Photo by Barry Willis

While I'm in Vegas for CES, I always try to see one show with my friend Melinda DeNicola of the PR firm Detail in Design; this year, it was Blue Man Group at the Venetian. I'd seen the show some years ago at the Luxor, and it was loud, so I decided to see just how loud this time with my Larson Davis Model 700 SPL meter.

The RMS average sound level (technically called Leq) over the entire hour-and-a-half duration was 92.3dB (A-weighting, slow response), while the highest RMS maximum (technically called Lmax) within a 1-minute interval was 104.5dBA, and the highest instantaneous peak was a whopping 137.5dBA. The sound level exceeded 97.5dBA 10 percent of the time, 91.0dBA 33 percent of the time, and 82.5dBA 50 percent of the time. Fortunately, I had my custom-molded earplugs with me, which cut the levels reaching my ears by 25dB.

As anyone interested in high-end audio knows, balanced signals are far superior to unbalanced ones because of their ability to reject induced noise and interference. German newcomer BMC knows this well—in fact, the company name stands for Balanced Music Concept. Its products are distributed in the US by Aaudio Imports and include the M1 monoblock power amp profiled here.

Omnidirectional speakers are nothing new, though there are many variations. For example, Italian maker Bolzano Villetri has taken an interesting approach with its Campanile series, which includes floorstanders, a center-channel speaker, and a subwoofer to outfit a complete home theater.

If bigger is better, Boulder's new 3050 monoblock power amp is clearly among the best. This behemoth was unveiled at CES before being completely finished—the company is waiting for the transformers to arrive—but the specs are enough to make any audiophile drool.