LATEST ADDITIONS

With the cover and top plate of the CD8 off, the Philips Pro-2 transport mechanism is revealed along with the damping system coupling the laser and spindle with the aluminum I-beam below.

To access the drive, a drawer on top slides open.

Wadia's iTransport was a <A HREF="http://blog.stereophile.com/ces2008/010708wadia/">big hit</A> at last year's show, so they are back this year with a pile of new products.

Here is Wadia's new 381 Integrated CD Player, which retails at $6,950 and offers the same performance of the company's 581se minus SACD playback.

Wadia is also showing the new 571 CD transport at &7,950 and is also slated for a March ship date.

8 DACs per channel and upsampling to provide a 2,8224MHz data rate with 26-bit resolution from a standard CD. Retail is $33,450 and availability will be March.

I did not make it to <a href="http://blog.stereophile.com/ces2009/">CES</a&gt; this year, but my exhibitor badge did. Here's our mischievous web monkey, Jon Iverson, with my name held hostage around his neck.

The original Coltrane speaker from Swedish company Mrten Design got the thumbs-up from Michael Fremer when he <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/floorloudspeakers/205marten/">reviewed it</A> three years ago, so I was not surprised to hear good sound in importer EAR USA's room from the new Coltrane Soprano ($45,000/pair). The Soprano combines a diamond tweeter from Jantzen Audio said to have a 55kHz bandwidth, with two 7" ceramic-cone woofers from Accuton. Other than the 56mm-thick front baffle, the stylin' gracefully curved enclosure is fabricated from carbon-fiber laminate.

Although Mikey Fremer has received a pair for review, I haven't visited his Jersey crib yet to take a listen. So the system in Boulder's room at CES was my first chance to audition Wilson's new MAXX 3. I popped a data disc with some of my hi-rez 24-bit/88.2kHz files in the Boulder 1021 CD player, and a list of the WAV files appeared on the player's screen. The 1021 will play data CDs carrying FLAC, WAV, Vogg Orbis, and MP3 files, and as I found, will decode and play hi-rez files.

I went into the Pass Labs room to check out the company's new amps. But what caught my eye was the SR-1 loudspeaker ($25,000/pair). SR-1 stands for "First Son of Rushmore," the Rushmore being Nelson Pass's original assault on the state of the speaker art. A conventional deign compared with the active quad-amplified Rushmore, the four-way SR-1 uses four top-line SEAS drive-units, including a 29mm Hexadym soft-dome tweeter,