Scott Wilkinson

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Meridian Media Core 600
Scott Wilkinson  |  Jan 08, 2011  |  Published: Jan 09, 2011
For multi-room custom installations, Meridian is introducing the Media Core 600 audio server with two hot-swappable hard-drive bays, conveniently located in the front, and outputs for six independent zones, each including S/PDIF, SpeakerLink, and fixed and variable analog. The Media Core 600 replaces the Ensemble and eliminates the latency between zones playing the same content by slaving multiple zones to one clock. Even better, a new House Sync feature slaves multiple units to the same clock, eliminating latency in very large systems. Pricing and availability are to be determined.
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Sony SS-AR1 Speaker
Scott Wilkinson  |  Jan 08, 2011  |  Published: Jan 09, 2011
Every few years or so, Sony makes a splash with audacious speakers aimed at audiophiles, and this is one of those years. The SS-AR1 is a 4-driver, 3-way speaker with a 1-inch soft-dome tweeter, 5-inch sliced-paper cone midrange, and two 8-inch aluminum-cone woofers in a vented enclosure made of laminated Hokkaido maple that's harvested only in November. This model costs the equivalent of about $27,000/pair in Japan, but no firm pricing has been established for the US market.

The demo system I heard included an EMM XDS1 CD player, Pass X20 preamp, twin Pass 600.5 monoblocks, and Kimber cables throughout. Listening to Take 6 singing "I L-O-V-E U" from So Much 2 Say was astonishing in its clarity and definition of each sound in the dense mix.

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Audio Can be 3D, Too
Scott Wilkinson  |  Jan 09, 2011

GenAudio's AstoundSound 3D-audio system is explained by inventor Jerry Mahabub; download a free 30-day trial of the consumer application here.

Getting Dizzy at Sharp
Scott Wilkinson  |  Jan 08, 2011

Many booths have giant video walls, but only Sharp has a video room with three walls, floor, and ceiling of tiled LCD flat panels. It's easy to feel some vertigo when the image moves.

Sony Innovations
Scott Wilkinson  |  Jan 08, 2011

Arturo Jordan, Sony Product Manager for LCD TVs, give the lowdown on this year's flagship HX929 as well as two concept products: an OLED auto-stereoscopic (no glasses) 3D TV and a super-cool head-mount 3D display.

Samsung Goes Big and Thin
Scott Wilkinson  |  Jan 08, 2011

Samsung's gigantic 75-inch LED-backlit 3D LCD TV is a concept product, but the D8000 and D7000 with ultra-thin bezels can be yours this year as revealed by Product Training Manager Jermain Anderson.

Eye-Popping Video Walls
Scott Wilkinson  |  Jan 08, 2011

Many of the major manufacturers have humongous video walls dominating their booths.

Analog Devices Electrooculogram
Scott Wilkinson  |  Jan 08, 2011
Chip maker Analog Devices has some interesting demos in its booth, such as this electrooculogram (EOG) system that tracks eye movement based on tiny voltages generated by the eye muscles. Other than medical applications, such as lazy-eye rehabilitation and quadriplegic assistance, such a system could be used to control game play or even an entire home theater. Of course, wearing those electrodes wouldn't fly with consumers, but a future version could incorporate them into a goggle headset.
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Analog Devices ADV 8002 Video Processor
Scott Wilkinson  |  Jan 08, 2011
Analog Devices is known mostly for I/O (input/output) chips, but the company is showing its new video processor at CES. The ADV 8002 includes two scalers, motion-adaptive deinterlacing, noise reduction, and video enhancement, and it can pass 3D without processing it. The production version will have at least two HDMI inputs and two outputs as well as all the standard analog-video inputs, and it will be able to process two different programs independently and simultaneously—for example, sending 1080p to an HDTV and 480p to an SD display in another room. This processor should be shipping in consumer products this spring, though the company rep would not reveal from whom.
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Blue Man Group
Scott Wilkinson  |  Jan 08, 2011
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.

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