Audio Federation - CEDIA Expo 2008 Day 4

Day 4
CEDIA EXPO 2008
Denver
Colorado Convention Center
September 2008

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This year at CEDIA, the last in Denver, had much less traffic than in previous years. My guestimate is down 20% on Thursday and Friday, and down 50% on Saturday.

The theme of this year was slim LCD TVs. Everybody seemed to have one ready or soon-to-be-ready. We got a good photo of the Hitachi below, but Sony, Samsung... everyone seemed to think that, because consumers were not buying rear-projection sets - presumably because they were so thick [as opposed to massive], that they would REALLY like a set that was only 1/2 inch thick.

The theme of last year, with about a dozen fancy direct-manipulation interfaces for managing music and video servers - seemed to have been replaced with just a few [4?] stalwarts this year.

The big standouts for us this year were

Sony's OLED 11-inch TVs [see below], that, if 20 inches or larger would have us dumping our LCDs left and right.
Stewart's STARGLAS, which at 160 inches was good to look at from a foot or from 100 feet. Music videos would be life size, like having the band in-room. Our next house must have room for this.
All the new speakers from Wilson including the static display of the Alexandria II. We sure would love to start hearing those big boys at shows...

This below is not really Day 4, is the end of Day 3 and odds and ends we didn't have time to put up previously. At the end of Day 3, we just couldn't find much else we hadn't already seen. Audio Federation does not do much business with the 99% of manufacturers represented at CEDIA - so we do not have THAT time-waster eating up our ogling time - so we finished everything in 3 days.

REVEL

Revel now enters the home-theater market....

OK. The Salon 2, Studio 2, and Gem 2. It is just me, or is the more conventional look of these speakers Bo-ring, especially compared to the exotic look of the series 1. Yes, some people didn't like the look - but they made a statement, and differentiated themselves from the 1,000,000,000 other speakers on the market, and were a great price/performance speaker as well [especially the Studio]. These we have not heard to my recollection.

The growing REVEL family.

Mark Levinson

The replacement for the venerable 33? More of the size of the 33H.

The No 512 CD/SACD player has a lot of competition at (and below) the $15K price point. They led the market in digital a long time ago - it is good to see them back into the fray.

I have a certain fondness for this chassis.

No, I do not think they are selling watches in this booth. That LCD screen had the most solid text display I think I have ever seen.

KEF

First time we heard these speakers. I didn't hear too much that was special - but the sounded like the amplifiers and cables they were using [i.e. they were revealing] which is a good sign.

Yep, a pair of passive [or active] drivers on the back of the speakers.

I found this realistic photo of a nude woman offensive [Neli just laughed].

A smaller version of the big KEFs.

ODDS & ENDS

JBL

More and more people are coming to appreciate [I think] the old JBL horn-driven speakers that people could buy up until the mid-60s or so. But isn't this kind of shallow - not much room in that cabinet.

SAVANT

ODDS & ENDS

This is the Hitachi slim line TV - but no label was found near the TV - so not sure which model.

SONY OLED

Sony showed an 11-inch OLED, listing for $2500.

A closeup of the controls.

A very good looking picture, so I zoomed in to see what the pixels were like. In the end, after comparing with the 55inch XBR8, even though the OLED looked better, I could not be sure just what I was seeing: the pixels on the CCD of the Canon camera? The encoding format errors on the RAW data file? The averaging algorithms of Photoshop?

Anyway, all I know is that I want one.

KRELL PT II

The Krell Evolution 707

This design is kind of the opposite approach [aka on the other side of the Galaxy] compared to the Audio Note Kegon Balanced :-) This is more a computer than anything. No, wait. A computer has a lot less circuitry than this does.