CES 2006 and the parallel slow run from January 5-8, with a special press day on the 4th (Day Zero, we call it). Click to visit each of UHF's live reports. The report will appear early the next day, if not before.
Day 0 (Jan.4th)
Day 1 (Jan.5th)
Day 2 (Jan.6th)
Day 3 (Jan.7th)
Day 4 (Jan.8th)
The last day was spent at Alexis Park, the high end venue. We saw the weird and the wonderful...and when we were lucky the two were the same.
Take this XLH speaker from China. Weird? We’d guess the HAF (Husband Acceptance Factor, never mind the WAF) to be at Antarctic levels. The sound? Amazingly good, the sort of sound that makes the speaker seem to disappear (yes, we know, we know!). By the way, the CD player, also from China, was called Leonardo.
Also offbeat but no less interesting for all that was the Tetra 306. The speakers of this marque are tetrahedrons, hence the name, and this one is a small tetrahedron that sits down low and looks up at you like Fido listening to his master’s voice (though in this case the master does the listening). We heard a song by Holly Cole that sounded warm and appealing. The price is larger than the sound, at US$3K, but we liked it. Ignore the metallic paint, because the 306 is wood.Tired of stringing wires around the room, or living with a significant other who doesn’t understand why your system isn’t wireless when even telephones are? A company called Firebird Sounds has a whole lot of wireless solutions. The simplest is a pair of boxes not unlike the Sonneteer BardOnes we reviewed in UHF No. 73...only much cheaper at US$150. Put the audio into one, and it appears at the other one, end of story. But that isn’t all. Firebird has wireless amplifiers and even a subwoofer. It looks like any other sub, except for the two little antennas at the rear
While we’re on the subject of unusual speakers, check out the Planet Diamond speakers from Metal Sound Design in Hong Kong, shown at left. The ceramic drivers can be rotated about each other to get phase just right depending on your listening position. They are both weird and exquisite. The company won a CES Innovation Award for this speaker, and we can understand why. Actually, we love offbeat speakers even when they don’t sound good. This one does, and that is a more than appreciable bonus. The price is around $65K.
The Newfoundland company Aurum made it to CES, as its unique system enters production. You may recall that Aurum makes triamplified speakers: three way speakers driven by individual single-ended tube amps, with a solid state amp for the woofers. The crossover is electronic, placed before the amplifiers. An optional extra is a combo CD player and preamplifier. Designer Derrick Moss has been refining the system, and at this point its "wow" factor is way into triple digits. "How can you get such clean transients?" asked a visitor. The answer is that the stuff that smears transients is left out.The picture at right, by the way, shows the new look of the Aurum cabinet. Those cabinets are made in Denmark, by the way. That may seem odd, but then again CES mailed us our show badges from Sweden, so why not?
Surprisingle enough, the Aurums were not the only triamplified speakers we heard. We spent a bit of time with the Viola speakers from WLM (that stands for Wiener Lautsprecher Manufaktur, and don’t ask where they’re made). The WLM electronic crossover (it comes with the system, and you choose the three power amps you want to use) is shown below. The WLM’s were a sensation at the last Montreal show, and it doesn’t seem to have been an accident.
The large Italian-looking Usher speakers (which are actually from Taiwan) sounded mushy and indistinct in the Usher room, where they were driven by Usher’s own components in a room with far too many speakers in it. A pair of Usher Dancers, which could almost pass for Sonus Fabers (though perhaps only if you took off your glasses) sounded far better in another room, driven by small amplifiers from Nuforce. The amps use switching power supplies, which keeps the size small, but not the sound. The matching preamplifier is also small for the same reason.
We heard remarks that there seemed to be more turntables than ever at CES this year, and we lost track of how many we heard. One of them was the Grand Prix, shown at left, which we heard with a pair of massive Von Schweikert VR-9’s.High end gear is sometimes dismissed as very industrial in appearance, hence the concern with the Wife Acceptance Factor. There are notable exceptions, such as this nice little system from Chord, below right.
The top component, by the way, is the new Chord One CD player, and it is new. The lower components are, respectively, a preamp and a power amp. Bang & Olufsen, eat your heart out!
There’s one more component we can’t resist showing you: the Metronome CD transport, at left. It made us think of an Oracle, though by its shape rather than its materials.We ended the show over at VTL, which was running its new S-400 tube monoblocks into Wilson Watt/Puppies. With viny, as usual. The amps wield a lot of power for tube units, 450 watts of it on each side. Like its bigger brothers (sisters?) the tubes get rebiased each time the music pauses, and a light warns you if one of them needs attention. Oh, did we mention they sound terrific? They’ll be out next Summer, at $13,500 the pair.
That’s it for another year. Next stop, the Montreal show.
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