Tuesday morning, I was up at 4:30 Las Vegas time, which was 7:30 to my South Bend body clock. I killed some time looking through my C.E.S. book, watching some TV news and, after a continental breakfast at the Tuscany, decided to plan my day. As neither C.E.S. nor T.H.E. Show opened until 10:00 a.m. on Tuesday, I had some time to chart out my plans.

At about 9:30, I decided to start roaming the Tuscany campus of buildings. My first stop was the second floor of the Tuscany's main building, housing the large Siena, Firenze and Tuscany rooms. These rooms held some of the bigger exhibits for the Expo, including Convergent Audio Technology, Essence Electro Acoustics and Sound Products, Shunyata, Lamm, Kharma, Intuitive Design, Plinius, Nearfield Acoustics, Rockport Technologies, Tenor, etc. Not too surprisingly, I guess, none of these rooms were open.

Next, I headed into the other buildings, looking for places like the Halcro and Rosinante/Argent Audio room. I really wanted to get a listen to the Halcro gear, as the word of mouth and reviews had been so overwhelmingly positive. Well by 10:00, even thought the Halcro room was open, no demonstrations were being given. I'd have to come back. I made it back to the Rosinante/Argent Audio room and found Ric Cummins joyously demonstrating his superb Dulcinea loudspeakers with the Audio Art Jota's.

Ric had a liberal array of Argent Room Lenses set up in the L shaped room, and had achieved a very successful room sound. I have to give him credit here. The room sounded sweet, clean, was very detailed, had a very realistic soundstage and an uncanny reality of timbre, especially with stringed instruments. I can see why Clement Perry was so taken with this particular synergy of equipment. The combination of the Dulcinea/Jota was simply delicious. As I toured more and more rooms over the next several days, one of the most disturbing conditions I regularly ran into was exhibitors placing the primary listening position much too close to the speakers. Not Ric. This room was done very well and was one of the more pleasurable rooms I visited this year.

Ric received me with an open, friendly reception and we had a great chance to talk and discuss many issues, as the crowds were still very quiet here during the first day of the Expo. After thanking Ric for his marvelous hospitality, I bounded off to see what other rooms I might check out. To my great displeasure, as late as 11:00 am, most rooms were ether not opened or there was no music playing in them yet. Slightly discouraged, I hailed a cab and headed for the Alexis Park.

Once there, it was clear that the traditional home of the C.E.S. high-end show was enjoying a fairly busy first day. The courtyard, just inside the main entrance and before the major group of buildings, was beginning to buzz with show goers, most of them industry professionals, judging from their badges.

I made my way into the fray again, and one of the first rooms I had on my list to visit was both close to the front of the compound and was playing some remarkable music to boot. The Atma-Sphere/Greybeard/Magnan room drew me in with the gravely sound of "Satchmo" Armstrong's voice. As I got into the room, I learned that I was listening to the Classic Records reissue of Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington's Recording Together for the First Time [Classic/RCA SR-50074]. I sat down and was immediately lost in the music! This was simply a superb sounding room; it had everything - outrageously lifelike recreation of the venue and both the musicians and instruments within that space. Yet life sized, not magnified, not out of proportion. Voices, both human and instrument, were possessed of an unquestionable correctness. Frequency balance was nearly flawless, with no forward or recessed regions. Pitch definition in the lowest registers was detailed, fast and spot on. Treble was detailed and focused, yet not overly analytical or hard. I sat through the rest of that side, and the entire B-side as well.

When that second side was done, I spent some time talking with Tim Wright of Greybeard. He filled me in on the system. The front end was an revamped Empire Turntable done by Atma-Sphere, the Model 208 ($2500), the Atma-Sphere MP-3 Preamplifier ($3800), a pair of M-60 Mk II.2 OTL monoblocks ($4650/pair) driving the prototype Greybeard KO/5 (approximately $19000/pair). The system was wired with all Dave Magnan cable, the Silver Bronze balanced interconnects and power cables and the Signature Speaker Cables (approximately $9000). Little did I know it at the time, but this would be the best sounding analog fronted system I would hear at this year's event.

I later got to spend nearly an hour talking to Ralph Karsten of Atma-Sphere, who had some pretty interesting things about our industry in general, and high-end audio publishing in particular. On the equipment front, this spring will mark the introduction of his first new product in some two years, the MA-3 amplifiers. This is going to be a 4 chassis (a power supply and an amplifier per side), 475 Wpc OTL amplifier! The MA-3 will have 42 tubes per amplifier chassis, have a built in power conditioner, a tube tester and be selectable to 1/3, 2/3 and full power. This thing will be a space heater, so running diminished output when possible makes a whole lot of sense. Introductory price -- $66000! I was salivating - and those of you who know me know how hard it is to get a Pavlovian response from me.

Moving further into the burgeoning campus, I looked up Israel Blume and EveAnna Manley, who were exhibiting together. Coincident Speaker Technologies was showing the new Total Victory ($11500), a very detailed and dynamic loudspeaker. The Total Victory is a deeper, taller version of the standard Victory ($4599). It is comprised of a highly sensitive Kapton film isodynamic planar tweeter and two 3" low-mass, fabric midrange domes in a D'Apollito alignment. Two treated paper 6.5" woofers do all the low frequency work in the Victory. In the new Total Victory, the 6.5" woofers are relieved of the lowest registers, those duties being handled by four 8" woofers per cabinet. The result? One tremendously detailed and lifelike speaker with some serious SLAM!

Manley Labs electronics were fronted with both digital and analog, which was routed to the Steelhead phono preamplifier ($7200). All signals were then routed to the Wave 24/96 DAC/Preamp Combo ($7500). The Wave fed the new 100 Wpc Manley Snapper monoblocks ($4250/pair). The Snapper is a fully balanced, ultra-linear amplifier utilizing a true 19 section output transformer that took over 3 months and 18 prototypes to develop. I can say that the results were worth it. Israel was kind enough to put on a couple of old standards, James Newton Howard & Friends [Sheffield Lab 23] and John Klemmer's Touch [MFSL 1-006]. I have heard both of these records on literally hundreds of systems over the years, and I know them intimately. Though I will apologize for the titles, I will not apologize for the sonics. The Grand Victory/Manley combination was superb. Outrageous bloom, excellent resolve and blinding transients.

One of the people I had wanted to look up was phono cartridge guru, A. J. van den Hul. His room was set up for a very interesting five-point-one channel music demonstration. Playing some of his own recordings and some other very good multi-channel recordings, he was showing off the promise of multi-channel systems for music rather than movies. While there was a great sense of space at some points, this system still was not able to get the hall space just right. More often than not, percussion or cymbal queues pulled to and called attention to themselves in the rear channels rather obviously. As much as I respect A.J., this multi-channel music system had a good way to go to compete with a really good two-channel music system.

Next, sticking with the van den Hul theme, I stopped by the Stanalog room, hosted by George Stanwick of Stanalog Audio Imports and Dung Tri Mai, the new owner of tir-planar. Young Dung has taken the heritage of Herbert Papier and the original Wheaton Decoupled Arm, originally introduced back in 1981, and infused his enthusiasm and passion to take the new tri-planar to new heights. He is nothing if not exuberant about analog, and most urgently wants to keep the younger generation involved in the joys of analog playback. After just 20 minutes of talking with him, I found him to be a very serious and engrossing young man.

What was fascinating about the demo in this room was the use of 'regular', not audiophile, records. Using Sugden equipment, ProAc Tablettes and featuring a van den Hul cart, the room just sang. The equipment was good, but not outrageous. The music was lifelike and involving, not anemic or boring. I have spoken with Dung and am hopeful of having a full review of the current iteration of the tri-planar sometime in the near future.

It was mid afternoon, and after a quick and less than satisfying lunch in the Alexis Park courtyard and a stop by the press room to use their online computers, I was beginning to feel the length of my day and the three hour time differential. I decided to head back to the Tuscany and grabbed a cab. After a quick pit stop in my room, I was off to hear the Halcro demonstration.

Entering the Halcro Super Fidelity amplifier room with a demo in progress, I sat down near the back and listened. As people filtered out, I moved to the front-and-center position, giving me a chance to hear the room from many differing locations.

This system was costly. Fronted by a Nagra D digital tape machine ($28000) using original recordings by Peter McGrath, as well as both the Marantz SA-1 ($7500) and Sony XA 777ES ($3000) SACD players, the sound in this room was something unique. All sources fed the Halcro dm10 preamplifier ($15000) that in turn fed the Halcro dm58 monoblocks ($25000). The amps drove the Wilson MAXX Loudspeakers ($40000). All cables were the Reference XL series and Shunyata Research provided all power cables and conditioning. Stands were from Townshend and all equipment was isolated further with Aurios Pro isolation bearings.

To me, and on several occasions, the sound in this room approached tedious. Why? Well, I didn't know any of the source material, and even many of the other listeners were questioning those unknowns. Some of the classical recordings offered bordered on boxed in sounding. While I found much to like in the room, while I was there, I was also wishing that there were more choices of known material to gauge what the system was doing, or not doing, instead of having to wonder about the recording.

Nonetheless, some aspects of the performance were simply superb. The soundstage, for the most part, was wide, tall and very deep - with such a tremendous sense of the space of the recording. Timber was so honest sounding that several times I was convinced that I had never heard stringed instruments reproduced so faithfully. Piano took on all its true duality of both the impact of a percussion instrument and the nuance and subtlety of all its harmonics and overtones. This was a very impressive, if occasionally disconcerting, room. So much so that, during our Stereo Times staff get together and meal Thursday evening, some of my colleagues thought I was somewhat too harsh in my estimation of the rooms overall sonics.

I had seen many other rooms, but this pretty much sums up the highlights of my Tuesday. By now it was almost 6:00 p.m., 9:00 p.m. back in my home time zone, and I was really feeling the effects of the coast shifting. I headed back to my room, called off my plans for the evening, and fell asleep while watching TV. I found myself wishing that I hadn't been so caviler in my trying to get to the events of this day the previous evening. And I knew Wednesday was going to be a big day.

Thursday had promised to be a very good day, so after getting up at a normal time for the first day since I had arrived, it was off for a traditional breakfast at Denny's. I spent the morning on the Tuscany campus and made many uneventful stops and visits. However, buy lunchtime, things began to jump.

Standing in front of the G building, who should walk out and run directly into me? None other than Stereo Times publisher, Clement Perry. We spent a few minutes talking about what we had seen and what we still needed to cover, and got the necessary "business" taken care of before moving on to more enjoyable topics of conversation, when my cell phone rang. It was Dusty Vawter, who was just some one hundred feet away when he had phoned. That is one of the many ironies one encounters at a show this large. You call someone you've been looking for unsuccessfully and they turn out to be standing right behind you!

Many of you know Dusty was with Audio Alchemy, and has been busy working with Greg Shug with Monolithic Sound, but his emphasis is now on his own company Channel Islands Audio. Dusty had been doing some repairs on "Tin Ear's" DAC and besides returning it to me here at C.E.S., brought me two of his new products to examine. Some how it seemed terribly fitting, even though he was not exhibiting here this year, as that is what this show has always been about, the introduction of new products.

The CIAudio VPC-1 ($249) and the VDA-1 ($349) are new and Dusty is very proud of them. No, those prices are NOT misprints. Dusty has long been a champion of the belief that audio heaven be affordabel.

In accordance with his no nonsense design theories, both new units are housed in a diminutive 4.40"W × 2.65"H × 4.40"D chassis, which also keeps production and machining costs down. The new VDA-1 24/96 DAC is designed as the perfect upgrade for anyone out there with a CD or DVD based system with a digital audio output. It will accept word lengths of 16 to 24 bit at 44.1, 48 or 96 kHz, but does no upsampling, - the unit only receives what your device outputs. Careful design layout and short signal paths are used to perfection here. Inputs are via Toslink optical or RCA coaxial. The input signal is fed to a Burr Brown DIR1701 low jitter input receiver, then on to a Burr Brown PCM1716 digital to analog converter. The analog output is routed through a Class A output stage utilizing the Burr Brown OPA2132 opamp. All signal path resistors are Vishay metal film types with polystyrene filter capacitors and the unit is powered by an external 14 VAC power supply. My preliminary listening at this point has left me astounded. I will have a more complete look at this unassuming little DAC very soon.