Photos: Home Entertainment Show 2007
High-end audio was on display today at the Home Entertainment Show 2007. We canvassed the show floor and found enough vacuum tubes and exotic speaker designs to make any audiophile smile.
Kef's 207/2s are the second-generation update of the floor-standing towers in the company's Reference line. These monsters go for $20,000 a pair, and they're shipping now.
At $10,000, the Krell Evolution 505 is easily the most expensive CD player we've seen. (At least it plays SACDs, too.)
At "just" $1,400, the Krell Kid iPod dock is one of the company's more affordable pieces. It boasts balanced XLR outputs for the best possible sound quality.
The SlimStage is the latest one-piece virtual surround speaker from Soundmatters. The company's largest-yet model boasts an upgraded "EuphonyHD" virtualizing technology and should be available later this year.
Soundmatters isn't the only one in the virtual surround game: Zvox is also offering a larger and more expensive single-speaker model. The Zvox 425 will retail for $600 when it hits in the late summer or early fall.
Germany's MBL was demoing its Reference line, which includes the 101E Radialstrahler speakers ($45,000 per pair)--a truly unique-looking loudspeaker designed to radiate sound in all directions.
Proclaim Audioworks introduced the DMT-100 loudspeaker system, with a unique design consisting of three independent orb-like drivers. The design allows for each driver to be optimally positioned, depending on room acoustics and the listener's preference. They're not cheap at $27,000 per pair, but we're sure they'll turn heads.
Audiophiles still swear by the magic of tubes and ClearSound had a whole table of tube-based amps and preamps from manufacturers such as Cary and Audio Space. Of course, you'll need to spend some serious dough to take one of these home, as prices ran up to almost $10,000.
While the Salagar S210 doesn't have the most exotic design, its understated sleek curves look like a nice fit for many a living room. Equipped with a 10-inch midbass driver and 1-inch tweeter, the S210 goes for a relatively cheap (for high-end, at least) $7,500 a pair.
High-end speakers come in all shapes and sizes, and Scaena's iso-linear array certainly isn't the average black boxy speaker. According to Scaena, the entire system is scalable, so you can continue to add more drivers to the system. The speakers we saw had 12 drivers, but the brochure mockup showed an iso-linear array with 15 drivers.
Haniwa's giant HSP3W10 speakers wouldn't fit in our living room, but we wish they did. The glossy black design and giant bowl-like enclosures give the HSP3W10 an unmistakable look, but you'll need $50,000 to take a pair of them home.
Audio Space's Nova 34 mono block power amplifier has seven vacuum tubes, which are openly exposed to make your audiophile friends jealous. The Nova 34 is currently available for about $3,000.
Lipinski's display featured a pair of L-707 loudspeakers. While the whole demo system costs more than $35,000, you can add a pair of L-707's to your home theater for a more reasonable $2,500.
Elaborate designs are nice, but some audiophiles like their speakers to, well, look like speakers. Gamut's Phi 7 tower speakers stand almost four feet tall and weigh nearly 60 pounds. With five drivers and a tweeter, the Phi 7 speakers look like they mean business.
It looks like a landing pad for a spaceship, but instead of accommodating a flying saucer, the Pathos Endorphin can spin your favorite CDs. The design is definitely sleek and around back there are balanced XLR analog outputs. Of course, there are also both coaxial and optical digital audio outputs, but using them would be even sillier than spending nearly $8,000 on a CD player.
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