Vegas was truly a show for extremes. We covered the $400-450k Swedish Statement before here and here, but it was fun to finally see this system in the flesh. Once again, the room was packed and listening was hard but the roar from CES halls was, "you've got to hear what the Swedes have been up to!" A lot of people came to the show saying, "Swedish Statement? Whateva" but left saying, "damn, I wish I bought Google stock."

The Swedish Statement's most prominent feature is, of course, the speakers. Marten's $250k Coltrane Supremes sport 1" diamond tweeters and 2" diamond midranges - the only one in the world - as well as a whole slew of ceramic drivers from the insane minds at Accuton. Cabinets are made out of carbon fiber and wood. The big towers are subwoofers with 9" drivers, 2000 watts of juice and active crossovers with digital room correction taking over below 100Hz for perfectly smooth bass. Total range is 15-100k Hz and 93dB into 4 ohms.

The rest of the system includes components by Bladelius, turntable by Nordic Concept, cables by Jorma Design, rack by Woo and power conditioning by Power Wing out of Arizona, the Sweden of the South West. I believe this was the most expensive room in Vegas but don't hold me on that.

Interestingly, every company chose to set up their rooms differently. The Signals Super-Fi room was identical to the Swedish Statement room but they placed their systems on different walls. Don't know why but, really, they both needed rooms four times the size to rip properly. THE Show at St. Tropez caused all kinds of fun with hot tubs in the bedrooms. One room - can't remember which - had the entire tub filled with exotic micro-brews on ice. Combine that with about half of the other rooms handing out drinks, it was a miracle someone didn't puke on some ridiculously expensive piece of equipment...that I know of.