Outlaw Audio has an impressive home theater demo at HE2007. The five 8200e THX Ultra 2 speakers are from Atlantic Technology, as are the two side-mounted dipole surrounds that fill out the 7.1-channel system. The projector is ProjectionDesign's premier single-chip DLP with an anamorphic lens filling a 2.35:1 Screen Research acoustically transparent screen. The source is a Sony Blu-ray player and the program material is a scene from <I>Vertical Limit</I> (yes, <I>that</I> scene).
Outlaw has also jumped into the full-range speaker business with its recently introduced Outlaw Bookshelf Speaker ($1000/pair (in black, $1100/pair in cherry, available now). It employs a 5.25" woofer-midrange and 1" silk-dome tweeter, both of them sourced from an unnamed but well-known Scandinavian driver manufacturer. The Bookshelf is shown here with the new Outlaw LCR Speaker. More on the LCR in the following report.
While the new Outlaw speakers use imported parts, they are assembled and tested in the U.S. (If you're wondering, the model designations are simply the Outlaw Bookshelf Speaker and the Outlaw LCR Speaker. Like all Outlaw products, they are available only on-line.)
Come September Outlaw Audio will offer this new LCR speaker, shown here by Outlaw's Peter Tribeman. It's appropriately named the Outlaw LCR Speaker ($700 each) and uses two of the same 5.25" woofer-midranges found in the Outlaw Bookshelf Speaker plus the 1" silk-dome tweeter. It will offer a three-position boundary switch (Off, -2dB, -4dB) to compensate for near-wall or atop-TV positioning
Yes, as a matter of fact all the news coming in for the next few days will be ground into show Blog fodder, including this. Marantz isn't among the exhibitors here at HE 2007 and I don't know if anyone will be using the <A HREF="http://ultimateavmag.com/videoprojectors/506marantzvp11s1/">VP-11S1</A> for demonstration. Nevertheless, the projector is getting a running change in production to HDMI 1.3, but the retail price will remain fixed at $20K. Deep Color and 12-bit color depth are being touted, but don't get too excited about that yet. Consumer HD sources aren't using either currently. Marantz will be offering upgrades to existing VP-11S1 owners (like me), but pricing for that isn't established yet. While I won't be jumping in for the Deep Color, my experience switching among the different species of HDMI suggests that as everything else moves to 1.3-spec that switching issues might be minimized being 1.3 all the way around. Stay tuned on that one- if Marantz talks me into upgrading my 11S1 I'll let you know what that gets me!
I remember my first audio / video trade show. Chicago, June 1995, the last official summer CES. I arrived at O'Hare mid-afternoon and made my way to the Palmer House, a grand old hotel where the show would take place. The lobby was huge, enormous and, as I would come to find, the place where journalists, manufacturers and their PR firms would come together each evening to conspire over cigars and cognac, with the manufacturers or their agents, naturally, picking up the tab.
