Despite griping and grumbling about <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/news/100206ces/">the change</A>, many makers of high-performance audio gear appear to have settled on their new official venue at the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas: the Venetian Resort Hotel Casino. Two months before the start of the 2007 CES (to be held January 8–11), all but 12 of the Venetian's 198 exhibit rooms and suites had already been sold.
What is the best environment in which to demonstrate and enjoy high-quality audio gear? According to Richard Rives Bird, founder and president of <A HREF="http://www.rivesaudio.com">Rives Audio</A>, the answer is simple: an acoustically engineered room.
On Ella Fitzgerald and Oscar Peterson's <I>Swiss Radio Days, Vol.15: JATP Lausanne 1953</I> (TCB 02152), the performances are so extraordinary that only the music itself can fully tell the tale.
Although it can sometimes seem quite illusive, or only reserved for the chosen few, high-end proof of the proverbial scales of justice surfaced in the last room I was privileged to visit.
Fortune found in the fortune cookie that accompanied my evening meal of Chinese take-out: "When in doubt, let your instincts guide you."
For some system configurations, hotel rooms present near impossible challenges. Such was the case in one padded cell on the 5th floor of the Marriott Denver Tech Center, where the frustrated purveyors of a modestly priced A/V surround system raided the linen closet in a desperate attempt to tame errant sound. I didn’t have the heart to ask if the reflective surface of the black plastic tape might be making matters worse.
Photographed in a state of mild panic, as your truly was trying to figure out what was wrong with his new Canon digital camera [<I>Answer: nothing but his brain</I>], the dedicated Serinus RMAF work area at the Marriott is pictured in its characteristically unglorious state.
Gilbert Yeung of Blue Circle Audio never fails to brighten my day. In this case, his electronics did likewise.
At the suggestion of a fellow BAAS (Bay Area Audiophile Society) member, I abandoned futile attempts to cover every room on a given floor, and instead pinpointed systems that had turned my brothers on. In this case, it was the room shared by Flying Mole Digital and Green Mountain speakers.
As mentioned in the <A HREF="http://blog.stereophile.com/rmaf2006/102006welcome/">introductory post</A> to this blog, Peter "PJay" Smith (above), Bob Cordell, and Darren Kuzma presented gratis "Amplifier and Loudspeaker Listening and Measurement" clinics throughout the show. One of the clinics, which I was unable to attend, interpreted amplifier measurement data supplied by <I>Stereophile</I>'s John Atkinson.