CES 2016

"Clear sound from the north" is how the speakers from Penaudio are identified in the product literature, and my immediate thought was that this is a speaker from The Great White North, ie, Canada. Actually, the speakers are designed in Finland, with the factory in Latvia. The speaker in the photo is the Serenade Signature ($10,999/pair), a slim floorstander that uses custom SEAS drivers. Good sound with Conrad-Johnson electronics.

Conrad Johnson's TEA 2 phono stage was being fed by one of my favorite moderately priced record spinners: the Acoustic Signature WOW XL ($2395) with its own TA-1000 tonearm ($1995) and an Ortofon 2M Black moving-magnet cartridge ($755). The CA150 integrated amp was driving the 2-way, stand-mounted Penaudio Cenya Signature loudspeakers ($4000/pair)—the presentation had this fast forward-moving grainlessness that I found quite beguiling.

Many of you have seen the posts about Graham Nash touring the high end audio exhibits at CES earlier this month. The experience taught me this: it isn't how good you hear, but how well you listen.

I'm not sure what readers expected from this, and I certainly wasn't sure what to expect, which is why it was an attractive idea. Yes Nash ended up liking what he heard, but for those cynical enough to think he was just being polite, I'm here to tell you first hand that he was excited by the experience, and his enthusiasm was genuine.

Making good on the prototype that Great Britain's Prism was showing last year, the new Callia DAC will finally be released for retail this month at $1,895. It will handle 32/394 PCM and double DSD via USB, optical and SPDIF inputs on back. There will be both balanced and unbalanced audio outputs with digital volume control along with low-impedance headphone output with sensitivity adjustments on the back panel.

PSB Speakers was exhibiting a new bass-reflex subwoofer, the SubSeries (SS) 450, which will be shipping in April 2016 at a suggested US price of $1499. The driver features a 12", woven-fiber-glass cone. The subwoofer employs a 450W class-D amplifier, a built-in 4th order, continuously variable low-pass filter. The subwoofer was on exhibit and not playing.

Questyle's Bruce Ball was on hand to demo the R or Reference version of their player that John Atkinson just reviewed for Stereophile. You can check the review for details, but here are the basics: the QP1R is available now for $899 and essentially offers more internal memory and higher quality components than the regular QP1 ($599). Check out the photo below of all the parts inside the new player. Gorgeous!

Raidho principals Lars Kristensen, whose surname, thanks to his business card, I've finally spelled correctly after all these years; Mikkel Simonsen, who specializes in digital circuits, software, and PCB work; and Michael Børresen, the speaker designer/chief engineer who is responsible for overall concepts, visual and functional design, and analog circuitry; showed off the great, full-range sound of Raidho's new D-3.1 loudspeakers ($65,500/pair). Not the least bit shy at frequency extremes, the D-3.1 loudspeaker topped off a system that was equally at ease with fast, slamming percussion and naturally zingy piccolo.