LATEST ADDITIONS

42,959 Steps
Scott Wilkinson  |  Jan 13, 2011  |  0 comments
CES 2011 has come and gone, and by the end, my dogs were barking big time! Last year, my pedometer recorded a total of 15 miles during the show, a figure I beat by 33 percent this year—I walked 20.34 miles, which translates to 42,959 steps. Thank goodness for orthodics and support socks!

Stay tuned for more videos from the show as well as my wrap-up reports…

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CES 2011: The Speaker Report
Brent Butterworth  |  Jan 12, 2011  |  0 comments

You might think that by now engineers would be out of ideas for speakers. After all, how many ways can you combine a woofer and a tweeter? But this year's Consumer Electronics Show proved there's still lots of life left in this category. In fact, I can't recall a past CES that showcased so many new speaker models, and this was the 22nd time I've attended the January show.

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Sonic Emotion 3D Sound
Scott Wilkinson  |  Jan 12, 2011  |  0 comments
Swiss developer Sonic Emotion was demonstrating its 3D Sound technology in a smallish booth at the Convention Center using soundbars from Haier and Coby. Granted, these are hardly the type of "ultimate" products I normally feature on UAV, but the underlying technology is surprisingly advanced and worthy of coverage here.
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CES 2011
Paradigm
Darryl Wilkinson  |  Jan 11, 2011  |  0 comments
CES 2011
MartinLogan
Darryl Wilkinson  |  Jan 11, 2011  |  0 comments
CES 2011
Control 4
Darryl Wilkinson  |  Jan 11, 2011  |  0 comments
CES 2011
Mitsubishi TVs
Shane Buettner  |  Jan 11, 2011  |  0 comments
CES 2011
Mitsubishi Laservision
Shane Buettner  |  Jan 11, 2011  |  0 comments
CES 2011
Thiel SCS4T
Thomas J. Norton  |  Jan 11, 2011  |  1 comments
The new Thiel floorstanding SCS4T (about $3700/pair), mentioned again further down in this report, is a modest speaker by Thiel standards. The single coaxial driver has the advantage of coincidence. That is, the tweeter is mounted coaxially with the woofer, so the two drive units do not produce comb filtering dips in the speaker's response at off axis angles. Coaxial drivers are also used in more upmarket models from Thiel, and also by KEF and Tannoy, but otherwise are relatively rare.

Yes, I heard more dramatically impressive sound at the show, but the Thiel room, one of the first I visited, sounded so honest and right that for me it represented the sort of value that most of the higher-end products could not manage. Of course, a pair of Thiel subwoofers were helping it along in the deep bass!

And unlike nearly all of the speakers heard at the Venetian, the SCS4T is ready for home theater. The older, stand-mount SCS4 (about $2400/pair, available in singles) should be a good match. It uses the same coaxial driver and can be used as a matching center channel, even mounted on its side (a trick that other non-coaxial 2-way speakers cannot do without sonic consequences.

CES 2011
Sony SS-AR1
Thomas J. Norton  |  Jan 11, 2011  |  1 comments
As with the Thiels, we mentioned these Sony speakers earlier in this report. But also like the Thiels, they deserve another mention. No other speakert impressed me as much as this one did at the show. I'm enough of a show veteran to realize just how much the room, associated components, and program material can effect the sound of a system, but under the conditions in the Sony room, in a 2-channel setup (four of the speakers were also being used in a surround system in a different room) they impressed me about as much as any speaker ever has at a trade show. The sound was punchy, dynamic, and full-bodied without being overblown. And they made both modern and classical music sound real—few speakers can do as well on both.

The SS-AR1's (I sense an homage in that name) have been on the market in Japan since 2006, but have recently been upgraded in the voicing and crossover department.

But will we ever see them for sale here in the states? Possibly, but this show appeared to be a trial run to judge dealer interest. That's been a problem with Sony speakers in the past, and there have been some very good ones. High-end dealers are reluctant to take on Sony speakers, and Sony dealers are reluctant to take on speakers this expensive—currently about $27,000/pair in Japan.

Associated equipment included Pass Laboratories monoblock solid state amps and an EMM Labs (Meitner) Reference SACD/CED player.

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