One of the interesting new features of this year's show is a variety of workshops, many of them to be presented more than once throughout the show. There are workshops on amplifier measurements, amplifier listening, speaker auditioning, speaker measurements, the peak power demands of music, and active loudspeakers. The Stereophile Analog Clinic also continues, as in past shows.
One well-attended seminar on Friday (presented once only) covered the listening room and its effect on the system. Chaired by Richard Bird of Rives Audio, it offered advice from four experts on room design and acoustic treatment. While much of the information will be old news to long-time audiophiles, the advice presented new listeners with a heads-up on the importance of the room.
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
Optoma is not showing at the Home Entertainment show, but two days before the show they demonstrated two new 1080p DLP projectors for the press at DataVision, the company's dealer in midtown Manhattan.
Kuro is a Japanese word meaning deep, black, and penetrating. And on the tenth anniversary of its entry into the plasma display business, Pioneer announced the culmination of its <I>Project Kuro</I> to the assembled consumer electronics press in New York.