Soundsmith's Peter Ledermann demoed his latest Strain Gauge cartridge system, the SG-230. The new model offers a complete system preamp solution that features the strain gauge function plus four line inputs, remote control, balanced, single-ended and fixed outputs.
This year's CES wasn't one for the record books, though plenty of records were played and that was good. From the main convention site to the Venetian to T.H.E. Show at the Flamingo, the show was rather lackluster and attendance was off, mostly due to cold weather flight disruptions.
That's the claim made by simaudio for the Moon 820S power supply, which can be added Evolution products including the 610LP and 810LP as well as the 650D and 750D DAC/CD transports and the company's 740P preamplifier.
Seeing these Pear Audio Blue turntables in the Audio Skies room produced both surprise and familiarity. Surprise because it was a three-turntable line I'd neither seen nor heard of and familiarity because certain design elements looked like they had been lifted from the late Tom Fletcher of Nottingham Analogue fame.
Clearaudio Introduced the Absolute Phono, a compact, fully balanced, current-based moving coil phono preamplifier built into the head shell of the line's linear tracking tonearms or into the arm tube Clearaudio's pivoted arms
AMG's new Teatro moving coil cartridge is an international collaborative effort, combining a machined, two-piece Tiodize Type III Titanium body manufactured in America and a Japan-sourced generator system, featuring separate coils for each channel said to increase separation (most cartridges have two coils mounted on a single former).
Osaka, Japan-based Zanden Audio added a third phono preamplifier to its line with the $7,500 Model 120, a solid state LCR RIAA design using Jensen dual tap step-up transformers with 60dB and 71dBs of gain and input impedances of 36 ohms and 470 ohms respectively.
The 2014 International CES opened yesterday, with attendance down due to the extremely cold weather conditions gripping the nation, but among vinyl fans warm feelings prevailed as sales were the highest in 2013 since the 1991 debut of Soundscan. And it can be argued that Soundscan barely "scratches the surface" of actual record sales.
Okay it was a typo but we like kicking people when they are down, so we're using the press release date. Obviously importer Bluebird Music meant 2014. French electronics manufacturer Jadis introduced a new granite plinth-based Thalie turntable.