CONSUMER ELECTRONICS SHOW 2007, Las Vegas (USA) 8-11 January 2007

Traditionally, early January of every year "belongs" to the CES in Las Vegas, one of the most important (if not the most important) trade event for our, high-end, segment of the industry in general. For the first time, the Specialty Audio section of the CES was situated in the Venetian, of the nicer hotels in Las Vegas and a respectable number of high-end audio exhibitors occupied luxurious rooms across three floors of the Venetian Tower Suites. It was our pleasure to meet a number of our long-standing friends/manufacturers (conrad-johnson, Avalon Acoustics, Magnum Dynalab, Muse Electronics, Cardas Audio, Kuzma, Zanden Audio Systems, etc.). Illustrations you can see accompany these words show some of a number of exciting and interesting new products we have seen and heard at the CES and which we hope to introduce as the year unfolds. A special mention, however, has to go to Bill Conrad and Lew Johnson of conrad-johnson design who organised a wonderful evening to mark the 30th anniversary of their company's existence. It was our pleasure (as one of their more long-standing distributors) to be present for the occasion and our warm congratulations and best wishes for many more years of champagne gold front panels to come!

We were most impressed with the sound and the aesthetics of the new Zanden single chassis CD player (probably to be named Model 2500) which es expected to ship in May or June and have a much more friendly price than the 2000/2000 transport and d/a processor. George Cardas finally "gave in" and designed his very first silver cable (only for speakers at present), but we hope the Golden Ratio principle he applies will make it sound much more musical than cables with silver normally do. Avalon Acoustics showed a pre-production pair of the new Indra loudspeaker which will replace both version of the existing Opus model. We should have it in the UK within the next few months and pricing is not expected to be much above the current cost of the Opus. Implementing new drive units, crossover and knowledge learned from the design of the Isis, it is most certainly a very promising performer. Conrad-johnson showed early producttion samples of the ET250S hybrid stereo power amplifier and the long awaited 275W flasghip mono valve power amplifier LP275M which, in a way, is a belated successor to the Premier 8A monoblolck that had an enviable reputation in its days. A state of the art valve phono stage TEA1 (in case you wondered, TEA stands for Tube Eqalization Amplifier - we think) of high price and even higher specification and performance. Last, but certainly not least, Franc Kuzma was at the CES to launch a new range of moving-coil phono cartridges designed and manufactured in Japan to his specification. The new range of Kuzma cartridges will consist of 4 models and we expect the flagship KC4 model to retail well under GBP 2000 in the UK.

Thanks to the initiative and effort of our retail consultant Andrew Oliver of AUDIO REPUBLIC in Leeds, who will exhibit at the forthcoming Northern Sound & Vision 2007 Show in Manchester on the 27th and 28th January 2007 , we are delighted to be present with a selection of our products at this exhibition for the first time.

Audio Republic's 2-channel system at the Manchester show will include prroducts from conrad-johnson design, Karan Acoustics, McCormack Audio Corporation, Avalon Acoustics, Cardas Audio and finite elemente.

Audio Republic will exhibit in the Room 211 of the Radisson SAS Manchester Airport Hotel and we very much look forward to your visit and hope you will enjoy the highly musical performance of their system.

After only a few months of hard work and preparation, Martin Colloms (Publisher) and Paul Messenger (Editor) have delivered the 1st issue of the HIFI CRITIC - Audio Review Journal. Addressing the most evident draught in the global world of quality audio journalism, HifiCritic has been formed alongside all the respectable principles J Gordon Holt (Stereophile) and Harry Pearson (The Absolute Sound) pioneered in the 60s and 70s of the past century - no advertising, availability exclusively through subscription and, of course, strong principles and strict standards of writing about audio and music.

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