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SECRETS OF HOME THEATER AND HIGH FIDELITY
by Paul Knutson
The high end audio industry is alive, well, and recently gathered in Las Vegas, Nevada for the 1999 version of the Consumer Electronics Show, and what a show it was! I've read the editorials and heard the skepticism about the future of two-channel audio reproduction, but if Vegas was an accurate barometer, the industry is positively brimming with talent, enthusiasm, and creativity.
About 90,000 of my closest friends and I descended on Las Vegas (aka Lost Wages) to see, hear, and feel the latest in consumer electronics. Of course only a small percentage of us were there for the sole reason of seeing what's new in high end audio, but count me among the devoted. I heard that Las Vegas is the only city with enough hotel rooms to
accommodate this convention, which is believable, but let's face another reality, the cities where this event can be held in the dead of winter are pretty limited regardless of the number of hotel rooms available.
I spent three great days touring the many display rooms at the "official" specialty audio show held in the Alexis Park as well as the "outlaw" The Home Entertainment (T.H.E.) Show at the just-next-door St. Tropez. Before we get into the report and
photos, I must congratulate all those folks that organized both of the shows I attended -- wonderful job! The rooms were all well marked and easy to navigate. I had no trouble finding what I wanted to see. The only real trouble was finding time to see it all.
What was I looking for at CES '99?
My goal at the CES was to seek out lots of the latest high value audio equipment and accessories, then let you know about it so you can check it all out for yourself after reading about it here at Secrets of Home Theater and High Fidelity. The adjective "high value" can apply to a lot of different gear, including the expensive and inexpensive. My criteria for high value is simple: any audio equipment that appears worthy of my hard-earned cash, judged from a price/performance perspective, will be deemed high value. You will notice a predominance of tube equipment in this report, which is in part from personal bias, and part because that's what I most often review and write about for Secrets.
Regretfully, there was a lot of great equipment that I didn't have an opportunity to see or hear -- to those manufacturers not mentioned in this report who worked so hard to bring, display and play their equipment, I apologize and will be sure to catch up with you at CES "Y2K". That promise, however, presumes that everyone's digital playback equipment doesn't lock up from "the bug" at 12:01 a.m. on January 1, 2000. That would
force everyone to use vinyl playback, which come to think of it, really wouldn't be such a bad thing, now would it?
TG Audio Labs teamed up with VMPS for an utterly convincing demonstration of the ew VMPS Special Ribbon Edition FF 3 speaker system ($6,800/pr with new larger subwoofer $699) driven by a system that included the CTC Blowtorch preamp ($9,000) hooked to the Plinius 100 Mk III amp ($4,400) on bass and the Bear Labs Symphony No. 1 ($14,000) on the mids and highs. The digital setup included the Entech/TG Number Cruncher DAC (being closed-out direct at $2,200 - a deal) fed by the G&D Transforms UTP-1 transport ($1,500). Analog sounds were from a Sota/Benz Glider combo with a
CTC-modified Vendetta SCP-2T phono stage ($5,000). All the gear had its AC cleansed by the TG BybeeSucker 1 for analog ($1,500) and BybeeSucker 3 for digital ($2,500). The wire was exclusively TG Audio, of course.
This system, while not inexpensive, was incredible from top to bottom and garners one of my votes for "Best of Show". For an idea of how it sounded, close your eyes, think about the last live music event you attended, then imagine a similar sonic experience packed into a hotel room at the St. Tropez -- there, you're pretty close to what I heard that day.
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