Best and Worst sound at the CES Show 2004

I wasn't at CES 2004, but I can comment on this years show.

I walked into the Wavac room, listened for maybe one minute and hit the bricks. It wasn't worth sitting through. I heard better sound in rooms with $5000 amps.

Best sound of the show was in the VTL room. I have never spent much time with VTL, so I had never formed an opinion one way or another, and I've certainly never seen the big Wilson's where I live, but the system stopped me in my tracks. I thought I would just take a quick peek, and ended up sitting for quite a while. The system was open dynamic without being overly detailed and unmusical. I could have spent a lot of time there, but there was simply too much to see and hear!!!

The Purist room was in 'my' top three, they showed their Venustus cables with a Nagra pre-amp, and a Swedish (?) amp and CDP that I had never heard of, but they did a good job. Another winner was the Star Sound Technologies room. They were showing a new pair of monitors with their own monoblocks, rack, and points, with some dcs electronics. My goodness that little system sounded good!!! The speakers with stands are only $5000 and roll off above 35Hz, but in their room there was not an obvious lack of bass. Virtual Dynamics was worth stopping in. Rick was a lot of fun to talk to, a man of integrity in a world of charletans (that doesn't look right, where's the spell check option???).

There was a big electronics company that had an active speaker setup there which I REALLY wanted to see, and hear. I was very disappointed. In the room they sounded poor, which is not to say they are not a great speaker.

People who go to the show and really condemn a manufacturer or product for sounding terrible are being disingenuous. The best rooms suck, and none of us would buy a house that offered nothing better than the tiny rooms in which these systems are shown. There were obvious attempts to tame the rooms, which worked to a certain degree, but the manufacturers I talked to told me that this is not as much a time to strut their stuff as a time to meet people, and shake some hands. Deals are made by building understandings/relationships between retailers and manufacturers.

Who buys a product based on how it sounded in the store??? What retailer would buy a product based on how it sounded at CES or THE Show???

I had a great time, listened to some great systems, and some of them even sounded good!

I believe there are enough great sounding products to be concentrating on the "worst".
Why not reporting on the positive stuff? Will report my thoughts when I have more time.

I really liked the Vandersteen/Joule room a lot. To me, easily best of show.

That said, I'm not a Vandersteen fan. Go figure :)

Many of my friends like the ARC/Wilson room the best.

There were 3 rooms that really impressed me.
There was a new company, April Electronics, with several product lines (Oasis, Eximus, Stello)of amps, dacs, cd players. Their products were featured in the Dali and Metal Sound Design rooms, both of which had very rich, detailed, and exciting yet non-fatiguing sound.
Audiopax' room had a sound that combined the best of solid state with the best of tube sound; detailed, musical, reasonably deep and tight bass.
Audio Aero's booth had a sound that really made you forget about the equipment, and listen to the music - rich, detailed, non-fatiguing. Bass transients were very soft,though, although sustained notes went very deep, and bowed bass notes had an appropriate level of vibrance. Synthesized bass didn't have the excitement factor of a good solid state system. If I didn't think about it, I didn't bother me, but on recordings that I knew had serious bottom-end oomph, it never materialized.
I was quite disappointed in the Rowland / Rockport room. The system really spotlighted the upper midrange, resulting in a very fatiguing sound. This was surprising, due to all the very positive press given to the ICE amps here recently, and the raves from the big mags over Rockport's speakers.
Vmps was also disappointing, as they often like to tout their best-of-show votes in their advertising. The system was very boomy. I understand VMPS has a way to adjust the boom factor, but it sounded like they didn't bother.

I didn't attend CES, but what amazes me about these reports is how two people can listen to the same system and make completely different observations about the sound. Then again, different times of day, different levels of listening fatigue, one's mood, various recordings playing during audition, etc... can all affect what we think. A perfect example of this were the comments posted by Celtic and Nrchy about VTL i.e. extreme polar opposite opinions.

I know that i've encountered this myself in the very same room. A few years back, i listened to a system that sounded very lush, full bodied, delicate and smooth. The system was all SS, but had a very definite "TOOOOB" flavouring to it. My Brother heard it and thought much the same thing.

When bringing another friend into that room the next day, the rep's were away from the room and were letting people play their own discs and use the system as they would their own. A very nice touch. One couple put in some type of Opera ( pardon my ignorance ) and proceeded to sit front and center with their eyes closed. After a short period of time, i wanted to run from the room. The sound was ear-shattering i.e. hard & glassy sounding upper mids, treble that was brittle and breaking up i.e. very piercing and anything but "smooth, soft & airy" as i had experienced the day before. I don't know if it was the disc or if something had changed in the system, but i can bet you one thing. I'll bet that the guy that i took to hear that system had a COMPLETELY different take on it than what my Brother and i had the day before.

Having said all of that, i've heard those same components in other systems and always thought that they had a "toob" flavouring to them. As such, it had to be the disc that they were playing. If someone had walked in the room at that time though, i'm quite certain that they would have thought the components / speakers sounded shrill as can be.

I ran into another situation in a room that had Vandy 5's powered by ARC gear a few years back. On one day, the bass was somewhat flabby sounding and lacked definition. After Richard dialed the system in a little better the next day, the bass had tremendous slam and impact. Some people thought that the bass was TOO visceral, including my Brother. Needless to say, the differences were night and day. Do you think that someone hearing the system on the first day would have the same opinion as a different person hearing the system the second day? I don't think so. I know i didn't.

Just goes to show that one really can't form much of an opinion about sound with show conditions, especially during one visit that is very brief to each room. This is why i try to hit each room that may have something i'm interested in several times on different days. This allows one to form a more qualified opinion of what's going on there and even that may not be all that accurate.

As such, i'm with Nate on this one. Shows are strictly for checking things out. Then again, if they can get a system dialed in to the point where it grabs your attention under show conditions, chances are, it can be even better under more idealized normal-use conditions in your home. After all, how many folks can get a system REALLY dialed in overnight in a completely foreign room with unknown acoustics? Industry professionals or not, we should take that into account. After all, many of the "industry professionals" that attend and set up the gear at shows are simply sales rep's, not engineers or acousticians. Sean
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