Bob Graham introduced the new Phantom Elite tonearm at CES 2013 mounted on the eye-catching $85,000 Air Force One turntable he is distributing in the United States (currently under review). The 'table is designed by legendary Micro-Seiki creator Hideaki Nishikawa, with whom I had a long and productive chat at the show about the design.
Triplanar debuted a 12" version of its popular tonearm at CES 2013. Key to the design is a new damped carbon fiber tube that maintains the effective mass of the 9" model.
Using the experience gained designing a direct drive motor for the Brinkmann Oasis and Bardo, Helmut Brinkmann is now building his own motors for use with the belt drive models in the line. I thought you'd like to see it.
UK based Avid introduced at CES the new Ingenium line of turntables. The base price for the machined aluminum plinthed 'table is $1300. So equipped, it comes with an MDF platter and bearing used on the Avid Diva. $2300 with Project 9cc carbon fiber arm. There's a $3000 version with an SME M2-9 inch arm as well as a more expensive range that uses the Volvere's bearing and aluminum platter.
Day one of CES 2013 proved that vinyl is now a normal and welcomed part of the high performance audio mix. It wasn't always that way of course. At one point it was "controversial." Not many new CD players were introduced at the show—at least based on what I saw so far. Granted I was looking for analog and not CD players.
The 2013 International Consumer Electronics Show begins Tuesday morning. I'm flying out tomorrow morning and will begin tweeting @analogplanet and blogging on this site as soon as there's stuff to report. Honestly, I still haven't posted everything worth noting from RMAF back in October and I fully intend to get those posts online here too but first, CES 2013!