by Michael

CEDIA 2007 Photos Day 2

[Still no Comcast… So miniature photos is what we got for supper again tonight]

The conference was not much busier today than yesterday, it seemed to me, which was different than last year.

But oday, they did not hand the conference microphone to the SpeakerCraft people, at least it sounded like they were from SpeakerCraft, but he was such an exuberant salesman – SHOUTING his enthusiasm, that the SPLs had us all curled up in fetal positions on the floor trying to stuff carpet fibers in our ears – anything to try and protect ourselves from the Onslaught. But seriously, it was LOUD but decipherable as words in some parts of the all, and total noise in others, and in some the volume was just ridiculously loud. I mean, the announcement system is perfect if someone is trying to tell everyone in the hall that there is a fire. It would work fine. Just keep sales people away from it.


Velodyne has a new subwoofer. Looks like it will produce some of dem bass type notes, all right.


A close up of the marketing specs. Of course, who cares about THD? Most poeple probably care about dynamic distortion. But is is not a horn, nor is it pulling 100 amps, so THAT is likely going to be more than 0.5%. But I bet is is something to hear.


Gallo Acoustics’ cute little speakers.


The EDGE Electronics room at T.H.E. with Montana loudspeakers.


The EDGE Electronics room at T.H.E. with Montana loudspeakers.


The HAL Audio Server user interface. Media server user interfaces were all the rage this show. Kind of like an iphone for non-liliputs. Or an iphone for the home. Or for people who have large fingers or bad eyesight. Personally, I am in all 4 of those cagtegories, so these UI’s interest me.


The new Acoustic Zen subwoofer


Phillips had a supersized remote control. Kind of cool to imagine actually using something like this. A remote control for giants. CEDIA is become like Gulliver’s Travels, I guess.


At least some people are looking for some good sound to be associated with good video…


ADAM speakers has a new line for the home. These use a improved Heil driver for the tweeter and midrange.


Another Media Server interface.


Another Media Server interface.


Sonus Fabers new Cremona M


Sonus Fabers new Cremona center channel


Over at T.H.E. Show. [need to insert speaker manufacturer name when brain comes back on line]. The gunshots had WAY too much low bass. Sounded more like close canon fire, the way it punched a person in the chest, or morter fire. Not that I have had direct experience with those events, but I had heard a gun go off before).


Media Max’s Media Server user interface.

So far the Totem booth has the honor of best of show in the main conference, (oops need to put up a photot ot two) and EDGE / Montana at T.H.E. Show (which only has 4 or 5 rooms this year, depending on how you count – though we did not wait in the line for the Maggie / Bryston demo there).

in Acoustic Zen / CEDIA 2007 / Edge / High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo / Show Reports 0 comments
 by Michael

CEDIA 2007 Day 1 Photos

Still no broadband from comcast. Maybe tomorrow. So no large juicy pictures tonight… but here are some nice little tasty ones.

I thought there were more people this year, but after covering more of the show floor, there were strange concentrations of crowds [mostly congregating right in front of the booth I want to photograph, of course:-)], so perhaps it is only about the same. Thursday was kinda slow last year, so we’ll see.


The McIntosh M110 turntable. I think this is new – at least I have never seen one before… so it is new to me!


Another photo… the platter glows with a purple-ish blue-ish tint – which this photo tried to capture. Static display only… like most things at CEDIA… so do not know how it sounds.


Savant had a few of their innovative user interfaces on display. This was a 40 inch LCD touch panel that you could use your finger to tap on or drag around the screen in order to organize and play your collection of movies and music.

Most of their LCDs aren’t this big, they had a number that were around 8 to 12 inches.


Then again, they had this coffee table sized.. coffee table… that was the screen. Not sure what happens when you place your beer on a song when you are watching a movie… but it is so cool! No more remotes on the table, the table IS the remote.


The new Sonus Faber ‘Elipsa’ speaker. THE front.


THE rear. Serial #00001.


Finally, we got some photos of the new Nordost ODIN interconnect. Note the signature decorative wooden block.


It is quite a bit thicker than their Valhalla interconnects.


And the Odin braiding is different, more regular, and appears tighter.


More Odin’y eye candy


And more…

A lot of the show looks just like last year (and CES this January). Kind of dissapointing. But, like the stuff in this post, there are some new goodies. And, you know us, we like the goodies 🙂

in CEDIA 2007 / High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo / Nordost / Show Reports 0 comments
 by Michael

Lightning Strikes…

… or 42.6 Kbps on the dialup connection… whoo hoo!

Well, we got hit by lightning late yesterday afternoon. Well, not us, thankfully, but our house.

It came and smacked the front of the house, about 20 feet from the window I was sitting at, at one of the corners of our hexagon-ish walls, came in and attacked a light fixture in our hallway and ran down the ground into listening room two, melting the ground and ‘hot’ wires together, and blew out the light switches across the room so that 30 feet away the Kharmas now have light-switch-pieces in front of them.

It looks like we lost 4 TVs, the ovens, Neli’s computer 🙁 , my computer’s networking, the Nordost Vidar cable burner, ….

We also lost cable and phone, though the phone is now working (the 4 wires just melted at the box outside so it was an easy fix).

The Coltrane Supreme system works, the small Audio Note system was unplugged, the rack with the Walker and M10 was unplugged. The rest – well, I am a little trepidatious about testing it all out – but Neli is game…

We were lucky. In a lot of ways.

None of the systems were ‘on’ – because we’ve been getting so many lightning storms this week, we got tired of turning things off and on and off and on. But we had grown lax, just turning things off, not unplugging them like we usually do. Oops.

Funny, this lightning storm gave little or no warning. Usually the thunder gets louder and Louder and LOUDER until we can’t stand the suspense and turn everything off and unplug it.

This time, it was like nothing… distant rumbles… BLAM! and then it was over.

So anyway, cable is out (i.e. broadband network connectivity). Neither of our main computers can talk to the net anymore, even if the cable was working. I am typing this on our ‘out-of-town show reporting laptop’, which is OK but not sufficient for a whole show report. We got a Mac somewhere – but that’ll be worse (no photoshop on it, for one, and an even smaller keyboard).

And guess what? We have a show tomorrow. CEDIA 2007.

So, the plan is to transfer photos to my main computer, process them, the put them on DVD and transfer them to this laptop, which hopefully will upload them over the cable, that will be working sometime soon, we hope.

Well, I guess that there will be fewer pictures during the show and until we get computers that are both capable of processing several gigabytes of JPEGs …and … connecting to the net.

Maybe we’ll also post a few photos of the smoked switches and boards hanging off the side of the house – but I think you all understand now why there aren’t any in THIS post.

But seriously, we were lucky. Especially me, who was sitting in the symetrical location in the window across from the strike. And the house did not catch fire. And the circuit breaker blew after the first leg of the circuit melted, trapping the major damage to the hallway circuit. All of the equipment was off, (except the Vidar) and lots unplugged.

So, fingers crossed, hopefully the rest of the gear is AOK.

Kind of messes with your head, this stuff does…

Anway, next post: CEDIA 2007!

in CEDIA 2007 / High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo / News / Show Reports 0 comments