2004 Consumer Electronics
Show Wrap-Up: Things that Made Me Go Hmmmm
The Consumer Electronics Show is always hectic. If you're
an exhibitor, you've got very little time to set up, and you're betting a huge amount of
money that you'll be able to attract enough attention to keep yourself in business for
another year (or to actually get into the business, as opposed to having a
ridiculously expensive hobby).
If you happen to be a big manufacturer (or you're selling
something that isn't dependent on audiophiles), you'll probably set up in the Las Vegas
Convention Center, which is so vast that I fully anticipate that future CESes will assign
GPS positions rather than booth numbers. The LVCC's food courts are spaced, like oases,
approximately a half-day's march apart from one another.
But I digress -- my point was going to be that exhibitors
in the LVCC vie for attention by going big, fancy, and LOUD. Walking the floor there is
akin to having every sense assaulted by too much information. Way too much. You
tend to shut down, at least I do.
Over at the Alexis Park, there are hundreds of individual
displays, most of which are assembled out of components from multiple manufacturers. It's
hard to tell if the sound that impressed you was a result of its source or its electronics
or its speakers. I try, I really try, but I probably get it wrong a lot of the time --
especially when writing to deadline.
Again, I tend to shut down from TMI overload.
Now, I'm not trying to wring your heart with the account of
my suffering -- it certainly beats working -- but it ain't as easy as it sounds.
And, as I mentioned, when you're confronted with all of
that input, you tend to get stuff wrong. At least I do. For example, I wrote that DeVore
Fidelity's Silverback loudspeakers cost $20,000/pair, while they only cost $12,000, which
seems like a real bargain in comparison.
I raved about the Gilmore Audio Model 2s, describing them
as "flat dipoles featuring a 40" ribbon tweeter and four 8" pistonic
woofers." Well, even though I remember checking and re-checking the info in the room,
I still managed to jumble things up. The speakers I described are the Model 3s, which are
$14,950/pair, while the Model 2s (60" ribbon; four 12" woofers) are
$19,950/pair.
I also completely missed the point of David Wilson's nifty
iPod "switcheroo" demonstration, which was not that Wilson used the iPod as a
source, but that he stacked the deck against his own speakers by driving his competitor's
product with a $20,000 CD player and the Sophias with the diminutive portable in an effort
(an impressively successful one, I'd say) to demonstrate that great-sounding speakers make
great-sounding systems -- even when associated with less-than-stellar ancillary equipment.
Then there are errors of omission -- oh, like it never
happens to you! Back when I'd drive to the CES from Santa Fe, my favorite part of the
whole trip was the drive back home, when I could chat with other Stereophile
editors about the exhibits that lingered in our minds. Think of the paragraphs that follow
as our trip back from the show.
I was wandering the halls of T.H.E. Show when I spotted a
glass display cabinet filled with nifty little gizmos offering active thermal
management. What's that, you ask. It's a little hard to explain, but easy to grasp:
we're talking ventilation fans for audiophiles.
The Cool-Stack is a rack-mounted fan box which sucks heated
air through four biscuit fans and vents it out the back -- just the ticket for racks
filled with class-A amps. The Cool-Shelf sits on top of a receiver and vents through its
sides, allowing you to stack equipment on top of it (if you must). The company offers a
whole bunch of other shelves, bases, and venting devices. Check it out at ATM's website:
www.activethermal.com.
I have to admit the display amused me when I first spotted
it, but I keep thinking about ATM's big idea and it's not a bad one. If you're handy, you
could probably build something like these products yourself, but ATM's not charging an arm
and a leg for them and the ones I saw were dead quiet -- as John Atkinson observed about
the Crown DC300A, "fans can be noisy."
Speaking of racks, Solid Tech was showing a stunning rack,
which looks like nothing you've ever seen. It's a skeletal X with fluted extruded-aluminum
columns and wooden crossbars. The crossbars are either suspended via springs from collars
(for source components) or are solidly attached with setscrew-tightened collars. There are
no shelves -- the crossbars support a variety of fancifully named footer devices: Feet of
Silence (a suspension footer), Discs of Silence (a sprung footer), and some basic balls
(no name supplied).
It's an expensive rack -- the "basic" system of
four pillars and four "shelves" (two suspended; two heavy duty) prices out to
about $1900 and the footers start at $200/set. But it wasn't the price that blew me away,
it was the fact that designer Bjorn Ohlsson actually demonstrated why he called it TROS
under show conditions -- it made a huge difference when he transferred a CD player
from his Rack of Silence to a "regular" audiophile-approved equipment rack.
Everything just got better. It wasn't as though the music
got louder, but it seemed to be getting through to me more efficiently. I cared more, felt
more, and "got it" more. So I wanted more -- and I now have one in-house for
review. You'll be hearing more about this one.
I also keep returning to VTL's demo in my audio reveries.
Luke Manley was showing off his new stereo S-400s ($20,000), which are a two-channel
version of the VTL Siegfried monoblocks. These beasties employ a whole passel of tubes: 12
6550Cs, as well as pairs of 6350s and 12AT7s. Driving a pair of Wilson WATT/Puppy 7s, the
S-400 (which "only" delivers 300Wpc) produced grand-piano sound that was truly
grand. The hammer attacks were incisive and the overtone decays were crystalline. Once
Casey McKee graciously surrendered the sweet spot to me, I turned into a beast, refusing
to budge for the longest time.
And I snuck back later for more.
The ProAc/Sugden room almost had to charge me rent as well.
Sugden was demonstrating its new Masterclass series of components: the $4000 Masterclass
preamp, $12,000/pair Masterclass monoblock amps, and $4500 Masterclass CD player. These
doughty ("marked by fearless resolution," heh, heh) worthies were feeding
ProAc's Response D25 two-way floorstanders ($6380/pair) and to call the sound musical
doesn't begin to do it justice.
You know how the hairs all stand up on your arms when the
music really moves you? That's what this system did to me both times I heard it.
The room was almost bare, too -- not much in there in the way of room treatment or
floobydust. The music was the magic.
And that, despite all of the petty inconveniences of
trade-show life, is what makes going to the CES worthwhile. Sometimes you can hear hi-fi
that will just give you goosebumps.
...Wes Phillips
wes@onhifi.com
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