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World's longest concert sounds second chord after one-and-a-half years. It's A, C, and F#—gonna take a while to resolve that one.
But change the name of the companies involved and I heard every one of the claims in "The Top 10 Lies of Entrepreneurs" uttered at one point or another this past week.
Technical Audio Devices, better known as TAD, was showing a speaker that looked disturbingly familiar. It was the same size and seemed to feature the same drivers as TAD's Model-1, but it lacked that speaker's silver hood and upper front baffle. That's because Andrew Jones had come to Vegas with TAD's Model-2, which he said would come in between $35,000 and $40,000/pair.
"The Model-1, with its 52 layers of ¾" plywood, was just too time-consuming to manufacture in quantity," Jones explained. "We'll still make it, but we had to give our cabinet maker a break." Yeah right, a…
Jon Iverson and I walked into Studio Electric's room at T.H.E. Show not knowing what to expect and stopped short. Whoa, this was different.
We beheld a pair of speakers straight out of Buck Rogers—shiny chromed domes capped with a swept-back tweeter faring topped more conventional woofer cabinets. "Oh, the woofers aren't operating, what you're hearing is just the Type One ($8000/pair) modules. They operate from 65Hz to 20kHz. If you've got to go down to 40Hz, add the XLR-8 cabinets ($3100, including DSP woofer integration)," said David MacPherson.
The Type Ones were driven by…
Small seems to be the next big thing—the new black, maybe. Viola Audio Labs introduced its 9" W by 4.3" H by 16" D 75W Forte monoblocks ($10,000/pair). Like its big brothers, the Forte has a minimum of internal wiring, which along with its compact dimensions, keeps signal paths short. It has a 1M ohm input impedance, making it easy to drive, and this is said also to improve HF performance and transient response, according to designer Tom Colangelo's colleague Paul Jayson. It uses minimal negative feedback and a choke input filter power supply.
Jayson's modular speaker was also on display.…
This is Vegas, so you'll understand that when I say that Jon Iverson and I were simply rolling the dice when we entered Audiona's room at T.H.E. Show, I mean that in a good way. "Want to hear some actively crossovered, four-way loudspeakers?" Brian Quick asked us. Well, yeah, that's what we do.
The 275 lb, 56.5" H by 26" W by 24" D 442 GL contains all-JBL drivers: a bi-radial constant-coverage horn/compression driver tweeter, bi-radial constant-coverage horn/compression driver midrange, 10" midbass driver, and 18" woofer. The class-A active crossover employs phase compensation for…
Andrew and Lukas Lipinski, manufacturers of the L-707 monitor I reviewed in December, were fed up with poor room acoustics and slow foot traffic at trade shows. So they eliminated the room! Ray Kimber urged them to take the empty spot in the Alexis Park lunchroom for their demo setup. Andrew set up one of the few multi-channel demo systems at the Show using six L-707s, including the one for rear height information seen in the photo. Despite the din of the lunch crowd, all I had to do was sit in the nearfield, and I was bathed in sound from Andrew's multi-channel recordings, such as…