I do not know offhand if the Gabriel Gold was used at the show. The information I obtained on the room I posted a pic of in my CES report was that Ayon used the Clarity Cable power conditioner and the Echole Cables. Whether Gabriel Gold was used in that room I do not know, or if at all at this show. Contact Charlie Harrison at USA Tube Audio and he may be able to tell you.
I have not compared the CD-1S with the CD-2. I suppose it is conceivable that the single ended output would be similar, but I have serious reservations about that. My guess is it would be more a case of wishful thinking, "Oooh, I could get the performance of a $5.5K player for half the cost..." It certainly would not be wise of Ayon to make a player that was identical in single ended output on two players at big price differences. Ayon has never done so in the past, why now? What motivation would Ayon have to undercut their primo player with a nearly identical one?
In casual observation I see several differences in the specs, including tube complement, D/A conversion and number of transformers. In my thinking just the tube complement alone would be enough to substantially change the performance, let alone differences in the D/A conversion. I'm not going to spend the time going back to research it, but it seems to me that the CD-1 and CD-3 units shared a lot of similar specs as well, and they were separated by quite a wide margin in terms of performance. I certainly would not anticipate these two (CD-1s and CD-2) to be identical in single ended performance. It looks like the transport and some of the topology is similar, but that's a long way from identical.