John Atkinson

Loudspeaker manufacturer VMPS ran a series of live-<I>vs</I>recorded dems throughout the four days of CES, at the Zeus Ballroom in T.H.E. Show's Alexis Park venue. In dems organized by VMPS's Brian Cheney, groups of musicians and singers first performed live while being recorded by some of Ray Kimber's staff in DSD, using crossed figure-8 mikes, Millennia Media mike preamps, and Meitner converters. The recording was then played back on VMPS speakers and subwoofers, driven by Ampzilla amplification, with Audience Adept Response power conditioning and Audience Au24 e cables. The playback level was matched to that of the original, allowing legitimate comparisons. (The mikes were close enough in the solo singer dem I witnessed to minimize the double contribution of the room acoustic.)

A close-up of Jim Borgiorno in the VMPS ballroom, performing a classic from the Golden Age of American popular song.

Thiel's PR wonk Micah Sheveloff grabbed me as I walked past the room in the Sands Convention Center Thiel was sharing with Bryston to meet with Frank G&#246;bl of Canton. "You've got to hear the new CS2.4 Special Edition." As Wes Phillips had been mightily impressed by the original CS2.4 ($4900/pair) when he <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/floorloudspeakers/1105thiel/">reviewed it</A> in November 2005, I looked at my watch. Enough time. I went into the dem room.

I went into the Blue Light Audio room at T.H.E. Show to hear the new Dartzeel amplifiers (Wes Phillips will be blogging on these presently) and to chat with designer Herv&#233; D&#233;l&#233;traz. But my attention was caught by Evolution Audio's beautifully finished MM<I>Mini</I> Two speakers ($40,000/pair). Ostensibly a two-way design combining a 5" aluminum ribbon with a 7" ceramic-cone woofer, the stand also contains an 8"<I>x</I>12" subwoofer.

Loudspeakers from German manufacturer Canton have impressed <I>Stereophile</I>'s review team over the past few years with their combination of careful, solid engineering and excellent sound. CES saw the launch of Canton's revised Reference line. The Reference 3.2 ($15,000/pair), seen here cradled by chief engineer Frank G&#246;bl, features a new tweeter with a ceramic/aluminum /ceramic sandwich dome replacing the earlier version's aluminum/manganese-alloy diaphragm, which pushes up the primary dome breakup mode from around 21kHz to 30kHz. The tweeter dome is recessed within a short waveguide to optimize dispersion in its bottom octaves, and is damped by a small circular plate suspended in front of the center of the dome. The lower frequency drive-units, too, have been extensively revised, while the multilayer enclosure, with its gently curved side panels is acoustically inert, at least as far as the accelerometer measurements Frank showed me were concerned. I was sufficiently impressed to request a pair of Reference 3.2s for review.

The speakers from Colorado-based Avalon Acoustics have either featured conventional, rectangular boxes (in the less-expensive NP series, like the Evolution 2.0 I <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/floorloudspeakers/708ava/">reviewed last July</A>) or the unique, multifaceted enclosures that I first saw in 1990's <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/floorloudspeakers/703/">Eclipse</A&gt;, which are used in the cost-no-object designs like the <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/floorloudspeakers/1008ava/">Indra</A&gt;.

Taking pride of place in distributor Sumiko's suite on the Venetian's 35th floor were the new Vienna Acoustics Kiss loudspeaker ($15,000/pair). Part of the company's Klimt series, the Kiss is ostensibly a stand-mounted design, but the side-pillared, faintly convex stand is part of the design concept. One drive-unit&#151;the flat, radially ribbed unit first seen in the Vienna Musik, covers the entire range of the human voice, 120Hz&#150;2.6kHz, and is married to a tweeter in its center and a port-loaded woofer. The latter features the ribbed, transparent polymer cone material used in Vienna's line, but has a multiple-radius cone profile to maximize stiffness and minimize mass.