"Putney says the Borman Six girl has got to have Soul"


During the CES, my friend Steve and I stayed at the Sahara hotel. You can learn a lot about the history of a Las Vegas hotel by the celebrity photos that dot the walls. At the Sahara, it's all about Johnny Carson, Buddy Hackett, Jack Benny, the Beatles and Elvis. Actually, Elvis doesn't count. Like God himself, Elvis is omnipresent. No Eminem or Britney here. Heck, no Barbara Streisand. Upcoming headliners include the Drifters/Platters/Coasters show. The sign promises that the headliners will appear both dead and alive.


The great thing about Las Vegas is that you can travel all around the world without ever once leaving the Strip. I enjoy a Professor-ship at Bocconi University in Milan that I rarely have the opportunity to take advantage of. As a result, I find that I miss Italy. No problem. I hit the Bellagio and the Venetian for a half day each and save the air fare. That way I can buy a Giorgio Armani suit on Ebay - or at least one into which they have sown the Armani label.


One of the most popular shows on Parisian TV features interviews with Europe's leading intellectuals. Last time I was in Paris (and bored enough to watch local TV), it was Jacques Derrida's turn. Though I am fluent in French, I did not understand a word. Derrida's reputation surely rests securely on his nearly unmatched ability to render even the most obvious and banal entirely incomprehensible. Obscurity overcometh all language barriers.


My plans to be a great French intellectual remain unrealized, partially because of my ineradicable Brooklyn roots. Las Vegas allowed me to pretend otherwise. I simply strolled on over to the Paris hotel on the Strip and experienced the requisite character transformation. Walking the wide indoor boulevards under the ceiling painted blue with just the right mix of sun and clouds, I imagined myself as I have always wanted others to see me: Gitan cigarette in one hand, coffee in the other, furrowed brow and a pained modern look on my visage as though tortured by existential angst like a character drawn by Sartre - at once condemned to be free while imprisoned by the existence of others. No way out. No exit. Only in Vegas can a life-long analytic philosopher entertain such a transformative experience. Cheers. May I have another double frappuchino?


Halfway through my Vegas stay, I found myself missing New York City. No problem. Leave the Paris hotel and head a bit further down the Strip. There it is: NY NY, a city so great they named it twice. In the Big Apple, you have to walk more than eight blocks to get from the Chrysler to the Empire State Building. No such limitations in Las Vegas. To get from the Chrysler Building to the Empire State, simply change elevators.


You can jet to Milan, Venice, Paris or New York. Or you can go to the Bellagio, the Venetian, the Paris or the NY NY. If you go to Venice -- the place, not the hotel -- you will come face to face with real Venetians. They have a history; quite an impressive one really. They have a distinctive culture, too - songs, holidays, rituals and a unique manner of comporting themselves. To understand Venice and Venetians, you have to engage them in a serious way. The same is true of Parisians of course; God knows it's true of New Yorkers. The Vegas conceit suggests that by visiting an appropriately named venue, you can experience an illusion of Venice, Paris and Italy. You can be transported without the engagement - without the work. You can connect without touching, feeling or smelling. You can sense without sensing. Or can you? Of course not. But why not? Because the hotels are so obviously fake. They are cardboard copies of what they aspire to represent. They offer no believable illusion of the real thing; at least for no one who's been to Europe, has read anything on European history. The hotels are Hollywood sets at best - cardboard made of brick and mortar.



They can never recreate the soul, the pulse, the emotion, the depth, the essence of any of the places they pretend to represent. They cannot transport you anywhere because they lack the ability to communicate the very meaning of the place. They represent and reflect - but they do not communicate. There are many magic shows in Vegas - from David Copperfield to Siegfried and Roy to the Venetian, Paris, NY NY on to the most appropriately, the Mirage; but there's no magic.


As it is in Las Vegas, so it is in audio reproduction. It is not an accident that the High-End show is held in Las Vegas. It approaches a cultural necessity. High-End music reproduction is all about getting to a place without actually going there. It is about creating an illusion. Great High-End is magic. For me, it is about getting to the soul, the pulse, the essence of a musical event. It's about truth, not accuracy. It's about being lost and found, dead to the world and completely alive in it. It is not about finding a perfect copy. It's about having a perfect feeling. The question? Was any audio magic (good name for an audio product, don't you think) to be found at the show? That depends of course on who you ask. The question then becomes whether there was anything at the show that transposed me - even temporarily. Did anything move me, engage me so in enveloping experience that I felt myself changed, if only a bit and only for a while? Did anything make me want to return time and again to such a room to recapture that magical feeling?


I am not referring to good sound. I heard a surprising amount of good sound at the show; more, in fact, than I had expected to find. I will report on sound -- good and not so good -- in Part III of my report. I am talking instead about sound that was captivating: A musical experience that was involving, that touched the soul and the heart as well as the rational self. I'm talking musical reproduction that communicated the meaning of the music in such a way as to change me, in the process allowing me to simply overlook/forget the system's flaws or shortcomings. As a philosopher, I am pretty sure about one thing that High-End audio is not - recreating the absolute sound. The absolute sound makes a great name for an audio journal. On the other hand, it is a pretty useless and distracting ideal for anyone evaluating music reproduction. More on that another time perhaps.


When my soul needed nourishment, I found myself returning to three rooms at the CES. There was a magic in these rooms, a naturalness of sound, an ease of presentation in which barriers between sound and music, between hearing and feeling, between passively listening and actively experiencing were largely -- and occasionally entirely -- removed. In no particular order (and referring to the rooms by the names of the speakers for simplicity) I touched and was touched by the soul of music in the Audiopax, Duevel and FJ rooms.


Music in the Audiopax room was more detailed, subtle, nuanced and enthralling than anywhere else in Las Vegas. In the four times I returned to this room, I never once saw someone stand up and leave in the middle of a song. I never once heard distracting conversations. People listened, deeply drawn into the music. On the one hand, the sound was subtle and seductive; on the other hand, it was powerful and musically right. Which is not to say that it was perfect - because it wasn't. The sound was not as extended at the frequency extremes as it might have been. Given that the speaker has a Scanspeak RingRadiator tweeter out to 40kHz, I think there's even more in that speaker than heard in the room, especially on top. From my previous experience with the amplifier, I am guessing that the amp is the limiting factor in this regard. However wonderful the amplifier is -- and it is wonderful -- it may not be as extended or dynamic as other tube amplifiers with which I am familiar.



In any case, I will let you know. For a pair of the brand-new Audiopax Reference 100 speakers will be arriving at my home for review soon enough. I will be pairing them with electronics from the legendary Ken Shindo. I've been listening to the Shindo Monbrisson preamplifier and Sinhonia monoblocks for the last three months. A review of both pieces will appear within the next couple of months. Suffice to say at this juncture that during my thirty-year audiophile tenure, I have never heard an amplifier of any sort that could take the measure of the Sinhonia. It is no wonder that it remains the amplifier Shindo-San himself uses. I can only imagine the blissful state which the combination of Shindo electronics and Audiopax speakers might be capable of inducing. The Audiopax speaker was the most outstanding new product I heard at the show.


If the Audiopax speaker was my outstanding new product introduced at this year's CES, then the Duevel room gets a special nod for introducing two products that have attained fame elsewhere but are nearly unknown here: The Duevel omni-directional, partially horn-loaded loudspeaker and the Pluto turntable. The Duevel loudspeakers have regularly won "Best of Show" awards at European High-End shows, including the prestigious Frankfurt Show where they are often paired with the Klimo Beltaine 300B amplifiers. Ted Lindblad of HighEndAudio.com imports both into the States and thus was able to give Vegas showgoers an ample dose of what it is that has captured the imagination of our European counterparts. On hand were the Bella Luna Diamante, a full-range, omni-directional loudspeaker driven with a mere 5 watts/channel by the superb Klimo Beltaine monoblock. When you think omni-directional, you think mbl. When you think mbl, you do not think 5 watts. You also don't think full-range loudspeakers for 7.5K; and certainly not as beautifully finished as these. When you think Duevel Bella Luna, this, my friend, is exactly how you are encouraged to think. Very liberating, n'est ce pas? Magnifique.



It takes time for some people raised on audiophile-approved loudspeakers to adjust to an omni-directional radiator. Images are stable but less finely delineated in space - in other words, more like live music, less like music reproduction. In the Duevel room, sound was full, spatial cues and effects eerie. What distinguished the room from others was the mixture of tonal correctness and naturalness. Visitors to the room were awash in an enthralling, natural soundscape. It was hard to leave; many apparently never did.


While a scribe at UltraAudio, I reviewed the smaller Duevel Venus. After living with the baby of the Duevel family and hearing the much larger Jupiter (the granddaddy of all Duevels), I did a Goldilocks and purchased a pair of the Bella Luna on display in Vegas. In fact, that very pair was just reviewed by fellow moonie, John Potis. He loved 'em. So do I.


The Audiopax room had a digital front-end to die for. Digital playback in the Duevel room was handled by the new Audio Logic MXL DAC, designed by digital guru Jerry Ozment. The name may not ring a bell for you, but Ozment's designs are at the heart of a good number of SOTA digital playback devices you are familiar with - Altis, for example. For years, Jerry has designed and manufactured a very limited number of digital products under the Audio Logic brand name. Ask around; folks in the know will tell you that everything he touches is special - and this $4K DAC is a marvel. I own one. So does moonman Jeff Day, albeit he was romanced by an earlier version already.


For analogue junkies, the real treat in the Duevel room was the appearance of both the Pluto 1 turntable and its designer, Eddie Driessen. There was simply no better turntable sound at the show. There may well be no better turntable in the world. I spent most of my time in the Duevel room begging Mr. Driessen for an opportunity to review his table. He was polite but pretended not to understand my English. I'm working on it, though. He and I are going to discuss the possibility of a review when he returns to the States in three months' time. Let's keep our fingers crossed. Perhaps his "hearing" will improve?


As the show drew to a close on Sunday, Srajan and I arranged to meet up with Joe Fratus [left with Sakura Systems' Yoshi Segoshi], the now infamous two bald guys from Portland, my buddy Steve and a few others for dinner. We were to meet in Hart Huschens' Audio Advancement room in the St. Tropez at 5:30pm. Joe was downstairs in the lobby serving drinks at the post-show celebration. If you know Joe, you know that there was no chance in hell we'd actually leave before 7:30. Steve and I made our way to Hart's room at the agreed-upon time nonetheless, ever optimistic though groundlessly so - as expected. At worst, I'd use the time to chat with the bald guys and renew my acquaintance with Hart. For many years, Hart has found and imported some of the best-sounding music and equipment in the world. He is drawn to products that conjoin exceptional sound and near total obscurity. The products he chooses remain excellent; often they cease to be obscure.


Here are some product examples Hart imported long before their value was more broadly recognized on this side of the pond: Klimo electronics and the Verdier turntable; the Eurolab; the EarMax and the Moerch arms. He is also the first person to import one of my personal favorites: The European Holophone Systems loudspeaker. The guy has an incredible ear and fabulous judgment. So I was anxious to sit down and spend a little time with him. And I was certainly going to have some time to do so, given that Joe was downstairs serving the crowd Joe-style.


No sooner had we all settled in for a chat, who should walk into the room but Franck Schröder of Schröder arm fame. My buddy Steve and I introduced ourselves though we couldn't quite figure out why he was at the show. We had seen no evidence of his arm anywhere at CES. It turned out that in fact, his arm was on display in Hart's room, albeit not in the room we found ourselves in. There was another adjacent setup hidden behind closed doors: a more High-End setup to boot. Hart and Frank asked us if we wanted to hear it. Were they kidding? Typical of Hart, his High-End system was in a room half the size of the room housing the other stuff. There's nothing showy about Hart.


Upon entering the room, we eyed the equipment. If I remember correctly, the amps weren't even housed in a rack. They might have been sitting on a table [a coffee table no less - Ed]. The system was simple and elegant. Tron electronics from the UK, with the amp featuring the 807 output tube; dps turntable with Schröder Model 2 arm and Allaerts MC 1Bcartridge; wiring by Audiopath from New Jersey's Hudson Audio; and this little two-way floorstanding speaker behind the electronics and near the back wall. The little thing was no taller than 30 inches, housing a front-firing silk dome tweeter and up-firing woofer. I never got the dimensions or relevant specs. I did learn this, however: The speaker is called the Om and designed and produced by FJ of Germany, with the tweeter apparently created in Norway, by someone who's been working on it for 27 years. I think he's finally figured something out.


I could excuse myself for not scoping out all the details to pass on to you. It was the end of the show; I was tired; Hart was distracted; the (one) moon was doing funny things to people. Also, there were no signs or placards by the products. All true excuses; all irrelevant ramblings. I learned nothing beyond what I just told you for one reason only: Once we turned on a record and started playing music, the four or five of us present (we eventually grew to be a group of about eight in the room) sat transfixed. After all the music and all the sound we had heard at the show; after all the conversations and all the walking; after everything extravagant and larger-than-life... there was this. This little speaker, this unassuming room. Why were we so transfixed? I can't speak for anyone else, but - there was an intimacy to the music, a relaxed and natural presentation that made me feel as though I'd really gotten it for the very first time. Where's Madonna when you need her? I finally understood what High-End audio is all about. At that moment, I would have been prepared to tell everyone to leave for dinner and not to worry about me. Maybe, I'd catch up later. Maybe not. It was all irrelevant now.


In a ballroom at the San Remo earlier that day, I'd listened to an impressive Halcro/Wilson demo that was all about scale; this room was all about a musical experience to appropriate scale. Personal; intimate; perfect. Until that moment, I had hoped to find sound that would let me touch the soul of the music; at that point, I found a musical experience that, itself, touched my soul. That's pretty much all I can say about it. I don't know that the message of the music being played for me has ever been more fully or naturally conveyed. Once that message was communicated, I knew I wouldn't lose it; I could take it with me. No need to stay any longer. So we summoned the troops, closed up shop, picked up Joe downstairs and off into the glittery Vegas night we stomped on our way to P.F. Chang's. I can't speak for the others, but I was sated already, my thirst quenched. All I needed now was a few hours with hairy and bald friends to celebrate good company and the folks behind the products - and the opportunity to talk Hart into letting me spend a lot more time with that little FJ speaker. I'll let you know how it turns out.