Vivid Audio Giya Speaker
Posted Mon Mar 15, 2010, 1:49 PM ET
When it comes to hotbeds of high-end audio, South Africa is not the first place that comes to mind. Yet this is the home of Vivid Audio, maker of beautifully curvaceous speakers, including the flagship Giya, which is available in two versions—the original G1 and the new, smaller G2 introduced at CES 2010.
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Nordost Odin Cables
Posted Fri Mar 12, 2010, 1:50 PM ET
Reader K. Reid asked for a profile of ultra-high-end cables from Nordost, and I'm only too happy to oblige. At the pinnacle of the company's extensive product range is the Odin line, which includes power cords, tonearm cables, analog and digital interconnects, and speaker cables.
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Lindemann 882 Integrated Amp
Posted Thu Mar 11, 2010, 1:34 PM ET
North American distributor Aaudio Imports was quite busy at CES last January, introducing many audiophile products to the US market. Among them was the 882 integrated amplifier from German boutique maker Lindemann.
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Avantgarde Trio G2 Speaker System
Posted Mon Mar 8, 2010, 1:27 PM ET
Horn-based speakers have been around since the earliest days of audio reproduction, and they continue to find favor among audiophiles today. Germany's Avantgarde Acoustic is no stranger to horn speakers, basing its business on them since 1991. At the top of the company's considerable lineup is the Trio, shown above in the Classico configuration with a massive Basshorn subwoofer.
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Burmester 069 Belt-Drive CD Player
Posted Thu Mar 4, 2010, 12:57 PM ET
When I first heard about the flagship 069 CD player from German high-end manufacturer Burmester Audio, I was surprised to learn that it is belt driven. Of course, many LP turntables use belt drives, but I'd never heard of a CD player with such a mechanism, which is said to decouple the platter from the rest of the chassis, eliminating vibrations and allowing the data to be read with considerably higher precision and less jitter.
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Tidal Sunray Tower Speaker
Posted Tue Mar 2, 2010, 1:27 PM ET
Most of the products on display at CES are new to the world market, but there are a few exceptions. For example, the Sunray speaker from Germany's Tidal Audio has been available for several years, but not in the USA—until now. North American distributor Aaudio Imports used CES 2010 as the venue to introduce the Sunray to the American audiophile community.
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McIntosh MVP881 Universal Blu-ray Player
Posted Thu Feb 25, 2010, 12:27 PM ET
Considering all the recent brouhaha about the $3500 Lexicon BD-30 actually being a rebranded Oppo BDP-83 (list price $500), I was suspicious when I saw a CES press release introducing the MVP881 universal disc player from McIntosh Laboratory. But then I read that the MVP881 uses the HQV Realta video processor, whereas the Oppo/Lexicon uses VRS from Anchor Bay, so it can't be another more-expensive knock-off.
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Veloce LS-1 Battery-Powered Preamp
Posted Tue Feb 23, 2010, 2:08 PM ET
AC power has long been the bugaboo of high-end audio—necessary to power the electronics, but prone to polluting the audio signal path with unwanted noise. American boutique manufacturer Veloce Audio has come up with a unique and elegant solution to this problem in its LS-1 vacuum-tube preamp—put the power supply and audio electronics in completely separate boxes and run the electronics with a rechargeable battery.
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Snell Phantom Speakers
Posted Mon Feb 22, 2010, 1:49 PM ET
At CES last January, Snell Acoustics announced the availability of its Phantom B7 speaker, which was first shown at CES 2009. What makes the Phantom B7 special? It's engineered to provide much of the performance of the company's flagship Illusion A7 at a fraction of the price and size.
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NBS Universal Power Amplifier
Posted Thu Feb 18, 2010, 1:36 PM ET
NBS is perhaps best known for high-end cables—its URL is nbscables.com, after all—but this American boutique audio company also makes a few unusual speakers and electronic components. I'm especially intrigued by the Universal Power Amplifier (UPA), a unique monoblock that is truly universal in design and operation.
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Naim Ovator S-600 Speaker
Posted Tue Feb 16, 2010, 1:19 PM ET
Naim is a name well known to audiophiles. This British high-end company makes virtually all types of audio products, from CD players and hard-disk servers to preamps, power amps, speakers, and everything in between (except cables). New to Naim's speaker lineup is the flagship Ovator S-600, which has taken three years to bring to market and features some innovative elements.
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Glass Act
Posted Wed Feb 10, 2010, 3:23 PM ET
Glass isn't the first thing I would think of as an ideal material for speaker cabinets, but French manufacturer Waterfall Audio disagrees. Its new flagship Niagara is a thing of crystalline beauty that boasts impressive specs.
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Space Saver
Posted Mon Feb 8, 2010, 1:09 PM ET
Most home-theater geeks prefer to buy separate components in order to optimize the performance of each one and allow them to be swapped out independently for repair or upgrade. But what if you don't have enough space to accommodate all those separate devices? Denon's answer is the new S-5BD, which combines a full-featured Blu-ray player and AVR into one compact package.
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Thin Air
Posted Thu Feb 4, 2010, 3:15 PM ET
Storing and accessing music on a computer has become commonplace, even for audiophiles, but getting that music to your audio system without sacrificing sound quality has always been a challenge. At CES, French high-end audio company Micromega introduced a unique solution to this problem—the WM-10 AirStream, the world's first wireless DAC (digital-to-analog converter).
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Horn of Plenty
Posted Mon Feb 1, 2010, 2:01 PM ET
Horn speakers have been around almost since the invention of electrical-to-mechanical transducer technology, and they still enjoy widespread use today, especially in commercial cinemas. But cinema speakers use horns that limit the vertical dispersion of their sound, whereas circular horns used by a few high-end speaker manufacturers radiate sound in a spherical pattern. Among the proponents of this approach is German maker Acapella, which introduced a new model to its lineup at CES, the High Violoncello II, which, like all Acapella products, is distributed in North America by Aaudio Imports.
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Second Son
Posted Thu Jan 28, 2010, 12:12 PM ET
Known primarily for high-end, high-quality electronics, Pass Laboratories has conceived its third speaker model. First came the 4-way Rushmore in 2003, which was followed by the 4-way SR-1 in 2008, so named because it was the first "son of Rushmore." At CES, the company introduced the SR-2, promising superb sonics in a smaller package.
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The Art of iPod
Posted Wed Jan 27, 2010, 2:14 PM ET
It seems as if high-end iPod docks are all the rage these days. Take, for example, the Art.Station from the David Wiener Collection.
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Cantare Nobile
Posted Tue Jan 26, 2010, 3:38 PM ET
German speaker maker Canton was founded in 1972, deriving its name by combining the Latin word cantare (to sing) and the German word ton (musical tone). Nowhere is the company's dedication to exceptional music reproduction more evident than its Reference line, which is topped by the flagship Reference 1.2 DC.
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Wisdom of the Sages
Posted Fri Jan 22, 2010, 4:57 PM ET
Among the myriad speakers introduced at CES were three new additions to the Sage Series from Wisdom Audio. All three—L150m, L100m, and C150m center-channel—are on-wall models based on Wisdom's planar-magnetic, line-array design and intended to be placed behind an acoustically transparent projection screen.
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Creative Evolution
Posted Tue Jan 19, 2010, 1:41 PM ET
At CES, many companies set up shop in off-site hotel suites, making it more difficult to find and experience them first-hand. So it was this year with Krell, which shared a suite at the Mirage with SIM2. Among the items introduced there was the Evolution 555 Blu-ray player, the company's first foray into this product category.
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