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CES / THE Show

Well, I just returned from the CES/THE Show, and for the most part, there really wasn't much in the way of "revolutionary" products, so in general, it was somewhat uninspiring.

On the audio side of things, I decided to take a different tack this year. Last year I visited as many suites as possible, but this year, I focused my efforts on loudspeakers, and based my visits on a single attribute; did the music coming from the room cause me to stop, and see what was making the music?

I heard an interesting comment from a gentleman on one of the shuttles. There was a discussion about recreating the “live event,” something that I must assume is the ultimate priority of audiophiles. He commented that “reproduced music is just that, reproduced music, so I don’t know why we all bother sometimes.” I thought it was an interesting comment, because as we all know, you can get close, but nothing reproduced can duplicate 100% the live event. I guess the objective is to get as close as possible!

Without getting into too many details, there were not a whole lot of rooms that drew me in. I did deliberately go to see a handful of speakers, one of which was the Thiel 3.7. I give Jim Thiel credit; they sounded pretty darned good. I passed right on by a large number of the usual suspects (the typical "top 10" list), as I just wasn’t impressed with the sound I heard. Many folks said the environment was poor, but regardless, some speakers excelled, even in a less than perfect setting. Is your listening environment “perfect?” A pair of PC speakers will outperform a $20K system under the right conditions.

Anyway, here’s a list of the rooms where the sound inspired me to embark on a longer listening session. They are in no particular order, and each of course had strengths and weaknesses. What I can say about all of them, is that to my ears, the trade-off’s were balanced well enough that the overall performance of the system didn’t suffer:

Edgarhorn – When you can hear the air coming through a trumpet, and the string of bass guitar vibrate, all I can say is “WOW”
Audiokinesis – This guy is on to something. Absolutely awesome midrange!
Rethm – Lowther based system that now has a powered sub. Beautifully designed and finished, and the coherency was outstanding!
Usher – If audiophiles can get passed the “made overseas” stigma, these easily perform as well, and in most cases, outperform the typical top 10 list at one-quarter the pricing in some cases.
Escalante Design – Fast and incredibly well balanced. Possibly the best conventional dynamic system I’ve ever heard.

In a nutshell, I’ve come to the realization that to my ears, a well executed horn system (or horn variation) gets as close to the “live event” as you’re going to get. While there are of course trade-off’s, a horn system provides the dynamic swings, transient attack, detail and delivery of instruments (strings, drums, woodwinds, brass) that a conventional, low efficiency, dynamic system simply can’t match. I’ll admit that a horn system might not provide a “silky” midrange presentation that some folks like for vocals, but a horn system is just so expressive that nearly every other design sounds like “Hi-Fi.” For me, horns are as close to the live event as I’m going to get, and I can now see why the value of older horn systems from Altec and JBL have skyrocketed in value. I think folks are on to something.

There really is something magical about the way these systems reproduce music, so needless to say, after 25 years of trying just about every speaker technology available, I'm going back to horns and never looking back.
seadweller
vegasears
1,173 posts
 
I didn't have the time nor desire to visit all the product rooms. I just went into rooms with product that was of interest to me.

Avantgarde Acoustics's room was by far the best sound that I visited. I had had enough "Show Jazz" recording's when I sat down and it was refreshing to hear some good old in your face hard rock. The guy took out the Show Jazz and put in Rammstein's "Reise Reise" track 5 "Los". It was the first time I said "OH MY GOD!" all day.

I didn't go to "The Show" I was on systems overload by that time.

PS, The Hooker's riding the elevator's was a nice touch. LOL
It gave it "A Vegas Feel".
newbie13
242 posts
 
Escalante Design was my favorite at THE. Very balanced and one of the most natural sounding speakers I've heard.
mark02131's avatar
mark02131
99 posts
 
Cary has an absulutly fantastic new 2 channel amp using 4 KT88's per side. I have no idea when and if it will be out but it is really pretty !! A work of art. Its so new that it is the only one in existence right now.
kennyt's avatar
kennyt
1,226 posts
 
I'd add a few more, MBL as always sounded good, and the amps the size of coffins were just to cool! The new Revel Salon2's sounded great, worth the walk to the Hilton, they had a much better room then when they demo'd them @ CEDIA, and I loved the look of the new gear from ML. I would also add a sleeper, the RBH 30th anniversary speaker, @$14K, a bargain,, they were amazing transducers, huge, but great. I breifly listened to the JBL Everest, and must say a very strange looking speakers, but had a great sound as well.
stehno
1,453 posts
 
Overall, I thought CES went quite well. Moving CES/Audio to The Venetian Hotel was probably a very good idea for exposing high-end audio to the general public since so many non-audio CES patrons had to walk the halls. I heard numerous times that out of curiosity some to many of these patrons at least peeked into the rooms on the lower floors to see and hear the systems.

As for my agenda at CES, I had several but I too was focused primarily on speakers. There were some nice surprises and also some not so nice surprises.

My friend (also in search of the right speaker) shared with me that the tweeter is probably the safest element of a speaker system to test at a show since nearly everything else can be more easily influenced by the room. We/he primarily used his Natalie Merchant Live CD since there is a section on track 10, Ophelia, that will fairly easily expose certain basic weaknesses within a tweeter/speaker system, especially if the speaker is a 2-way. If the dynamics flatten out or the tweeter breaks up, we'd move on to the next room and speaker.

I/we discovered that perhaps 85 - 90 percent of all the speakers we auditioned had one or more shortcomings at reproducing this track. In fact, there was only one speaker that absolutely soared to new heights and without apparent issue and that was the AMR monitor speakers with a ribbon tweeter and all-aluminum cabinet. The speaker (roughly the size of the Maggico Minis) weighed 80 lbs. each and was supposedly full-range. We didn't really test the lowest bass regions but it was amazing up top with incredible dynamics. This speaker deserves a serious audition.

Overall I thought that the Integris System from Aurum Acoustics was the best sound at CES.

I'd have to say that the most fascinating tweak I heard had to be the little 2-inch x 2-inch x 1/2-inch thick resonator blocks with a little cup and ball and what they did for soundstaging and room acoustics when strategically placed in the room or on top of the components.

As for the not so nice suprises, there were a few rooms that sounded absolutely horrible and based on the name brands of one room in particular, I'd guess that there could only be one excuse for such poor sound quality.

Overall, we had a lot of fun, learned some new things, and made some new contacts.

Oh, yeah, I think I found the speaker I'm looking for.

-IMO
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