CES 2006

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.

Climb the AP's stairs day by day,

Push on through the screaming fray,

Get those pictures anyway.

Hansen is a new line of ultra high-end speakers from Canada, using proprietary drivers and said to feature extremely dense, non-resonant enclosures. The company is headed by Lars Hansen, who, as former president of the Dahlquist Corporation, is no stranger to the world of high-end speakers. The sound of the Prince ($27,000/pair, third model from the top) was simply excellent—an auspicious debut, I felt.

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">http://www.musicalsurroundings.com/">Musical Surroundings.

Audiopax, the Brazilian manufacturer of the Model 88 single-ended tube amplifier that I reviewed">http://www.stereophile.com/tubepoweramps/843/">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).

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-989http://www.stereophile.com/floorloudspeakers/720/">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.