CES 2015

My assignment at CES 2015 was to report on speakers costing less than $10,000/pair, so when I went into each room my first task was to see if they had any new (or at least new-to-me) speakers that met this criterion. I found one in the KEF room that appeared to fit the bill: the sign on the speaker identified it as the Reference 1, priced at $7500/pair. Johan Coorg of KEF explained to the assembled visitors how the design of this speaker utilized knowledge gained in designing the Blade.

Replacing the HM901, the new s version has a redesigned aluminum body, tweaked analog section and quicker power up and down cycles. This is another premium player in the $1k price range and like the others, handles both PCM and DSD and features nice build quality. There is an SD card slot for up to 256GB of storage and stepped volume control on top. The new model should be appearing in the second quarter of 2015.

Sporting beautiful casework for relatively modest pricing, Burson's Conductor Virtuoso will be shipping in two versions: one with a Sabre ESS9018 DAC chip for $1,995 and the other with the BurrBrown PCM1793 for $1,495. Inside is a 4 watt headphone amp section along with PCM processing up to 24/192.

On the back are digital inputs for USB, SPDIF and optical and also analog RCA jacks. Also on the back are the digital and analog outputs
and on the front a 100-step volume control and 1/4 inch headphone jack. Remote control is included.

I was mightily impressed by the Cambridge Audio 851D Preamp/DAC when it was in my system last year, especially at its price point of $1,695! So seeing a new flagship streaming/preamp/DAC product piqued my interest.

A Cambridge rep explained that the new 851N is essentially a CXN and 851D put together, which is surprising since the price only jumps one C-note to $1,799 when it becomes available in March. See details on the 851D in my review and check out the CXN in the post below.

Rotel previewed three new "best ever" models at CES. Although the passive display allowed for little more than photo and note taking, I learned that the brand new RC-1590 DAC/preamplifier ($1749), which ships in March, promises to be "the best stereo preamplifier Rotel has ever made."

Closing three days of Hi-Res presentations at CES 2015 were (from left–right) Maureen Droney, Senior Executive Director of The Recording Academy's Producers and Engineers Wing and a recording engineer who has worked with Santana and John Hiatt; Marc Finer, whose Digital Entertainment Group (DEG) consults with Sony and other entities as he attempts to align messaging on the hi-res front; and Robert Heiblim, Vice Chair of the Consumer Electronics Association's (CEA) Audio Division.

If you only need to add networking functionality to your system, the CXN will provide wired UPnP, wi-fi, USB Audio, AirPlay, Spotify Connect, aptX Bluetooth, and internet radio which is sent to either a digital out for your DAC or through its own dual Wolfson 24 bit DAC section. It will handle both PCM and DSD sources and upsamples all inputs to 24/384 for digital filtering if using the built-in DAC.

Price is $999 and it should be here in March.