February 5, 2012 by Michael

THE Show 2012 (at CES) – VMPS Ribbon, Wired4Sound, Ampzilla, WyWires

They had a piano back behind these large VMPS speakers, though I did not hear the back and forth demonstration.

But I didn’t really have to, these speakers did piano quite well. I was fortunate enough to hear a cut with piano in it while I was here and it was quite good. Especially the dynamic aspects of the piano keys. Even the decay was good – especially considering a real piano would have all that carpet, people and chairs to dampen the sound quite a bit.

Funny how the mind, seeing the piano, immediately jumps to the conclusion that the piano must be playing all the piano parts of the composition [so some of this is kind of a neat optical / aural illusion :-)].

Unfortunately, this system disproved that old audiophile tale that all a system has to do is get piano right and everything will follow from that. On other, modestly complex passages, the sound was uneven and confused – in harmonics, dynamics, resolution, … some notes were muddied with others, or became uncharacteristically prominent etc.

Ampzilla should make some other things.. like giant ‘powerzilla’ power cords… [or maybe call them ‘amperezilla’ .. :-)]

The VMPS Ribbon loudspeakers