LATEST ADDITIONS

Totem Acoustics was demonstrating a speaker they call The One. Its a limited anniversary edition of the first speaker they ever manufactured. Sans a subwoofer, these diminutive $3995 (pr) speakers were extremely impressive, outperforming, to my ears, some of the behemoth tower speakers [with five and six figure price tags] that were being demonstrated by other manufacturers at the Venetian.

At a press open house this morning, McIntosh showed off a number of new products, including monoblock and integrated amps, an SACD/CD player, and the $9,000 MT10 turntable. I may never be able to afford McIntosh gear, but I love taking pictures of it. It's purty.

Vizio showed off their 2008 HDTV line today at the Wynn. The company is jumping on the 120 Hz bandwagon with their new SV Series of 1080p LCDs. Dubbed the Black Tie Series, the 42-inch SV42LF and 47-inch SV47LF use 120 Hz processing and MEMC (Motion Estimation, Motion Compensation) to reduce judder and motion blur, and the company showed an effective before/after comparison. The new models also sport a more attractive gloss-black frame and four HDMI inputs. To enjoy 5.1 sound, you can purchase the optional $299 Jive SV5.1 enhancement kit, which includes surrounds and a wireless subwoofer. The LCDs be available in July for $1499 and $1899.

The use of music servers rather than CD/DVD transports was a common occurrence among high-end manufacturers at the Venetian exhibits. By using servers, they can store high resolution, loss-less files that are far superior to standard CDs, which are limited to 16bits.