Another CES is upon us. At CES we are not exhibitors and get to play tourist – albeit ones that take a lot of photos and write a lot of notes about what we are hearing – but this is much more relaxing than being exhbitors. And fun!

This year we ARE going to make it to the main conference center exhibit halls – where CES proper lives. Every year we say this half-heartedly, but this year it is with full heart. We want to check out some of the new high-definition video front projectors and a couple of other, top-secret for now (hee hee hee), audio products.

At the usual high-end audio part of CES are a number of new products we are looking forward to seeing and hearing. And at the top of the list has to be the new Marten Design Coltrane Supremes:

Here we see prototypes of the Supremes. This system uses Lamm hybrid amplifiers to drive the speakers, however at CES the Swedish Statement room will demonstrate (in Suite number 2007 at the Alexis Park Hotel):

“Bladelius Beowulf amplifiers: $37,500
Bladelius Gondul version 3 multiplayer: $14,000
Jorma Design Jorma Statement cables: $71,800
Marten Coltrane Supreme loudspeakers: $250.000
Nordic Concept, Artist Signature turntable: $18.000
WOO Design furniture: $11.000

Total: $402,300”

Yeah, this might qualify as a statement system :-). And for those of you wondering why we do not have a quartet of the Supremes here at Audio Federation, well, we just do not have the room:

Seriously, we should do a photo montage of our rooms here at the Belfry – although this is a 4-bedroom house, 2 bedrooms are chock-full I am not kidding to overflowing offices, one we sleep in, and one is our small listening room. Our livingroom and rec rooms are listening rooms. And yes, we (mostly me, I will admit) talk about converting the small dining room to a listening room, as well as the bedroom – at which point we would instead sleep in the walk-in closet. It would work, I just know it…

OK, back to CES…

The Swedish Statement room has its own website

The speakers are certainly something special, check this out:

“…Marten is now the first loudspeaker producer in the world to use Accuton’s 5cm diamond midrange in the Coltrane Supreme. Each of the Supreme’s two main speaker towers employs one diamond tweeter, one diamond midrange unit, one ceramic lower midrange unit and four woofers for the upper bass. The two bass towers employ six 9-inch woofers each, and a 2000W power amplifier. The cabinets are made of carbon fibre laminate and wood. The integral stands are made of polished stainless steel, and use cones and pucks from Black Diamond Racing.

“…The Coltrane Supreme is a four-cabinet system, consisting of two main loudspeakers and two dedicated subwoofers. The cabinets are made of extremely rigid, light, and stiff carbon fibre laminate with a Kevlar honeycomb in between. The main loudspeakers have a frequency range from 100 to 100,000 Hz. The crossover is a fully balanced, active, fourth-order design, with digital room correction possibilities below 100 Hz. The subwoofers have a frequency range from 15 to 100 Hz.

“Each main speaker tower employs four 7-inch ceramic upper bass units, one newly developed 7-inch ceramic lower-midrange unit, the world’s first 2-inch diamond midrange, and one _-inch diamond tweeter. Each subwoofer employs six newly-developed 9-inch, long-throw ceramic bass units with extreme low bass capabilities. All drivers employ neodymium under-hung magnet systems. “

Ah, one of the good things about the impersonal nature of the net – you all can’t see me drooling.

Finally, here is another view of the prototypes:

We already know how good the Jorma design cables are – they are the only speaker cable that we think might be better than Nordost Valhalla (read between the lines of what all the other cable manufacturers say, Valhalla is darn hard to beat). And now they have come out with a statement cable: The Jorma Design ‘Prime’:

Jorma Design (no photos yet)

“The newly-developed cables that Jorma Design will be contributing to this project are made of top-quality materials: gold, copper, transparent Teflon and walnut, all fine-tuned to get their best possible result. The cables have completely new conductors that were developed especially for this project, by a small European producer that really had to push its limits. The manufacturer had to change its machines to be able to make these conductors, and it took more than half a year to test them. The screens are made of extra-sturdy copper, and the cables make use of Bybee Slipstream Golden Quantum Purifiers. “

We have not heard the other components that are used in the Swedish Statement system… but soon, very soon now, just 16 more days….