CES 2014: Loudspeakers, $15,000+

If this year was the time of ‘Statement’ amplifiers, when it came to top-end loudspeakers, CES 2014 was more the year of filling in gaps in the portfolio. While there were new top-end loudspeakers to be seen – perhaps the most high-end of the high-end were the Nola Concert Grand Reference Gold ($197,000) and the Marten Coltrane Supreme 2. This last was a huge statement of loudspeaker intent; 16 drive units per side, standing almost 6’ tall in its stocking’d feet and weighing in at more than 500lb, this long-time-coming statement of Swedish intent, claimed by the company to be the best speaker in the world. Sadly, we didn’t get a chance to hear the best speaker in the world, but those who did all reported it sounded very good indeed. But, very good or $480,000 good… for that, you’ll just have to wait for the review!

Elsewhere in the show, the new launches were more about what has become the middle of the high-end line-up. It’s perhaps a fairly positive sign of much needed re-growth in the more affordable end of the sector that my colleague Chris Martens can muster four individual reports on the sub-$15,000 market and I can cover the higher ground in a single piece, but this is possibly because there has been so much concentration at the top end recently.

The big three launches in this more lofty part of the market this year were arguably from Magico, Wilson Audio and YG Acoustics. Just to be contrary, starting alphabetically from the back, YG’s new $42,800 Hailey 1.2 shares a lot in common with the company’s flagship Sonja 1.3 loudspeaker, albeit in a smaller form factor. The two both use a thick CNC milled aluminium cabinet with its ForgeCore tweeter and BilletCore bass units said to be capable of delivering a realistic 20Hz-40kHz in room. The suffix does not denote model changes, it’s that Hailey 1.1 is the compact two-way loudspeaker that sits atop the bass module that forms the full 1.2 model. This makes the loudspeaker design upgradable, in the manner of the three-box Sonja. The Hailey was played through D’Agostino mono amps.

Wilson Audio was showing (although not playing) its new Sasha W/P Series 2. This stood alongside the original Sasha W/P and although you could see the heritage (and the same heritage reaching back to the WATT/Puppy models), the new model has been extensively redesigned, with new laser measuring techniques to help reduce cabinet resonance by 30% (already hardly a problem with the original Sasha), as well as borrowing top-box mounting adjustment and the soft dome tweeter from models like the Alexandria XLF and the Alexia. The price of the new Series 2 will be $29,900. Elsewhere, many companies were demonstrating using Wilson speakers, notably Nagra (Alexias) and VTL (Alexias and the new Duette Series 2).

Magico was showing the new S3 in what has become its entry-level S- range. The new speaker retains the 1” beryllium dome tweeter and 6” Nano-Tec mid-bass unit found in the S1 and S5 models, but brings a pair of 8” Nano-Tec drivers to the rounded aluminium tower speaker. The $22.600/pair S3 is claimed to deliver 26Hz-50kHz.

On a larger scale, Magico’s Alon Wolf also brought the whopping Ultimate III loudspeaker along. Of course, it’s so big, he only brought one, but at $600,000 per pair and standing as tall as a room, one is enough!

At the other end of the size scale, the Vivid Giya G4 loudspeaker is a $33,000/pair floorstander was shown for the first time to the American market. This diminutive four-way, five driver loudspeaker looks like massive G1, only a lot smaller looking. This was being played at a private event at the Mirage, powered by the clever Mola Mola amplifiers.  

There were others well worth noting, that had either been seen before or I simply didn’t have time to cover at length. Among those, the Kharma Elegance Double Eleven Signature loudspeaker (at $54,000 per pair) were proving universally popular and the new three-way version of the two-way Stenheim Alumine from Switzerland (the secret’s in the stand, all for $46,000). Avalon Acoustics was apparently showing its cost no object Tesseract, but – in an nod to old-school Vegas, was showing this at the Golden Nugget and the no-one can afford to spend the two or three hours out of the schedule in travelling across town anymore and – while covered by Chris Martens in his own round-ups, on a personal note, the DeVore Fidelity Gibbon X ($12,000) and the $7k X-1 from Raidho were some of my loudspeaker highlights this year.