DAY 1
CES
January 8th, 2007

* product carried by Audio Federation

Copyright © Audio Federation, Inc.. All rights reserved.
All pictures in this report are freely copyable and distributable.

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Before we leave yesterday's preview of the SHOW at St. Tropez, a few pictures of Audio Federation / Audio Note's two rooms. Audio Note Ongaku, M8 Phono preamplifier, DAC 4.1x Balanced, CDT3 transport, E-SPeHE speakers with new hemp woofers, TT2 turntable with Arm 3, IO1 cartridge, and S4 step-up transformer. With Acoustic Dreams equipment rack and Shunyata Hydra M8 power distributor and Anaconda powercords, with a few HRS Nimbus Couplers thrown in underneath things. System total: $165,975 without rack and cables.

Below we have more photos of the Audio Note rooms and the Lamm room.

We also have a few dozen of the main conference (see below!).

Finally we have more of the Sands / Venetian high performance audio show.

The Audio note Ongaku.

The smaller, uh, reasonably priced room. The system complement consists of J/LX speakers, Conquest Silver amps, CD2.1x/II CD player which was just released [face plates are not quite ready yet], and M3 Phono preamplifier. System total cost without cables: $28,900.

The lobby of the Venetian. A very high-end hotel. Turns out that the conference organizers do not expect people to go to the Venetian but the the Sands / Expo for the conference. The staff at the desk did not know if there was a conference going on but if there was it was down thataway, on the other side of the casino.

The conference board. Not sure I understand the purpose of this board. It is kind of a room list and kind of a schedule of conferences...

Registration looked glorious but empty. But there were a LOT of people wandering about.

Still don't know what is down here, but I think there are many definitions of 'high performance audio'. There is a conference floor under here that might be needed to get visited.

This is the Lamm* room with Wilson Watt/Puppy 8 loudspeakers, with Metronome digital and analog, Kubala-Sosna cables.

Lamm ML2.1 were driving the Watt / Puppies. We thought the Lamm ML1.1 were a great match for the Sophias, but the ML2.1 on the Watt / Puppies may have them beat. We need to listen a lot more to both, I think.

The new $126,290 Lamm ML3. Due to transformer supply-chain difficulties, the ML3 were on static display. Sucks. They will be able to ship in numbers in April or so. And show goers will be able to see them at the Stereophile show in NYC in May or June. since they like showing with Wilson, I put in a request for them to show with the Alexandria X2 loudspeakers :-) From the looks I got maybe it'll happen!

The Lamm ML3 rear.

Close up of the Lamm ML3

Front of the Lamm ML3

Front of the Lamm ML3 power supply.

Innards of the Lamm* ML3

Innards of the Lamm ML3 power supply.

OK, everybody tells me how great these presentations are by Steve Hoffman. And I believe them. But it sure makes me feel like I am a loser when person after giddy person comes up and tells me how I didn't get to hear THIS awesome and extremely mythical track and THAT awesome story that so enhanced their enjoyment of music, well, it is just too bad for you Mike. OK. So, because I will likely KEEP missing them because my brain is otherwise occupied, aka absent - and not likely to return any time soon, that doesn't mean YOU ALL need to miss it. And this way you can join in the fun telling me what I missed at THIS show's Steve hoffman presentation.

This is where the busses excrete their passengers at the main conference center - LVCC. South Hall, West side.

The entrance to the South Hall, West side.

This is about 1/4 of the conference. I hope it is because I wanted to photo the whole conference and I got this hall done today and I only have 4 days to do the whole thing.

Just selecting a few pictures for today's daily, I am including a few photos of vibrating chairs that are trying to compete with the D-BOX chair.

Another vibrating chair.

Norcent was the largest display booth on this floor.

The CLO System. The K2 Mounts people in this booth helped me out (thanks!) with security who were intimating that I was not allowed to photograph unless I was 'press'. But in truth, I cannot photograph the booths who did not want to be photographed, which was yet another sound chair booth - whose name I already forgot because I have no photo to remind me who they were out of the 1000s of booths I saw today.

A clone of the venerable B&W Nautilus speaker

Larger flat screens. Sorry about the horizontal line there. No matter what I did it was there. I think it is the reflection from lights on the top of the booth across the isle

NERO sponsored the lanyards were all wore.

A Zalman liquid cooled PC computer chassis.

A Zalman quiet motherboard.

The idea of LCD advertising panels just struck my fancy. Don't know why.

This booth with these little robots (and R2D2's) was attracting a lot of attention.

A turntable? No. A CD player? Maybe. No I didn't ask the nice women booth people what this was doing there. For some reason I was at a loss for words. It musta been the gorgeous, uh, thing here, that was responsible for this lapse. Yep. Musta been.

A view from above - left

A view from above - right.

The IsoMike / Kimber Cable room with Soundlab*, Pass Labs, Emm Labs* room, with 4 x 2 Soundlabs in surround configuration. As usual always a room that challenges us about just what is audio reproduction

TAD system driven by Pass Labs with a reel-to-reel tape source.

Avantgardes running too loud in a setting that is memorable what with the posh room, the Vegas highway system, and dualing horns.

Golden Sound's room always sounds pretty good. Better than it should. but I really do not want to believe (do I?) it is because of all these special treatments that have on the equipment, speakers and floor.

Golden Sound floor treatment.

Ypsilon Electronics with Verity speakers. These amps are quite large (4 feet tall?). If I remember correctly, but I rarely do) they pump out 120 watts

The Ypsilon amps use tubes - presumably for the input stage?

Cayin tube radio.