CES 2011 – EAR, Marten, Jorma Design

[We are going through the rooms in the order that I saw them. There were just a few rooms that I went to first, before starting the more regimented room to room search. Neli and I went to these few rooms together, which was the first time we have done this in several years].

EAR electronics on Marten ‘Bird’ speakers.

There were a number of sources here: reel-to-reel, CD and computer. A number of tracks on the computer were recorded from the reel-to-reel. Dan tried to convince me that tracks recorded this way from tape and played back on the laptop sounded better than the CD of the same track. It was certainly less compressed, but I am not certain that there wasn’t some bad stuff inserted by the laptop in there as well. In this very limited demonstration, in fact, I didn’t like the sound much on either the CD nor the laptop. The EAR-modded R-to-R sounded great though 🙂

EAR electronics on Marten ‘Duke’ speakers

New Jorma Design cables to replace their ‘No. 1’ speaker cables. The cable is slightly rounder and smaller than the No. 1. Bybees are no longer used but the wooden ornamentation remains. The sound is much closer to the Jorma Design ‘Orego’ cables (which appear immediately above the No. 1 in their line of cables).