Dreaming of a Wire Free World
"Let's face it," Neosonik's Ted Feldman said, "wires are a hassle—nobody really wants to clutter up their homes with the darn stuff. I know eliminating wires has always been a dream of mine."
Dynaudio Gets High-End Sound from the iPod
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.
Emperor Hansen
Hansen Audio needed a speaker that wasn't quite as, um, lordly as its $65,000/pair King floorstanders, so Lars Hansen designed the $49,000/pair Emperors. The four driver three-ways are constructed of Hansen's composite matrix material in an enclosure that employs Sound Wave Refraction Distortion Elimination technology. The midrange (7.2") and bass (10.6") drivers are all multilayer composite sandwiches.
Excellence!
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.
Excellent Smile and Design
Final CES Thoughts
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.
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.
Flying High—The Märten Bird
Having waxed ecstatic over the big Märten full-range loudspeaker on display at last October's Rocky Mountain Audio Fest, I was delighted to discover the somewhat smaller $30,000/pair The Bird on display in two virtually square, air-walled conference rooms at the Sands/Venetian Convention Center. The three-way speaker, with a 6 ohm impedance, boasts a frequency range of 28Hz–45kHz, and is 89dB sensitive at 2.83V.
Furman Sound: Passion for Protection and Performance
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.
Gershman Rocks with Red Rock Audio
The Canadian Gershmanhttp://www.gershmanacoustics.com/">Gershman; Black Swan speaker ($30,000/pair), which mounts the tweeter and midrange unit in a separate A-frame enclosure to prevent their performance being affected by vibrations from the woofer, made its debut at HE2006 last May, and I was looking forward to hearing what it could do at CES.
Getting the Awards Ready
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.