Amir's CES 2012 Picture Thread

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Soulution:





That is a small USB to AES bridge on the second shelf supporting USB to AES. I was surprised to hear that despite the high cost (a few thousand) it was powered through USB bus.

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Accuphase and Focal

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dCS:









Wilson WP being driven:


VTL amplification:


The DAC guts:

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Raidho Acoustics:







Someone has to explain to me how this is a good way to hook up expensive speaker wire to the speaker:

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DSPspeaker. Nice little device. 2-channel room EQ in a small box. Not yet ready but works pretty well. Has both digital and analog I/O.

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VTL and Rockport Avior:

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MSB Technology. One of the best sounds I heard at CEDIA. Expertly picked demo material to showcase good digital reproduction. YG Acoustics speakers played along well.





The guts showing their very low jitter clock source:

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Pass Labs amplifiers:

Funny story. I asked them what those giant meters show. He said the bias to the output stage. I asked if that ever changed or whether there were any adjustments to impact it. He said no. I asked then why on earth would I need a meter for it? He said, "it is for looks!" I like his honesty For the record, one channel showed a lower value than the other.





Stack of them at the entrance. Likely the ceiling below had a sag in it.


And the back end:

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YG Acoustics. Another example of fine performance at the show. I must say, the speakers in person look nicer than in pictures.

With Tenor amplifier:




Ampex ATR tape deck. Somehow looked smaller than I thought it would:

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Now for my favorite brand, the Mark Levinson . I will post an interview with Kevin Voeks later on these products.

For their anniversary, they decided to go all out and announce a bunch of stuff. Good news: they have all the right features. The bad news: they don't ship for a while .

First up the No 560 DAC. Key here is that it not only has the standard inputs and asynch USB, but also a high-performance HDMI input! It has something like 10 different inputs! And it nicely has volume controls operating in 32-bit digital domain (that is the DAC resolution). So connect it to an amp and you are good to go.

At $6K, it is very reasonably priced:


Add to it an SACD/CD transport and you get No 519 at $8K:


There is also the No 52 Reference Dual-Monaural Preamplifier. It is in the video. This is the one that is going to ship first. It has two boxes separating the digital/noisy stuff from the analog. It is the mate for the No 53 mono amps. I see that Wizard post this in the ML forum.

BTW, I love the new look. Consistent with the past but totally modern.