CES 2001 PICTURE REPORT

This year's Winter Consumer Electronics Show (from January 6th to the 9th) was another very busy one for yours truly here at Signature Sound. While I was working for my friends at Merlin Music Systems this year in the Merlin/Joule-Electra/Cardas room, I did manage to grab a few hours here and there to check out some neat stuff. Here are some pictures with my thoughts of some of places I visited at this years CES...

No, there is nothing wrong with your monitor! I just decided to get a bit creative with the usual photo of Joule VZN-100 amps and the Merlin VSM speakers. This year however, Jud Barber at Joule-Electra got creative and brought along a pair of his VZN-100 OTL tube amps in their sexy new (optional) wood boxes which we showed/played with (for the first time in the US) the newest version of the Merlin VSM speaker, the VSM-Millennium. The sound was indeed, truly special this year as the system we had set-up jelled together extremely well. With the Audio Aero Capitole 24/192 upsampling CD player for digital, a VPI TNT MK5 (with 12" JMW arm & Cardas Cartridge) for analog, Cardas Golden Reference cabling throughout, and Joule LAP-100 full function preamp backing up the amplifier and speaker combination above, show goers were regularly wowed. In fact, we bagged another Soundstage! Standout Room award for our set-up.

In the back room of our suite, we had the Merlin TSM-Millenniums set-up with the new Joule-Electra Stargate monoblock power amplifiers. The Stargates are a new 40W $5,000/pair amplifiers which are based on a transformer coupled output version of their famous OTL tube amplifier topology. The TSMs above are shown in a Platinum premium clear coat finish o top of Osiris speaker stands. I only wish my picture here did the proper justice to how sharp the silver color trimmed out Stargates matched up with the Platinum color finish TSM-Millenniums.

In the back room, we even had this sharp looking silver faceplated Joule-Electra LA-100 preamp to match the amps & speakers!!!

OK, I hope I'm not boring you with all this Joule-Electra gear, but I just had to show you this picture of THE big Joule-Electra OTL monoblock amp (the VZN-220 or the Rite of Passage OTL) in one of the new wood cases. The new optional casework available for the Joule OTL amps is exquisitely built with the best quality woods and dove tail joint work. They add as much as $3,000 (ouch!) to the price of the OTL amps, but the resulting look as very beautiful. For those curious about this amplifier, the VZN-220 amp is a 220W OTL monoblock. Power consumption alone for a pair of these $20,000/pair amps is about 1,500 watts at idle. Make sure you have a good air conditioning system for your listening room if you plan on buying a pair.

My friends at Rogue Audio where showing off their Magnum 120 monoblock amps and were spinning plenty of Vinyl from a AVID turntable (with SME arm) via their model 99 preamp (soon to be available in Magnum form as well!).