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
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