CES 2012

The CES show is just inundated with headphones and earbuds.  Seems the only way some people think to break through the clutter is to add celebrity endorsements. One company, tucked away in the back of the convention floor is taking an entirely different approach. 

While it’s always a party at CES, this year was something special for Audio-Technica. They’re here celebrating “50 Years of Passionate Listening” with five limited edition headphones and phono cartridges debuting here.   

Sound bars are a great solution to an age-old problem – how to add a decent-looking and decent-sounding system to enhance the clean, minimalistic look of your flat-screen TV. The problem is that they can sound pretty crappy – mainly thin and tinny unless you add a subwoofer. And there goes that nice, clean minimalistic look.

For audio geeks, most of the real fun at CES is over at the Venetian Hotel, where high-end (and not-so-high-end) audio companies demonstrate their products in dozens of guest suites. While the rooms in the Venetian are known for $200,000 speakers, $100,000 amps, and $20,000 speaker cables, you can also hear great speakers and amps for as little as a few hundred dollars.

From a technical standpoint, speakers have hardly changed since I went to my first CES back in January 1990. Yet each CES is still jam-packed with new speaker designs. Some are merely modifications on the classic black box. Others are aesthetic flights of fancy intended to captivate those who really don’t much like audio gear.

Arcam were showing an interesting little collection of solidly-built digital audio solutions in their suite at the Venetian.

We've talked a bit over the past year about CSR's apt-X Bluetooth audio profile; while we've been impressed with the performance of the receivers we've been able to listen to, and at CES we found apt-X in a wide variety of products, including Monster's new boombox, affordable DACs from Arcam and Cambridge Audio, NAD's iOS dock, and even Burmester's audiophile-only ultra-high-end 113 "super DAC."