Hello!
Arrived home from CES later yesterday - catching up on e-mails now..... Intended to catch up at the show in the bussiness center of the hotel - that is what I usually do. At $1.00 a minute though (since it takes several hours of e-mail time typically) I chose to wait until my return!
This was far topped by my asking at the front desk to make a couple hundred coppies of the little TAP sheet I had made to have at the show. $4.00 per page if I made them myself or $7.00 per page if they push the button. When I asked about another place to go make coppies (kinkos, etc) the guy actually warned me several times that it would cost a cab fare to get there - I don't think he'd done the math in his head to figure out just what 200 pages at $7.00 a page would cost.........Ah - Las Vegas......
It was really great to go and see so many people that I otherwise don't get to see in person. Few Bent Owners came by and that was great - thanks guys!
The room sounded really good for a show and the Lansche speakers are wonderful. The Tweeter is amazing - A -3db point of 150Khz with a low side crossover of about 2.5K and ZERO resonance (no mass). Paper cone mid from 150Hz up to the Tweeter at 2.5K. It is 99 db efficient (mid / tweet) with an active bass. Kind of a dream speaker really - and for most it will stay that way - the price is in that 'if you have to ask' catagory. Easy to see why though since it is so much more than a box with some drivers in it. In the room we had:
EMM Transport feeding a Sony Interface box and a Grimm Clock via Twin glass fiber.
Two Modified DCS Elgar Dac's one for the left channel and one for the right - bit extreme but fun
Bal cables to the TAP Pre-amp
RCA cables from the TAP to an EAR 861 Amp
Then to the wonderful Lansche Speakers
Power conditioner by Audience
All cables (most very exotic!) by Steath
Just like here at home except here I use 4 Elgar Dac's - Two per side.
Most disturbing things at CES were the Angry Cab Driver From Hell - "No I will not take you to Kinkos - This is far enough - you must walk - get out here - now!" - not quite sure what I did (just sitting there really.....) but it must have been very bad. Other most disturbing thing was that those Shakti things that llook like neptunes forks actually seemed to change the sound. Quite disturbing really for an engineering type like me!
The least disturing thing was the cab driver that showed up just seconds after the angry guy - took my to kinko's and suggested he wait for me since it was hard to get a cab. You can guess who got the really big tip. Maybe a 'good cab' / 'bad cab' teem? Or not. Actually being a cab driver in Vegas must be a hell of a job so I should not make light of it.
Seeing Furuyama san and the folks From FAL was a real treat as always. They had some nice Mactone gear with the speakers and it sounded great. Looks like they have a 'real' USA dealer (or will have very soon) - not a semi dealer like me! I always wanted to help them as much as I could but I am not really a 'dealer' as such so this is really good news. Hopefully more folks will get to hear them soon. I'll post more details about that when I confirm it is o.k. to post them.
I did not make it over to the Venetian to see the other side of CES. I gather it was maybe an experiment that did not work so well - certainly the transportation between THE Show and CES was a bit tricky - maybe that was the point since I would guess CES does not really like THE Show.......
Must get back to e-mails now.......
Thanks!
John
