Best of CES 2014

Mike

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Best of CES 2014

First off, I’m not a fan of using “best of”, but prefer “my favorite”. Let’s face it, any show is not an ideal environment for auditioning equipment, however, what I heard ranged from quite poor to extraordinary, with most falling somewhere in the middle. Also, a lot of times, there were extenuating circumstances affecting the demonstration – volume of people in the room, noise from adjoining rooms and most importantly, music selection (a very faint violin solo is not the best way to demonstrate your gear in such a noisy and congested environment.) That being said, CES is certainly better than RMAF for sonics due to larger rooms with higher rooms.

But, there were some rooms that stand out to me – for better or worse. Here they are:

Favorite Overall Room

•There were several excellent rooms, but the nod definitely has to go to the VAC/Focal room at the Venetian. Kevin, Brent & Co. were able to reproduce a symphony orchestra as good as I’ve ever heard it on a hi fi system – probably better. I went back to this room several times, and every time was impressed. VAC 450’s, VAC signature Phonostage and Preamp, Focal Grande Utopia’s, Shunyata cabling throughout. Beautiful and awesome.

Runner-up: Wilson Alexia/DCS/VTL room at the Mirage. Using the VTL 450 amps, this room produced some wonderful soundstaging.

Favorite New Speaker
•The new Magico S3’s were demonstrated by Magico (with Vitus) and in the Soulution/Axxis room. The midrange on the S3’s is outstanding and bass is totally balanced.

Favorite NEW Modestly Priced Speaker
•The GoldenEar Triton 1. Priced at a reasonable $4999/pair. Big sound. Great look and with the built in subs – powerful. Ass rattling bass with a delicate touch. You can have great sounding speakers for a great price – GoldenEar does it again.

* Runner-Up: Also priced at $4695/pair, the Bryston Model T. Powered by the terrific 28SST2’s, the Bryston Model T continued Bryston’s desire to provide amazing speakers at a reasonable price.

Favorite Speaker Setup

•Wilson Alexia/DCS room at the Mirage. DCS utilizes a well-known dealer in California to do the setup. He had those Alexia’s dialed in as good as I’ve ever heard them.

Favorite Analog
•Demonstrating his new Kronos Sparta Turntable, Louis Desjardins was very proud (and rightly so) of his new invention. In my opinion, in the area of high end turntables, the only competition to the Kronos Sparta is the original Kronos.

Favorite Synergy
•This one surprised me, but the Soulution 711 with the Magico S3’s had an undeniable great synergy.

Runner-Up: The Absolare/S5 room. On the first day, this room was rocking. I was pleasantly surprised at how good the Absolare amps sounded on the S5’s. Karem Kucukasian of Absolare is a good designer and a true gentleman in every sense of the word. He is one of my favorite people to chat with at the shows. Always friendly and cordial and he had his amps properly demonstrated on some great speakers.

Favorite New Preamp
•Ever since its announcement last year, the Audio Research SP20 has caught my attention. With its superb phonostage (equivalent to the ARC PH8, an $8000 phonostage in its own right) and beautiful profile and touchscreen. Sonically, the SP20 also continues the pedigree of quality preamps from the company in Minnesota.

Favorite Digital

•I will of course say the Lumin room! ☺ But besides the Lumin, the Nagra DAC (it has a tube output stage). It handles DSD, DSDX2 and all formats, natively. It sounds great with redbook/hi res, but when he played Double DSD, it was digital Nirvana.

Favorite Digital for the Money
•LA Audio Pro-2 Vacuum Tube CD Player. This tube CD player retails for just over $2000 and appears to be very well built and sounded better than many digital setups costing many multiple times more.

Favorite NEW Solid State Amps
•This category was very hard for me. Because, well, nothing blew me away. For me, the D’Agostino amps are my benchmark for solid state, but I wanted to see what was new and impressive. The new D’Agostino integrated sounded very good from what I heard. I also heard an endless amount of Swiss and European amps all trying to out do one another with higher and higher resolution. The Soulution 711 was very impressive. BIG jump up from the 710. But the winner for me was the Pass XA160.8’s. They are fast, dynamic, punchy with quick bass, a terrific midrange and much better separation than the XA.5 series. These amps are going to be a hit for Nelson & Co. A pair of XA60.8’s might just be the ticket. A great balance between sonics and heat!

Runner-Up: Concert Fidelity amps. These wonderfully sounding, 125 watt/channel Class A amps made the TAD’s sound better than I’ve ever heard them, and actually quite listenable for someone who isn’t really a big fan of the TAD sound (but I do have tremendous respect for Andrew Jones and what he has accomplished).

Favorite Solid State Amps

•The D'Agostino Momentums continue to impress with their liquidity, bass control and balance. Oh, and yeah, they look pretty good too!

Runner-Up: Not inexpensive by any means, but the Bryston 28 SST2’s continue to hit way above their price point. They just don’t do anything wrong and they do a lot of things right – definitely all the important things. Really, the Bryston 28 SST2’s represent a wonderful pair of amplifiers made by a wonderful company with the best warranty in the business and a terrific team behind them.

Favorite NEW Tube Amp
•This category was very hard for me for the opposite reason of my Best of Solid State category because there were so many great sounding tube amps! I admittedly have a love affair for Asian amps (you thought I was going to say Asian women didn’t you?) ☺ Triode Corp amps are a big tease! But in all seriousness, the Best Tube Amps were the Kondo amps. I didn’t know HiFi could sound THIS good. I could never afford them, but one can always dream.

Favorite Tube Amps

* VAC Statement 450’s. On the big Focal’s, these great amps continue to impress. Sounding more like music, and less like “tube” or “solid” state, the VAC 450’s continue to represent some of the best that is possible in amplification today.

Favorite Tube Amp for the Money
•This is an easy one. The LA Audio P-845 monoblocks. These amps stopped me in my tracks. I had to force myself to leave the room. I returned to this room 5 times. For $9995 for the pair, an absolute home run.

Favorite Demonstrations:
•The Shunyata demonstration with the Alpha Digital Power cord would convince even the most harden cable skeptic that cables DO matter.
•Over at the Raidho/Ansuz room, Lars gave a pretty impressive demonstration of the new Ansuz cable risers.

Biggest Disappointment:

•McIntosh once again disappoints their core customers with another lackluster CES launch. Appealing to the iPod generation must be their current priority. Boom boxes, headphones and streamers must be the talk of the town at McIntosh these days.

Thank you!

I want to personally thank all the manufacturers who participated in CES. Their hard work and investment should not be overlooked. It is not inexpensive for them to come to these shows, to be away from their families, etc. and to put up with the same questions over and over again! :) Thank you.
 
Mike, thanks for all your hard work. You did a great job ! Now I'm lusting over those XA160.8's :exciting:
 
Awesome Mike!

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Few pics of your Favorite Overall Room (Focal-JMlab/VAC) ::

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http://www.focal.com/2014/----------------------------------------------------http://www.focal.com/en/
 
Thanks for the summary Mike! Like Mark, I would love to hear the .8 series one day!
 
That was a great summary Mike, Thanks. I would have really enjoyed listening to those big Focal's and mentally compared. Anyone know if Albert Porter attended, he now has the same speakers and has been looking at options and I had mentioned the Vac's. I'll have to drop him a note

Appears besides getting to see lots of eye candy first hand there were some great rooms, gotta give your hats off for being able to pull such off in less than ideal conditions and limited time frame.
 
Thanks Mike. Great summary.



Did you order the Grande's already Mike? You're not the #2 type of guy:audiophile:
focal-grande-utopia-em.jpg

They are great, but not for my room. Too big, too tall, too heavy, too expensive. If I had a 25 x 35 room with 12 or 15 foot ceiling and a concrete floor (instead of a wood subfloor), they would be on my short list. But in this price range, MBL 101 Xtremes for me. :)


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Mike, is your $4,999 price for the Bryston Model T speaker correct? I thought it was $6,495 for vinyl (who would ever buy) and more for the veneers.
 
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