OK.

Done with the photos and I hope people can see that:

1) There just were not a lot of contenders for best of show
2) Of those, many were using laptops as sources, which almost always severely compromises the sound quality of a system at this show
3) Of the remaining, many were just trying to attract attention and did not focus on the creating the best sound that they could.

So…. better than RMAF, sound wise, as usual, but not as good as previous CES’s…

I think I detected a more relaxed attitude about the defacto train-wreck that is high-end audio and the doom and gloom dire predictions of the future are now almost as quaint and boring as playing Diana Krall all day long.

All the people using laptops to demonstrate the sound of their equipment (as opposed to just demonstrating that it, in fact, works) are like car dealerships sending a sales associate with bad breath and B.O. along with every person taking a test drive. It ain’t helping your case, people.

Let’s see, what else….

Clueless show reports by 2nd and 3rd tier magazines are still all the rage [I’ll let them decide if they are 2nd or 3rd tier :-)]. Jeez I wish these people would get a different job – perhaps even a job they are actually good at? Hmmmm… maybe the next post should be about how to detect a clueless review?

One of these days we have to stop buying crazy audio gear for just a darn minute and get me a decent camera [Yeah right :-)].

I like Las Vegas a lot better when it is warm, say 70 degrees during the day. Maybe next year…?

This is the second and last part of the photos for the rooms at the Flamingo this year. As you can see, THE Show is continuing to grow – and traffic this year, which was up, was more or less commensurable with that at the Venetian, whose traffic was down.

Surprised we did not see the Joachim Gerhard speakers here in this room with the Spiral Groove turntable – they are certainly the equal of Vienna Acoustics and usually appear in the same room as the Spiral Groove turntable [Silly me, this is a room Vienna Acoustics was sharing with Immedia and of course they would prefer to show their own speakers. Duh. Thanks for the comment Patrick].




These amps are big. Expect to see a ‘Biggest… Amps… EVER’ cover story…

TAD had their own electronics here this year. After a quick listen I thought they would do quite well on our list of amps vis-a-vis micro-dynamics. All in all I liked them – although the sound here was lifeless – which could have been due to cables, the stupid laptop, setup, whatever – it had not the purposeful soullessness that typifies so much of the Boy Toy systems elsewhere.








Silbatone always tries to do something interesting, and it is always fun to talk to Joe Roberts.










Audio Power Labs put their unpriced $100K – $200K amps on the Vandersteen 3A speakers and driven by a cheap front end. It was interestingly good enough that I came back here with my own CDs. With my own CDs the flaws in the Vandy and source were obvious and significant, but, albeit though these filters, I did not hear and problems with the amps.








A few people [Jim and Wes] sent me down to hear this room on Level 2 – something about out-of-this-world dynamics. I went down with Jim. These people do the sound for Avatar and stuff for Radiohead – they were name-dropping left and right – but the sound in this room had a lot of [untight] bass and was totally confused everywhere else. Not sure what went wrong or what was even supposed to go right.




The sound here was relatively pleasant and music – not in a surprising way but in a way that made me think that a lot of rooms at the show this year had quite a few more things wrong than this room [which DOES surprise me, given the laptop source etc.]