Show Reports

January 17, 2012 by Michael

CES 2012 – Rogue Audio, Tel Wire

Don’t remember if they were playing music in here [presumably off a laptop] or not – I took a bunch of photos and thought about how ‘Class D Done Right’ was a good slogan, and at the same time one could interpret it as being slightly tongue-in-cheek.

The main rack for this system. There was also a secondary rack as we’ll see below.

Front view of the main rack.

Rogue’s Medusa hybrid amplifier. We’ll see a few more shots of this below as well.

Rogue Audio’s Hera II preamplifier

Rogue Audio’s Triton phono preamp

EgglestonWork’s Andra II loudspeaker. Love it that Rogue chose such a high quality speaker for their room.

EgglestonWork’s Andra II loudspeaker

This is the smaller rack on the side of the room.

Ayre’s QB-9 USB DAC.

Spiral Groove’s SG1.1

The Rogue Audio Medusa amp was on static display.

The rear panel of the Rogue Audio Medusa amp that was on static display.

Rogue Audio’s Cronos Magnum integrated amp

Front / top view of Rogue Audio’s M-150 monoblock amp

Side view of Rogue Audio’s M-150 monoblock amp

January 16, 2012 by Michael

CES 2012 – Clearaudio

There is a nice simple system that plays music in this room, but face it, many rooms like this are primarily setup for us to ogle at the gear on static display. And there will be a lot of opportunity for ogling before this post is done.

Clearaudio’s Concept turntable

Clearaudio’s Concept turntable and Concept cartridge

T+A Music Receiver

Dynaudio’s Confidence C1 speaker

Dynaudio’s Confidence C1 monitor speaker

On a table against the wall as we come into the room, a bevy of Clearaudio phono stages…

List of Clearaudio cartridges and… what looks like bearings…

The Clearaudio Smart Matrix record cleaner

The Clearaudio Smart Matrix record cleaner – the front view

The Clearaudio Double Matrix record cleaner

The Clearaudio ‘Concept’ turntable

The Clearaudio ‘Performance DC’ turntable

The Clearaudio ‘Ovation’ turntable

The Clearaudio ‘Innovation Compact’ turntable

The Clearaudio ‘Innovation’ turntable

The Clearaudio ‘Innovation’ turntable tonearm

The Clearaudio High Precision Level Gauge. Looks like this would work quite well – and this table on static display is not level. For shame… 🙂

The Clearaudio ‘Innovation’ turntable

The Clearaudio ‘Accu Drive’ BPS turntable power supply

The Clearaudio ‘Master Innovation’ turntable. Took several photos of this new table. The table is $27,500. The stand $8,000. And the linear tracking TT-2 tonearm $10,000

The Clearaudio ‘Master Innovation’ turntable

The Clearaudio ‘Master Innovation’ turntable. Cool the way the platter lights up…

The Clearaudio ‘TT-2’ tonearm

The Clearaudio ‘Master Innovation’ turntable

The Clearaudio ‘Master Innovation’ turntable. Every show there is always someone who walks up and plants themselves in the photo background. This show… this is that guy.

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January 16, 2012 by Michael

CES 2012 – Onda Systems

Onda Systems makes cables. They used this system consisting of the Vandersteen 5a Carbon speakers, Aesthetix Janus preamp and Atlas amp, and 2 Accustic Arts CD Player 1 players. The 2 players were going to be used to do quick demonstrative comparisons [shootouts] between various of their cable = but one of the players was having issues when I was there.

Onda cables are similar to the Acapella Silvercables in that they are solid core silver. You can bend them with your hands fairly easily but they are thick – so it ain’t THAT easy.

What is cool about these cables is that the spades, for example, on the speaker cable are molded as one piece with the cable so there is no seem, no discontinuity between cable and connector.

Sonically, the cables sounded very nicely clean and rich in the midrange. I did not listen long enough to test for leading edges and micro-dynamics, sometimes problems for solid core cables.