I haven't been on Audiocircle much in the last 6 months - very busy with work, family, and other things so I have barely been able to check in to see what's up. BUT...I do have some things to post, as I have been to not one, but two major events in the city of Las Vegas.
I originally decided to go to CES about Dec 8 when I realized it coincided with my lady friend's company conference. Then I realized that T.H.E. Show was also there! Having never been to an audiophile show nor CES, nor Las Vegas, I decided to brave any potential hassles of trying to see 2 shows, in Las Vegas no less. I went as a 'systems consultant' at my friends company ( well I have actually held that title before
) - we printed about 12 business cards to satisfy the registration folks and any requests for a card, and I was good to go. They approved my registration immediately with no proof of anything except my friends website - I guess the $100 fee helped.
T.H.E. Show was "open to any authentic Audiophile Society Member", but when I went to get my badge after having pre-registered there was no designation for just "audiophile". There was however a designation for "Pest", which the ladies at registration refused to give me
- they made me a "Consultant" which caused some confusion but probably got me better treatment from some
Here is a quick summary of my impressions:
Las Vegas sucks - considering how much money is pumped into this city it should be one of the best in the US. Instead it is barely passing for what is required in the way of infrastructure. I guess there are those who have warm feelings for the place...I will have to say that i did not stay near either venue, the Convention Center with the Hilton and Venetian also hosting some CES rooms, or the Flamingo where The Home Theater Show was located. My friend's conference was at the JW Marriott about 15 minutes away on Rampart. So I had to fight to get my rental car parked near the Convention Center every morning.
CES was a madhouse for industry insiders, and also for the public through the eyes of the press. 95% of the attendees dressed in mostly black, as in "we are the
digiterati", and were exhibitors, meeting with exhibitors, or were affiliated with the press. There were some impressively designed booths, even huge areas of the halls. LG had a huge area, well designed, Microsoft of course was nice, Intel was OK, Motorola really was flashy, Dolby probably the most beautiful booth, D-Link was fun, NVidia and Tesla managed to participate in multiple locations. I managed, with great effort, to see about 12 booths I really wanted to see among the hundreds and hundreds of booths in 6 or 8 MASSIVE halls. I probably stopped at 50-60 booths in the parts of 4 days I was at CES.
Very big marketing-wise was 3-D. This in spite of there being no 3-D content out there to speak of. In fact, many booths created their own 3-D content with little 3-D cameras and the Panasonic 3-D camcorder. Also very big was, of course, tablets! Now that the iPad has made a statement, everyone's tablets were at the show. I did not spend much time with any one tablet, but did see some quality implementations. Did not see the Notion Ink Adam, not sure it was on public display. I did see the Parrot A.R. Drone quad-rotor - not ready for prime time at $300.
T.H.E. was a bit of a disappointment for me personally. I was able to spent two afternoons there, and enjoyed listening to some of my CD's on some frightfully expensive setups. However this does not seem to be a very (audiophile) consumer-oriented show at this point. Deals made with dealers took precedence over showing to audiophiles. I didn't really get to hear the VMPS RM50s despite swinging by multiple times, due to the recording sessions going on and the Bybee demonstrations.
Still, everyone was very friendly with 1 or 2 notable exceptions, and I had a great experience of hearing a decent variety of systems. Some "things I took away"
-all systems are different
-not only are they different, the room's setup is half the equation
-Krell has some silver-colored, boxy gear this year
-lots of tubage
-the giant Magnepans produce some amazing low end
-some mysterious Russians or Asians must be buying some of this extemely expensive gear
-open-baffle speakers really do work
-my own system sounds pretty good!
I took plenty of pictures, all without flash, and gathered a good bit of printed information also. I will try to put together some kind of review of each show as I am sure many would be interested. Please ask any questions and I will try to answer what I can.
