[jefemeister]

First of all, please excuse my bad photography. These are the ones that came out decently, some were out of focus so I didn't post them. I didn't spend a lot of time at the non-Wadia rooms due to a hectic schedule, but I'll try to include a little comment here and there. Also remember that most of these systems were right out of the box and not broken in, also most rooms were set up poorly duw to space constraints.

Avantagrde Duo. Didn't get to listen very long, but a beautiful product.

These are amazing amps from Blue Circle Audio, Gilbert is a very unusual character and a great guy. I would definitely do business with him. He owns EVERY Martin-Logan ever made including the statement. Supposedly all his friends have "free" martin logans because he has run out of space in his home in his.

Boulder had a static display (no music playing.) I love the finish on the amps and the insides are more beautful that the outsides.

Cary monoblocks. Didn't listen too much.

 

[jefemeister]

Static display. Absolutely stunning workmanship/engineering on these ClearAudio's. If I were to buy a turntable, these would do nicely.

no comment really. I don't remember this room one way or the other.

Conrad-Johnson. This was a static display as far as I remember. I've always had a lot of respect for this line.

 

[jefemeister]

DCS.

Eggleston Andra II's. I'm not a fan of multi-channel, but this room blew me away. It could have been better, but I could tell the room was hard to work with.

Genesis. The first system was shoved in a corner and was hard to listen too due to the number of people in the room at any time. The model 1.1 was static and they only had one channel. I would have killed to hear these properly setup and playing music.

Hovland Saphire. What more can i say?

 

[jefemeister]

This is the new model 201 from Jeff Rowland. 500W/ch in an EXTREMELY small package. They really looked funny next to the gargantuan JM Lab Utopias, but drove them quite nicely.

Koetsu. Didn't get to listen for more than a few seconds.

MBL. The second system was gorgeous but was unbearable to listen to. When I was there they were playing the new Madonna cut at full scale in a 12x12' room at 100dB. Very shrill. I heard from other folks that this setup was quite good with proper music and lower levels.

McIntosh came strong this year, and spent a fortune on their room choice. Didn't hear anything, but they had at least four different rooms setup. They also had a car system out by the barbeque that sounded very nice.

I'm a Nagra fan to the end. When I dropped by, no music was playing. But you could imagine.

The XA series amp from Pass Labs. The authority of the X series super-symetry combined with the liquidness of the Aleph. What more could you want in an amp. I belive these start at $16,000/pair.

Pass Labs Rushmore. This speaker has an aleph amp on each tweeter and mid, and an XA on each woofer. The speaker is beyond beautiful but setup issues deinifely held it back.

I've forgotten what these are. Quite nice looking though.

VMPS ribbons. This room sounded awesome. Brian and Hal are really nice guys as well. They had a wadia 861, Ampzilla 2000 amps (too many to count,) some kind of 2->3 channel processor, 3 of their speakers and one of their subs. NASA bought 4 of their subs to simulate shuttle lauches. Supposedly it's the only sub that could reproduce 20 Hz for 4 hours straight without breaking down.

 

[jefemeister]

Von Gaylord amp. This was a static display as far as I can remember, but looked nice.

This was truely the best sounding system at the show. Even without my bias. Wadia 921 dual mono DACs with Jeff Rowland 302 amp and Avalon Eidolon Diamond speakers. I've never heard emotion come from a recorind before until I heard this, Especially later in the show once things burned in. But we had one of the biggest rooms which allowed for proper placement and room treatment. The Vandersteen room came pretty close and was my second favorite overall.

 

[jefemeister]

Many thanks to tkam for hosting these pictures. There may be more insight on these posting in the previous post: http://www4.head-fi.org/forums/showt...threadid=56990

 

[grinch]

Quote:

Originally posted by jefemeister This was truely the best sounding system at the show. Even without my bias. Wadia 921 dual mono DACs with Jeff Rowland 302 amp and Avalon Eidolon Diamond speakers.

i've never heard of this of this model from wadia, is it a new component that's soon to be released?

 

[jefemeister]

Quote:

Originally posted by grinch i've never heard of this of this model from wadia, is it a new component that's soon to be released?

Yes. It will be released in Feb. It a 3 piece system--one dac per channel and a controller box. The DACs can be seen flanking the Rowland. The controller is not shown. The controller provides the user interface, provides digital source switching, applies digital volume control, manages the clocking, and send the data and clocks to the DACs via glass fiber running a prorietary format. It has full clocklinking capability when using a Wadia transport. The DACs each run 64x upsampling (2.8224 MHz for redbook) using Digimaster spline interpolations. This requires 8 burr-brown 1704s per channel. This system is capable of a TRUE 24 bit resolution since the error is split across multiple DACs. Our patented SwiftCurrent zero-feedback I/V conversion chip has been moved out to discreets and molded into the output stage as a single entity. Fully balanced and matched pure class A operation. No buffers or opamps and very few passives.

A modification to handle SACD will appear in a few months after initial launch with a matching SACD/CD (perhaps also DVD) transport to arrive within the year as soon as we settle on a mechanism. SACD will be handled in a proprietary way. We do not believe in 1-bit systems. Also, digital volume control can not be applied to a standard DSD stream.

[edit: add] before anyone asks, price TBD $20-$30,000 US. Also, yes this product is somewhat derivative of the 790 PowerDAC. The digital section is similar but has been improved, and the analog stage and power supplies are all new. Also, the controller is capable of handling 8 DAC units so multichannel SACD/DVD is not a problem.

 

[KR...]

Quote:

Originally posted by grinch i've never heard of this of this model from wadia, is it a new component that's soon to be released?

This is what Stereophile said about their booth :

"Wadia was back this year with the brand new 921 "decoding computer" serving as a DAC and a digital preamp. The 921 should appear at Wadia dealers near the end of February for somewhere between $20,000–$30,000 and has both PCM and DSD decoding capability. General Manager Paul McNeill says that a new transport should appear by mid-year that will play SACD and CD discs. Also new from Wadia this year is the 302 CD player, based on a Philips transport and falling somewhere between $3500 and $4000 retail."

 

[Canman]

great pics jefemeister.

By the way, where are the pics from the **** show next door?

 

[Mcrmouse30]

Dang I missed a lot! I was at CES this year but obviously didn't make it past any of these booths. Where were they located at?

 

[jefemeister]

Quote:

Originally posted by Mcrmouse30 Dang I missed a lot! I was at CES this year but obviously didn't make it past any of these booths. Where were they located at?

All of this was at the Alexis Park. That's where all the high-end stuff usually is. T.H.E. Show was next door (The Home Entertainment Show) and supposedly had some high-end stuff but I didn't make it over there at all. All the random gadgetry was at the convention center and I didn't make it out there either. The **** stars were randomly dispersed, and I have no further comment/pictoral evidence to share about that.

 

[Mcrmouse30]

Quote:

Originally posted by jefemeister All of this was at the Alexis Park. That's where all the high-end stuff usually is. T.H.E. Show was next door (The Home Entertainment Show) and supposedly had some high-end stuff but I didn't make it over there at all. All the random gadgetry was at the convention center and I didn't make it out there either. The **** stars were randomly dispersed, and I have no further comment/pictoral evidence to share about that.

I knew I should have wandered over to Alexis Park. Oh well maybe I will get there next year.

 

[Mikhail]

Jeff, it was great seeing you and rest of the Wadia folks again, always a pleasure.

Here's a link to some of the pictures that I took at CES.

CES Pictures


I'll post more detailed descriptions when I get a chance.


Mikhail

 

[jpelg]

Wow. Thank you both, Jeff & Mikhail for those pics!