A Terrific Tube Preamplifier From Korea, And A - Ultra High Fidelity ...

Thiel was back at CES, exhibiting
alongside Bryston. Their main room
(not the one with the wireless system,
whose purpose is different) was making
beautiful music, which was no surprise.
However the Thiel people were smiling
wanly, and for good reason. Their
cofounder and designer from the very
beginning, Jim Thiel, had died of cancer
a few months before.
In the photo above is Kathy Gornick,
who many years ago founded the company
along with Jim in a garage. A commemorative
evening was held in Jim’s
memory. It turned out Jim — one of the
genuinely
n i c e
people of the
industry, had a
lot of friends.
Including me.
S e e t h e
impressivelooking
open-reel
recorder on this page? It used to be
a Technics RS-1500, and its brilliant
design (we actually own four of them)
would have deserved a much
longer life. This one is from
J-Corder, which rebuilds the
innards and uses its experience
with fancy automobile
paints to make them look
like this. No two alike,
need we add?
I spent part of the
evening at the Dolby suite,
including a few pleasant
moments in the company’s egg chair
(at left). It is, as you would expect,
fitted for surround sound, with a lot
of 3D “acoustic foam to tame the
inevitable resonance from the walls.
I remember chairs like these being
popular in the late 1960’s, with two
differences: there were no loudspeakers,
and there was room for…ahem,
two people. “Surround” had a different
meaning then.
But that is not a commercial
product. What Dolby was showing
was a sound processing system
that lets you hear surround sound
through standard headphones on an
iPhone. It was surprisingly good, and
I wished I had it on mine for the plane
trip home.
Note, by the way, the big blue
holder with the yellow patch on my
CES badge. The yellow is the logo
of Best Buy, who paid for the badge
holders and actually had an exhibit at
CES Unveiled. Why? CES is not open
to the public. A Best Buy spokesman
told me the company wants to see what
consumers will be buying. Good reason
to attend, sure, but to exhibit?
A long walk through the endless aisles
of the “zoo” (the Las Vegas Convention
Centre) let me get a look at a number of
obscure Asian manufacturers, trolling
for distributors. Some had worthwhile
products that I’d be pleased to see
in stores, but many of them seemed
destined for failure. An example is the
company above, whose (presumably)
non-English-speaking management
should have Googled “scam” before
naming their company. The name makes
sense if you read it as “Gos Cam.” Yes,
it’s a camera, specifically a surveillance
camera.
ULTRA HIGH FIDELITY Magazine 25
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