We got this email today:

“Dear people of Audio Federation,

I have carefully inspected your CEDIA / T.H.E. Show “show report” section.

I have not found the customary clarification used by publications at both the top and bottom of the page, which clarifies when a column is written by someone with commercial interest (this is normally written in large, readable letters).

Since you are an audio dealership rather than an independent publication, I kindly request that you mention this at the top and bottom of the page. Otherwise, it may confuse readers who will believe that you have no commercial interest in the matter.

I am asking you this as a sign of good faith, with no legal implications at this stage.

Please advise as to your planned course of action.

Sincerely,
Xaver Obermeyer
YG Acoustics”

It was a nice letter, especially considering the overall uncivilized tone of much of the conversation in the audio world these days.

The show report page in question is here:

T.H.E. Show - Full Report, CEDIA 2006, Denver

Do people think it is not obvious that we are a store (there are indeed links at the top and bottom of each page) in our show reports? [For that matter, what about the Blog?]

I mean, we WANT it to be obvious we are a store… People read the report, read about what we hear, see and read what we are like, think perhaps that we might, maybe have a clue, and check us out when they are ready to make the next step in their system building enterprise.

If it is NOT obvious, we could, for example, without being tooooo obnoxious about it…

1. Make the ’store’ text yellow, keeping the other links white (you know, that section that has: “Home | Magazine | Store | Guides | Blog | Music” )

2. Make all these links larger

3. Make the “* Denotes a product carried by Audio Federation” text larger (Neli says it is quite small on her screen - it is quite fine on mine, but I have IE and FireFox both enlarge the text for me tired ole eyes).

4. Add a large, rotating, blinking, animated image of a shrinking wallet with our logo on it

5. An animation of a Calvin and Hobbs-like Audio Federation branded Transmogrifier Machine with troops of unhappy audiophiles going into the machine on a conveyer belt on one side and coming out the other side with big happy smiles pulling wagons full of audio equipment and LPs and CDs.

6. [OK, we could spend the rest of the day doing these…:-) ]

We just posted this email and some comments on the aforementioned page in the show report, to wit:

“Well, we certainly want people to know that we are a store. And, even though there are links at the top and bottom of 100s and 100s of pages of show reports, perhaps they are not visible enough and some people do not see them? If so, this would suck. So, we will try to resolve this by posting this on the blog and seeing what our readers think would help us get people to know we are a store but without being too obnoxious about it (i.e. there is NOT going to be blinking text saying ‘We are a store’ ‘We are a store’…. ).

And as far as commercial interests in the matter go - I guess some dealerships do ‘trash talk’ their competition, and it kind of tarnishes all dealers as needing to lie to make sales. However, we do have a real commercial interest in going to shows and that is to find the really good shtuff, and talk about it… in our show reports, with you all out there, and with each other. Later we might even try to get it for our store. Most of the product lines we carry were ‘discovered’ at shows. And in general, the more we talk about what we hear at shows, the more people we meet who have also been hearing the same things we do - but they thought they were nuts because they thought they were the only ones who were hearing these things - that there was something wrong with them because they just… weren’t… able… to hear everything as being just won-der-ful. That there are always tradeoffs and some people like making those particular tradeoffs and some don’t.

And… ‘independent publication’? Love to see one of those someday.”

So, what *do* you all think? Another show report, CES 2007, is coming right up, so any decisions we make now will see the light of monitors real soon now.

We just learned that CEDIA 2007 and 2008 will be in Denver as well as was 2006. Wow - for some reason we just assumed that CEDIA would be traveling to another city next year like it always does…

So, expect a show report from us again next year. I noticed engadget.com is now starting to post larger pictures… but no one posts show reports like we do. They are a little hard on the computer and network, but easy on the eyes

We posted a number of links to our show report in various forums:

AVS Forum in the Ultra $20,000+ section and Home Theater Forum in their special CEDIA section people seemed to enjoy it quite a bit.

On Audio Asylum no one seemed interested. On Home Theater Spot they deleted my chatty post and banned my login from the forum. No accounting for taste, I guess.

We had a good time at the show. Looking forward to next year, in fact. Just like audio shows, the demonstrations are way better than what you can get at your typical dealership.

Neli did run into someone with 2-channel envy at the ReQuest booth. After telling the guy what we did for a living, he apparently went on and on about CD-changers this and dead-SACD that… so much so that Neli just had to walk away without getting to ask any questions about their music servers. Yeah, we also think ultra high-end 2-channel audio is more fun than selling turnkey-software boxes that are running head-first into the free-open-source software-on-linux (and begrudgingly Windows) movement …. no matter how much people try to convince us (and themselves) that it aint so

Anyway, one thinmg that the show has done is infected us with a desire to upgrade our video here at AF. And even more, to set up a HT system where the sound doesn’t impinge on the enjoyment of the movie - in fact, it may even ENHANCE the enjoyment! [ironically enough, huh?].

Sony KDS-R70XBR2 SXRD Rear Projection Television Set with magnifying glass in front.

OK. Day 4 part 1 and 2 and the final Report are now up.

Pith helmuts are on - not that we need them for this report - I don’t think - but alwasys good to be safe.

So, here are the links:

CEDIA Expo 2006 Show Report Day 4 Part One

CEDIA Expo 2006 Show Report Day 4 Part Two

CEDIA Expo 2006 Show Report Best of Show and Commentary

All told, about 400 pictures out of over 1200 taken. Kind of a minimalist show report around here… but we are trying to scale things back a little and it seems to be working…. But we have another show, RMAF 2006, in about a month, at which we are also exhibiting. So not out of the Show Reporting and Picture Taking waters yet…

The write-up about our tour at T.H.E. Show yesterday is up on the site. The overall feeling, is that one wishes that the two sides of the street - the Audio side and the Video side - would get together for a little confab.

Top of a YG Acoustics ANAT Reference loudspeaker

Overall the sound at T.H.E. Show was good and competent and repesented us in the industry fairly well to those video-type people.

T.H.E. Show at CEDIA Expo 2006 in Denver, Colorado

We spent most of the day wandering: about 1/4 on the main floor exhibits, 1/4 on the first floor exhibits and about 1/2 at T.H.E. Show (which has a high-end audio focus).

Pioneer Alter… I mean exhibit

Quick take-away: Audio sucks at CEDIA and Video sucks at T.H.E. Show.

Today was much busier than yesterday. We may just skip atending tomorrows show because the expected crowds will make it even harder to see and/or hear anything. Sunday should be nice and quiet and we should get in to a few final demos.

Yesterday, we did get the JL Audio Demo (Subwoofer was impressive, the other speakers not) and the Meridian / Faroudja Demo (video was very impressive, audio was low mid-fi). More details on these later.

Every system at the T.H.E. Show had better sound than any system we heard at the main CEDIA show (there are still systems we have not heard there, so this is not, and cannot, be an absolute statement). The audio systems at CEDIA seem aimed to do one thing - pressurize the room.

Watching the faces of the show goers during demos and during an exhibition-hall wide commercial announcement that was SO loud and SO distorted - I’d say that HT installers think this is just the way audio systems sound. My heart goes out to all the people paying big bucks for systems that are really almost unlistenable.

The typical sound has a midrange that breaks up into clacky noises without harmonic content, sounds with unpredicatble and very sharp transients,

The typical bass is thumpy and loose and overwhelming without emotional content or even shock value.

The typical soundstage, there ain’t none (!), [directionality is all gimic and wows and effects and not continuous thoughout the movie - it is just kind of added in as a condiment - it was a pleasant shock to hear a video that had a soundstage when we got to T.H.E. Show after a day and a half at CEDIA].

I’d say 80% of the video at CEDIA was first rate - significantly better than anything I’ve seen outside of computer generated animations runing on computer monitors. The video at T.H.E. Show was for the most part pixelated, washed out, distorted, low resolution, etc.

Anyway, we’ll do a critique of each room’s sound - in general, the sounds at T.H.E. Show did not embarass themselves - and one room was quite impressive, and all but two were running videos.

Picks and pics of T.H.E. Show later…

Pics of CEDIA are here:

Nordost Heimdall cable connected to an IPOD

Acoustic Zen subwoofer in a furniture-quality wood finish

The 2006 CEDIA EXPO Show Report Day 2

I think my comments are meandering all over the place…. I think I need to go back to touching up photos befoer everyone thinks I am pixelated and washed out with a collapsing midrange and… Uh. Oh.

Sony has guts. Magnifying glass setup in front of sony monitor (forget which one, sorry).

Earthquake subwoofer driver. No ma, I absolutely will NOT try to pick it up. But why not put how much it weighs on the sign so we don’t have to guess that it weighs.. a lot.

InFocus ScreenPlay 777 projector. Some of these puppies are BIG. Tried to photo the Meridian / Faruja DILA monster (whose performance seemed freakin’ awesome to these eyeballs) but it didn’t come out very well. Try again later.

CEDIA EXPO 2006 Denver Colorado Day One Part Three

Enjoy!

Been a long day.

Covered the entire main floor. Did not get to the smaller first floor nor across the street to T.H.E. Show.

First impressions:

There are LOTS of audio companies here at the show. At least half of the exhibits, if not more.

Cabasse loudspeaker cut-away…click to see large picture.

The sound here sucks. Sucks. Really. Bad.

The video is great! Wow. Nothing like what I see at Circuit City or Ultimate Electronics. (Well, except the Sony SXRD 60″ at Ultimate E. of course).

Fujitsu’s Aviamo were very, very excellent as were several others including Sony’s XBR2 1080p 56(?)” …. click to see large picture.

OK, Sleep now. More later.

Oh, CAL (California Audio Labs) is back. And they make large red speakers now as well as electronics…?

There are 100 or so (large) pics up at:

CEDIA EXPO 2006 Denver Day One Part One

CEDIA EXPO 2006 Denver Day One Part Two

Hopefully more tomorrow morning… before we drive down to the show again (it is about an hour drive from here).

The CEDIA EXPO Daily Newspaper

Kind of nice for them to snail mail everyone who registers this daily. ‘Course, we did pay $50 to register…

It has a nice map of the convention inside… Maybe I should photo that….

Anyway, news in the paper mentioned that Rives (the roo-treatment company) bought Talon (the loudspeaker company)…

O….. K……

When we get back we’ll post some photos here and in the CEDIA EXPO 2006 Denver Show Report Dailies.

Does anyone really remember what CEDIA stands for without looking it up?

I mean:

“Consumer Electronics Design and Installation Association”?

For some reason I think a lot more installation is going on than design. But there does seem to be a lot of consuming, and so high-end audio does look at CEDIA with both Fear And Longing.

But if they called it:

“INstalling HOme Theater for fun and PROfit” or INHOTPRO

it would be a lot easier to remember.

Or not.

Its mostly a mental thing - and hardly anything to do with audio. I mean, if someone is crazy about audio = spends gazillion dollars and quintillion brain cycles on the stuff, they naturally have to be careful about the consideration of other possible hobbies.

Just because we are craxy does not mean we aren’t perfectly aware of how crazy obsessed passionate we are and cautious about getting any crazier by getting into the visual side of the entertainment event reproduction chain.

So, video is great and we are on the upgrade path, slow as it may seem to other real videoholics (we just got a Sony 26″ XBR LCD TV) - we are just NOT going to go nuts over the stuff.

There is only so much craziness to go around - craziness don’t grow on trees, ya know. [It has to be carefully cultivated and nurtured for years…:-]

Anyway, the mode here is to twiddle bits between autitions and get the show report infrastructure up and clicking:

CES 2006 DENVER

[Yes, we KNOW the Hifiing logo is too big. I’m just tired with mucking with it]

Not sure if we are just going to do the dailies (aka episodes - cute huh?) with buckets of pix, or a real report. I guess there has to be a ‘Did it Suck or Not’ kind of summary so who knows…

Only the Shadow Knows For Sure… or

Only the Echo Knows For Sure.