CES 08

One of the very first stops walking through the St. Tropez was in the Daedalus Audio  room that featured their highly efficient (97dB) Ulysses loudspeakers ($8800 pair) in cherry wood. This was my first time hearing these at length and they sounded quite good and very coherent considering the amount of drivers visible. Electronics included an Ensemble transport, Gill Audio Alan preamp and Elise dac, while amplification was the glad-to-see-back Clayton Audio M200s. Shakti Hallographs and Stones kept AC noise and room anomalies low while all cabling was by way of Empirical Audio.   

German manufacturer Lansche Audio introduced a new reference in their Number 8 loudspeaker ($90k) employing their own plasma/ionic tweeter along with GTE-Audio's super expensive Trinity dac and amplifiers ($100k each and also German made). Rated at only 50 watts per channel (pure Class-A) this dual chassis, triangular-shaped and pure analogue design boasts 288 output transistors per channel making the Trinity amps among the most expensive I've seen originate out of Germany. Their dac takes the cake as the most expensive I've seen or have heard of.

I was anticipating hearing greatness via the No.8's since receiving emails detailing their debut. Sadly, I have to admit my disappointment with this setup. The top end was extremely detailed and open thanks in part to perhaps the world greatest high-frequency driver element. That said, the bass sounded disembodied from the rest of the sound providing a disproportionate amount of body to instruments. Side firing woofers can have a tough time in most room, especially show rooms and it appeared the 300-watt self-powered amps used in the No.8's simply didn't work in this setup or with the Trinity amplifiers. I've heard some really great things from this loudspeaker company at last years CES so I'm going to assume this is a quick fix issue.  

Importer Laufer Teknik Inc. of New York City, introduced the new and smaller version of the Ascendo loudspeaker Model C8 Renaissance ($9500). Sporting a coaxial driver -composed of a neodymium fabric dome tweeter - located in the center of an 8" Kevlar cone midrange driver. This super-glossed and fabulously finished in a variety of woods is rated at 88 dB efficiency. The Renaissance's rear firing ribbon tweeter is similar to the ones used in their reference M and Z Models.

Theoretically, a single driver, point-source transducer is purported to have the most accurate in-room phase response due to none of multi-driver, time alignment and crossover bugaboos that even the most minimalist designs are often plagued by. Driven by Behold amplification and electronics (another Laufer Teknik import), including the new and very impressive looking Nova Physics Memory Player (photo above), the sound was impressively natural and unforced, giving the music a more sophisticated feel than usual. In addition, as shown at the Denver Rocky Mountain Audio Fest, when you have a loudspeaker of this size in a normal to small room, it's most likely going to sound better. A hard lesson - considering the times the Laufer Teknik gang attempted to stuff the bigger models into similar sized rooms - but a lesson learned nonetheless.

Evolution Acoustics showed their reference model MM-Three (priced at $70k, with an introductory offer for $38k). This already very large loudspeaker looked even bigger in the relatively small room in the Alexis Villas. Sporting dual 15" woofers, dual 7" ceramic midrange drivers and a single 5" Aluminum ribbon tweeter, surprisingly the MM-Three's didn't seem boisterous or claustrophobic in the least. As a matter of fact, they allowed me to listen to about a dozen of my very own CDs, which I enjoyed immensely. DartZeel of Switzerland used their 160 watt per, NHB 108 Model One amplifier ($21,181) and NHB 18NS preamp ($26,250 phono comes standard), along with the new EMM Labs SACD player finessed this listener into a very enjoyable session.