Jon Iverson, Stephen Mejias, and I were sitting in the Venetian's food court after the Primedia cocktail party on Saturday night with Mo-Fi's Coleman Brice and Music Direct's Bes Nievera, Jr. We'd wanted to grab some sushi, but Tsunami (what an unfortunate name) didn't have a reservation for five for another two hours and our second choice, an Italian restaurant (what else?) had just laughed when we asked. So we wound up eating pizza slices off of vinyl tables rather than sashimi off of bamboo.

I didn't mind, because the companionship was what really made the meal. Jon and Stephen are easy hangs, and Coleman and Bes are muy simpatico. We were all giddy with fatigue and trading really dumb jokes, along with some life stories, since I'd only met Bes at the cocktail party a few minutes earlier. Besides, if we hadn't been wandering the halls of the Venetian, we'd have never witnessed the surreal scene of the red carpet catwalk outside the Adult Entertainment Expo's awards ceremony, where women with rather, ummm, exaggerated secondary sexual characteristics were sashaying into the hosting nightclub. Actually, I didn't see any of those women on the catwalk, which was surrounded by catcalling men, but the whole scene was pretty bizarre. (Speaking of which, I guess I should count myself lucky for not having to write about the new products at the AVN expo, like this one. Don't click if you are offended by adolescent body-parts humor.)

As we lounged around our table, digesting our mock-Italian mock-food, Bes asked me, "So what are your impressions of the show?"

"Ummm," I stammered. "Er, that is to say...(long pause)...You know, I don't have the slightest idea. I've been so busy collecting data and blogging it as quickly as possible, I haven't had a moment to reflect on it."

"Really? That's odd."

True, though. One reason I like the writerly life is that I spend so much time by myself, over-thinking experiences—covering CES on the fly doesn't allow for that leisurely approach. Heck, even today, the third day after the end of the show, I find it hard to come up with a big-picture analysis of the show.

My big disappointment was the paucity of affordable ambitious high-end products, although that might be more indicative of the cost of doing business at CES than a lack of merchandise. I did see some extremely promising gear, such as Arcam's $1500 Solo, Amphion's $1350/pair Ion, Dissun's Original electronics, Zu's $2900/pair Druid Mk.4, and Anthony Gallo's $2995/pair Reference 3.1, so I'm hopeful that they are just the tip of the iceberg.

The word "lifestyle" was bandied about a lot, but this year it seems to actually mean "lifestyle," rather than be a codeword for pretty and sonically compromised. Manufactures like Arcam, ReQuest, Orb, and Olive are promoting products that take prevailing trends in music listening (whole-house integration and portability) and attempt to deliver them in better fidelity. Hard-core audiophiles may think this a futile attempt to create a Gucci purse out of Bossie's ear, but I don't think we can create new audiophiles by telling them everything they know is wrong—first we have to introduce them to the concept of better.

I do have one Big Picture prognostication, now that I think of it: At 140,000 attendees, 2500 exhibitors, and five ginormous locations, including the Las Vegas Hilton and the Sands Convention Center, plus numerous outbarding exhibitors, CES has grown too large for anybody to experience all of it—this may be the year the show peaks. I spent a single day at the Sands, another at the Las Vegas Convention Center, and split the last two days between the Alexis Villas and T.H.E. Show at the St. Tropez. That means I missed stuff at every single location—and never even made it to exhibitors I wanted to see, such as Audio Research and MartinLogan.

On the other hand, that may be more a problem for those of us who have to try to see it all than it is for the exhibitors or their client-visitors. Ayre's Charlie Hansen and Quartet Marketing's Stirling Trayle both told me they had a phenomenal show this year, seeing more dealers and eliciting more excitement than in any previous year. Folks at T.H.E. Show complained about sparse attendance, however, which may be indicative either that it was harder to get around to see and hear everything this year or that people were cherry-picking the best-known exhibitors there, such as Halcro and DeVore Fidelity, neither of which lacked for attendees.

Comdex, the annual computer show held in Vegas, ended up a victim of its own popularity, rapidly becoming too big to bother with. I'm betting the CEA is already working on preventing that from happening to CES.

Make each vendor take his pose,
Just don't step on any toes.
Catch the eyes and the nose.
Maybe a piece of gear in repose.

Singing...
What new stuff can you show me?
And how much is the owner's fee?

Run back to the Amerisuites,
Shrink those photos but do it neat.
Squash 'em down to 50 squeaks.
Only thing waiting is my sleep.

Don't forget to check those facts,
Write it snappy with lots of cracks,
Not too long, not too short,
Make it a purty show report!

Send it through the Internet,
Wait and see what I get.

Did it make the company blog?
No, all I find is more fog.

Why do other blogs shine,
While my stories only pine?
Maybe tomorrow I'll learn what's wrong,
In my dreams during wakeup's song.—Larry "The King" Greenhill

"Larry, I've just come from the Alexis Park." Tom Norton, editor of Ultimate AV" button-holed me. "I think the Pioneer speaker is worth a visit. It's one of the only new things I've found over there." Tom's words rung in my ears. Had to see it!

Pioneer's room was downstairs from the very hot $45,000/pair TAD Model-2 loudspeaker. Both speakers were designed by Andrew Jones—Pioneer is TAD's parent company—and under Andrew's leadership, a multi-national team reconfigured the TAD beryllium technology into the 145 lb, three-way, $9000/pair Pioneer S1-EX. Both speakers use the same coincident tweeter-midrange array, except that the S1-EX's midrange unit has a more economical magnesium cone. Pioneer's curved baffle for time-aligning the coaxial driver with the two 7" woofers caught my eye.

Raoul Bauer, leader of the French team responsible for the S1-EX's 4"-thick wood cabinet design, came downstairs from the TAD exhibit to explain the S1-EX's final tuning at London's Air Studio. The recording engineers had rejected the previous S1-EX design because it failed to reproduce correctly the high-level sound of a kick-drum skin damped with gaffer tape. "Hundreds of design hours rejected because of some stupid Scotch tape," lamented Raoul. But there's a happy ending—the current Pioneer apparently made all the Air London engineers smile.

Praise the Lord and pass the Scotch tape! The Pioneer floorstander sounded as fast, dynamic, detailed, transparent, and open as the big TAD upstairs. Did I mention that its curved cabinet design is real purty? Thanks, Tom, you can send me downstairs anytime!

A line of speakers that impressed me when I auditioned them at the 2004 London Show was the Vivids, from South Africa. Designed by Laurence "Dick" Dickie, the engineer primarily responsible for B&W's groundbreaking original Nautilus design back in the mid-1990s, the Vivid speakers use proprietary metal-diaphragm drivers in enclosures formed from composite materials rather than wood. Seen here in one of the Audiophile Systems rooms, with VTL amplification and dCS's new P8i SACD player (review forthcoming), the Vivid B1s produced a clean, open sound. It was announced at CES that Vivid is being distributed in the US by Musical Surroundings.

Audiopax, the Brazilian manufacturer of the Model 88 single-ended tube amplifier that I reviewed most favorably three years ago, introduced the Model 55 amplifier at T.H.E. Show. Solid-state rather than tubed, the 55 is still single-ended and still features the unique "Timbre Lock" control. According to designer Eduardo De Lima, this MosFET design sounds very close to the Model 88. Price is $11,990/pair (compared to the $14,990/pair of the current Model 88 Mk.II).

I've always thought of Fujitsu-Ten as a company that manufactures car stereos. However, it turns out that they have a special division producing a line of home-audio speakers using single drivers of their own design. That's right: no woofer, no tweeter, no coaxially mounted woofer and tweeter—just a single cone driver, claimed to cover the range from 40Hz to 20kHz. In the top model, the TD712z ($7000/pair), this drive-unit is mounted in a rigid, egg-shaped enclosure. The sound of these speakers, driven by an Audion Sterling Plus Mk.II tube integrated amplifier ($2950), was simply stunning in its clarity and focus.

Sonics is the name of a new line of speakers designed by Joachim Gerhard, the founder of Audio Physic, and imported by Allen Perkins (Immedia), formerly the US importer of Audio Physic. The top-of-the-line is the PassionS, a tall, striking-looking speaker that consists of angled modules, with each driver having its own enclosure. The price is $32,000. Allen obviously loves its sound!

I'd heard a lot about Quad's upgraded ESL-989 speakers, renamed the Quad 2905 ($11,500/pair), so I dropped by the company's exhibit at the Alexis Park to check out these electrostatic floorstanders.

When I arrived, IAG America's Larry Shafer was listening to 2905s driven by Quad electronics. Smaller 2908s sat by. The new Quads sure looked sweet! So, too, was the sound, which was just as pleasing as my Quad '989s in my own listening room.

Julian Maddock, Quad's technical expert, assured me that the 2905—the model number combines the year (2005) and the panel size (9)—uses exactly the same circuitry and measures identically to the '989 in both time and frequency domains. This was refreshing—a manufacturer who upgrades his product but announces that the more expensive, newer version tests just the same as the old one!

So, what is new here? The ca-$2000 upgrade was done to strengthen the panel by reducing the speaker frame's "cantilevering" action while playing music. The new design is "centered on tensioned aluminum extrusions coupled to a stainless steel support structure." Structural rigidity was increased further by adding aluminum side bars that frame the cloth grille, a black-piano-lacquered wooden top plate, and a thin strut that runs perpendicularly down from the speaker top to latch behind onto the base, and a larger and heavier base plate. The aerofoil profiled tensioning strut reduces bending motions in the panels—and their chassis—while the speaker is reproducing music.

Finally, Quad listened to the laments from owners about the old-fashioned, tiny speaker terminals, and upgraded them to accommodate heavier spade lugs.

I was sipping my gin'n'tonic, watching a hologram of a scantily clothed dancer and soaking up some serious party ambience at Stereophile, UAV, and Home Theater magazines' annual CES bash, held this year at the Venetian Hotel's Vivid night club, when a tap on my shoulder snapped me back to business. It was jolly Craig Oxford, president of former Nearfield Acoustics, the company responsible for the balls-to-the-wall, cost-no-limit, Pipedreams loudspeaker system.

"It's been a good year, Larry," said Craig, "we've reorganized Nearfield Audio into a new business, High Emotion Audio, and recreated the Pipedreams in a twin-tower form. You've got to come and hear it at the Alexis Park."

"Where would I find you?" I asked to keep the conversation going while I kept one eye open on the kitchen door where the ladies were bringing out the food. "Just come to the doghouse," sighed Craig, "it's the only show room at the Alexis Park I can get that's big enough to let the Pipedreams breathe."

Mmmm, where is the doghouse? I consulted the Alexis Park guide, found the Pipedream's upstairs (ugh) room number, and pushed my feet sleepily over there early Sunday morning. Craig's twin-tower Pipedream ($85k–$135k/system) sat at one end of the double room, its burl/walnut, full-fill, 100% sheen, 15-coat lacquer finish gleaming in the sunlight.

D. Mike Shields, High Emotions' design engineer, gave me the info. The twin tower emerged as a "disaggregated" design that employed two narrow cylindrical baffles per channel, one to mount 40 tweeters, and the other to mount 18 midrange drivers, that provide a minimally diffractive environment for the array. These poles are sunk into a massive pedestal weighing 200 lbs. Craig drove the columns with two 350Wpc Conrad Johnson stereo amplifiers. Backing the columns was a row of four powered subwoofers, two per channel, each employing two opposed 12" drivers to pressure a central chamber so the resulting output formed a radially propagated pressure wave. Each sub was driven by an internal 400W amplifier.

Playing a Bela Fleck album, the new Pipedreams proved to be dynamic, punchy, and transparent, playing with best transient response at moderate volumes than at low volumes. By midmorning, the Pipedreams were delivering the goods with plenty of dynamics and fun, all I needed in the doghouse.

Though tired — exhausted, in fact — I walked in, only wanting to stand against a wall and listen. A group of friendly faces sat happily around a pair of LSA1 loudspeakers ($1000/pr), enjoying a bit of jazz. What I noticed, immediately, was that, though I was standing against a wall, in the back of the room, my listening position obscured by tables and chairs and people, I wasn't missing any of the music.

Larry Staples walked over. "Have we taken care of you yet?"
"Oh, I'm just listening," I replied.
"Well, we've got the LSA2s in here," he said, motioning to a second room. "Would you like to check them out?"

I'll admit: at the time, I honestly wasn't interested. Like I said, I only wanted to rest against a wall for a bit before going back to our hotel and calling it quits. But, sometimes, pushing yourself a little more, or doing something you wouldn't ordinarily do, leads to new and pleasing experiences. So, instead of declining:

"Sure," I nodded.

I followed Larry in, where he graciously offered me a seat and some time. I sat down and faced the impressive LSA2 ($2500/pr), a three-way floorstander — bigger than what I'm normally interested in, but at a price comparable to that of my reference DeVore gibbon 3.

Larry popped in a performance of The Four Seasons (Vivaldi, I believe?). I know the piece, sure, but I can't say I'm familiar with it, and it's not at all something I would normally listen to. Nevertheless, I soon found myself thoroughly enjoying the rises and falls, the dynamic sweeps.

Larry sat slightly behind me, where I could, every now and then, discern the motions of his head, swaying with the music.

The LSA2's finely crafted cabinet curves from front to back, going from 8" to 9.25" in the center to 6" at the rear.

Larry explained: "I'll tell you where the design came from," he began.

"It was my wife and I, sitting down to listen to some music. We'd be sitting there together, you know, and I'd always be hogging up the sweet-spot. She'd be off to one side or the other, and she'd always end up complaining that all the sound from the nearest speaker was beaming right at her."

I laughed.

"So, I had to figure out a design which would allow for the music to be enjoyed from any area in the room."

At this point, Larry stands me up and leads me to a far corner of the room.

"You hear that?" he asks. "All the images are still centered solidly in the middle of the space. You don't get all that beaminess from one speaker. You can stand anywhere."

I move around the room, casually. Indeed: near, far, standing, sitting, to the left or to the right, everything sounds smooth and natural. I detect very little alteration in the size or placement of images, and the sound is never at all fatiguing. If anything at all, I find the music to be a tad polite. I'm just not getting that certain sense of excitement or intensity that I am attracted to.

Larry asks if there's anything in particular I'd like to listen to. I hand him my demo disc, and ask for track six.

Earth, Wind & Fire comes on, and it's all:

I'm longing to love you
Just for a night
Kissing and hugging and holding you tight

It becomes clear to me that Larry is a music-lover first, and the science he puts into his designs is geared towards making music that can be enjoyed by anyone, no matter where they sit or stand in the room.

Used by Bösendorfer in their demo, the Art Audio Adagio has to be one of the most beautiful tube amplifiers made. If you see it and don't want it, you have no soul.

He didn't need to ask twice. Goller is a psychacoustician and former head of driver design at Vifa, ScanSpeak, and Skanning, and the designer of the symmetric drive (SD) and non-resonant chamber (NRC) drivers, among many, many others. The chance to get a data dump from the driver guru was irresistible.

The house was everything Stephen claimed it was, except for one tiny detail: the only place to set the speakers up in the 5000 square foot open plan living room was smack dab in front of the pool table. Goller rose to the challenge, however, and placed his L7 floorstanders ($14,900/pair) 15' apart and sat me on a high stool about 23' in front of them. Driven by an all GamuT system—CD3 CD player ($6000), D3 preamplifier ($6100), and M230 230W power amps ($11,500/pair)—the speakers create a cohesive soundstage in that vast room. They sounded intimate, putting Donovan between the speakers and awfully close to life size. On Strauss' "Banditen Galop," they filled the room with an orchestra and reproduced the whip-crack percussion with scary transient response. The system was fast, bold, and uncolored.

I've asked Goller for a longer interview for an upcoming eNewsletter—spending time with him was way too cool not to share. Ditto, the new GamuT products.

The drivers are muscled around by three 350W switch-mode amplifiers and the crossovers are active—and include analog signal processing for bass/room integration.

My Tuatara "Afterburner" track was vivid and raw—which is not a criticism of the speaker's tonal character, but a reflection of the sax-driven jam band nature of the disc, Percussion sounded fast and had tons of snap and the bottom end was tight and punchy, but it was the saxes that shone—that tweeter really does seem special—'very special. I've always loved 'stats, but sometimes want more weight than they give me. The problem with many hybrids is that they reveal too much tonal differences between the electrostatic driver and the woofer—perhaps by crossing over to a fast midrange cone at 3500Hz, Amft has avoided this. Only a long audition would say for sure—and I hope to get a chance to give the Criterion TCI 2 precisely that.

This is Vegas, so you'll understand that when I say that Jon Iverson and I were simply rolling the dice when we entered Audiona's room at T.H.E. Show, I mean that in a good way. "Want to hear some actively crossovered, four-way loudspeakers?" Brian Quick asked us. Well, yeah, that's what we do.

The 275 lb, 56.5" H by 26" W by 24" D 442 GL contains all-JBL drivers: a bi-radial constant-coverage horn/compression driver tweeter, bi-radial constant-coverage horn/compression driver midrange, 10" midbass driver, and 18" woofer. The class-A active crossover employs phase compensation for the fourth-order filters, with frequencies set at 150Hz, 1kHz, and 4kHz. Cables are included. The whole system retails for $45,000.

Quick told us he'd considered building a three-way system, but it was impossible to keep the woofer pistonic throughout its range going that route. It sure sounds pistonic in the 442 GL. Wowsers, no wonder horn guys are so contemptuous of reflex-loaded small box loudspeakers—the 442s sounded immense. What impressed us most, however, was how natural the mids and highs sounded through those compression drivers. Voices sounded smooth and unforced and music had life and sparkle. If you love horns, you've got to hear the 442 GLS—and if you don't love horns, these could rattle your prejudices.

I hope Quick is bringing Audiona to HE 2006 in June, because you really ought to hear'em.

Jayson's modular speaker was also on display. The Allegro Reference Monitor ($32,000/pair) contains a 2" Eton ribbon tweeter, a 2" Dynaudio dome, and an isobarically mounted pair of 6"Skanning midbass drivers in a time-aligned, tapered baffle. The Basso Passive subwoofer sports a pair of isobarically mounted 12" Skanning woofers in a rigid 1" MDF enclosure.

I listened to Tuatara's "Afterburner"—no that's not quite right, I experienced "Afterburner" as though I was in the front row of a jazz club. The rhythm was visceral and the saxes had a ragged bite that saxes have in real life but seldom through hi-fis. The xylophone shimmered and floated between the speakers—again, with that disembodied palpability that it has in real life (the overtones sound solid, but not at all connected to those metal keys that actually produced them). It was special. As in many hotel room demos, the bass wasn't quite as vivid or present as the lower mids through the highest highs, but I can't say whether that was genetics or environment. I'd sure like to find out, though.

We beheld a pair of speakers straight out of Buck Rogers—shiny chromed domes capped with a swept-back tweeter faring topped more conventional woofer cabinets. "Oh, the woofers aren't operating, what you're hearing is just the Type One ($8000/pair) modules. They operate from 65Hz to 20kHz. If you've got to go down to 40Hz, add the XLR-8 cabinets ($3100, including DSP woofer integration)," said David MacPherson.

The Type Ones were driven by Studio Electric's 275Wpc Electrodyne amplifiers ($7000), hybrid designs featuring NOS Seimens or Telefunken E88CCs in the first gain stage and high-output MOSFETs in the output stage. "I figured why not ship 'em with real tubes rather than make the customer foot the upgrade."

Jon and I listened and wept that we had miles to go before the show closed. The Type One/Electrodyne combo was relaxed and detailed, with a lot of character. It may well be a tad more colored than some of the top-end contemporary systems we heard this past week, but it also had soul. We'd hear again—and again, given the chance.

"The Model-1, with its 52 layers of ¾" plywood, was just too time-consuming to manufacture in quantity," Jones explained. "We'll still make it, but we had to give our cabinet maker a break." Yeah right, a shell constructed of 16 layers of 1/8" MDF is so much simpler! The Model-2 sports the same coincident-source 6" beryllium tweeter/midrange driver and twin 10" woven-aramid woofers as the Model-1, but it lacks that speaker's 8" lower midrange driver. "There are some benefits to that simplification," Jones said. "The crossover doesn't need to be as complex and that's always to the good."

Using some of Keith Johnson's 24-bit/88kHz masters played on an Alesis hard drive through a thoroughbred all-Pass Labs electronics chain, the Model-2s produced some of the most completely natural sound I heard at the show. They adapted themselves to the sound of the recording, creating a small, intimate soundstage for solo instruments and huuuge blocks of sound on orchestral tuttis.

I salivate every time I hear TAD's speakers, but Jones says that the Model-1s have essentially been built to order, meaning none have been available for review. That could change with the Model-2s, although John Atkinson might fire me if I made him measure a 300 lb loudspeaker. It might be worth the risk to live with the Model-2s.

The fabled Threshold Stasis amplifier is back. The S/350 reissue, built in China by Threshold International Ltd., is said to have the same circuit as the original, but with updated components. The original cost $3900 in 1992, so for those who long to own this famous amplifier, the S/350 reissue at $2000 is a bargain!