My definition of great writing is writing that makes you care about stuff you never even knew interested you. By that definition, this Warren St. John article explaining why he cares about college football qualifies. I think I'm going to buy <I>Rammer, Jammer, Yellow Hammer</I> for the flight home from Vegas.
The CES's "Innovations" exhibit at the Sands Convention Center is intended to honor the most technologically advanced and ground-breaking consumer electronic products at the Show. Most of the display cases were still waiting to be populated on set-up day (though we spotted B&W's cute cylindrical subwoofer as well as Krell's Dean Roumanis wheeling in some big boxes). But some of the choices for an award raised our eyebrows, as with this robot intended to train boxers in the comfort of their own homes. <I>Stereophile</I>'s Stephen Mejias strikes a suitably pugilistic pose.
As a reader pointed out, missing from Wes Phillips' coverage of Wednesday's Thiel CS3.7 press conference was a picture of the new speaker. Here it is, pictured with Jim Thiel waxing lyrical about his new midrange diaphragm.
It's just after 10pm, here in Las Vegas. The moon is an eyelash.
You know that stuff I said about how pointless the pre-show press conferences are? Well, not always—not, for example, when Jim Thiel has been busy. At last year's CES, Thiel practically levitated when he began describing the challenges of re-designing his CS3.6 floorstander, which has been in production since 1992. He described what he'd keep in the CS3.7 (first-order crossover; three-way design; short-coil/long gap motor design; coincident tweeter and midrange, time coherence;and aluminum diaphragms) and then he began waxing rhapsodic about how completely open that left his imagination.
"Its first audible resonance is effectively above 20kHz—that's above the operating range of some <I>tweeters</I>."
I've always said that cables might be the most important component in a system—after all, without 'em, you don't get much sound out of the whole schmear. <A HREF=http://www.avegasystems.com">Avega Systems</A> is doing its best to make a liar out of me with its Oyster wireless loudspeaker.
If one component is omnipresent this year, it's the iPod. You may find this hard to believe, but there are actually companies making iPod accessories these days—actually, it's hard to find companies that aren't.
Others, not so much.
Basically, the press conference day is crowded and noisy and pointless. Even worse, they play irritating techno music at you for what seems like hours.