THE STEREOTIMES CES 2006 SHOW REPORT
I didn’t know they were doing a show report, so I just recently added a link to theirs along with everybody else’s on our show report’s main page.
I particularly like Frank Alles’s report. There is no link to it, because they use frames, but if you click on ‘Show Reports’ at the top of the Stereotimes site and then scroll down using the scroll bar way at the right side of your browser, then you should see a link to it. The pages load slowly so you have to be patient.
He says something about the sound of each room, and you can read between the lines in true carefully-parse-what-the-reviewer-said-to-get-the-secret-message-of-what-they-are-really-saying fashion to determine more or less what really went on. And he lists a number of favorites and runners up, …
all of which Did Actually Sound Better Than the Majority of the Other Rooms!
Well, this guy is in big trouble now, and will probably be run out of Reviewer Town for not throwing in the minimum allowable FUD factor (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) that is required in each days allotment of information disseminated to the Audiophile Community in microscopic packages like some Information Age version of the legendary Chinese water torture.
I’ve never heard of this guy – which don’t mean squat but let’s pretend I do infact remember a name for longer than the refresh rate on my LCD monitor here – and maybe that is the secret. If nobody knows you, you are perceived to have no power to persuade or inform the masses – so you can say more or less describe what you actually heard (Well, he does say it in a nicer way than I do – but here in geek land, clarity of expression is valued more than in Politics and Show Reviewing).
Or maybe it is the age that is important – there are a number of younger reviewer types over at Positive Feedback – they do not appear to have soldout, or perhaps worse, to have so much at stake that they no longer hear what they listen to.
Whatever it is, there comes a time when their days as a hard-hitting reporter are over. Now the days of wine and the never-ending-auditions have arrived. All they need is the page in the thesaurus for the word ‘best’ and thick-skinned ears and they are ready for stardom. Woo hoo!
If by some chance of fate this happens to us please let us know. If there is ever a consensus (and we will be checking where the emails come from so if they all come from the folks at Stereophile it just won’t carry as much weight, sorry) that we have finally soldout to become just another cheerleader – we will shut down Hifi’ing show reports and the Blog – and contemplate the misery of our fate.
Hey Mike & Neli,
i read through Franks show report. i would like to know if you could share a little about what may be between the lines. i think you had commented that the Lumen White speakers were nasaly and uneven. i have seen several reports that comment positivly on the King electrostsatics..
did you visit the audiopax room? what are your impressions? also do you have any experiance with vmps? they seem to get a wide variety of comments. one more.. the Lipinsky speakers have had good coverage. did you get to visit their room?
thank you in advance for your time again!
Hello there, Ben,
I think I’ve gotten Frank into enough trouble – suffice it to say that most reviews, and it is a long-stading tradition at Stereophile, say what they really think in the last 1 or 2 paragraphs. But you have to read EVERY word and put that word into context by comparing it with all the other words they could have used there instead.
The report held the Lumenwhite speakers up to the highest standards, as it was probably in the top 5 most expensive systems at the show – but it nevertheless was one of the best sounding….in the top 5% say, and maybe top 1% of the rooms that Mark appears to have visited. Sometimes the show reports out there give ‘best of shows’ to room that are not in the top 1/2.