CES 2007

At the Las Vegas Convention Center, Dynaudio was showing—and playing—its new self-powered MC15 mini speakers. In three setups, they were connected to a laptop, a gaming console and an iPod dock, each setup clearly indicating that its high quality sound was an improvement over the usual powered computer speakers. Sporting a 6" woofer, an Esotec soft-dome tweeter (with 1st-order crossover at 1.5kHz), and a pair of 50W amps, this $1299/pair package, including elegant table mount, would be even more suitable as the basis of a deskop system with a good disc player.

Naum Dorkhman was chuffed about Audes' new Excellence series of loudspeakers. "I told he engineers to take a blank sheet of paper and make loudspeakers that would satisfy audiophiles, not the bean counters," he said.

Big Trends:
Wireless Speakers—except that they replace the speaker wire with an AC cord, so you come out kind of even.
Music Servers—of course it's the sound that matters, but the interface is what will make the difference. Sooloos leads the way.
Apple iPhone—it's wireless and an iPod. This means your remote can now be your music library too. This will sink in soon, and audiophile WiFi will take off.

This man is electric. More than electric, this man is electricity. The strongest, purest current snaps through him and charges the entire room. We crowd around, unable to fully maintain his flow, but also unable to withdraw. John Atkinson and I settle in closest, occupying the front row. JA follows securely along, constant flickers of acknowledgement and wonder emerge, illuminated moments of understanding and interest. At the same time, however, running in the opposite direction, I feel almost as though I'm being rude — too deeply occupied at scribbling these notes, my pen powered by his words and ideas, moving faster across the page than I want it to go, I can't even look up to meet his eyes. And his eyes, these ice blue darts, they're the blue of a glowing front panel. The man is plugged in.

Stephen Mejias and longtime Primedia CES assistant Cynthia get the awards ready to be handed out later in the day. We'll have complete pictures and story later.

Ypsilon Electronics was a new name to me, so I wasn't sure what Jon Iverson and I would see when we entered its room. Whatever we expected, it wasn't the ginormous hybrid SET-100 monoblock amplifiers ($69,000/pair).