OK, Comcast was here all day. Our junction box was fried and the Comcast guy a couple of years ago did not ground the cable. Uh, bad.
But we are now up and running (Yay!) and the show report is here:
The Comcast guys were all hard-working, friendly guys, but their management is totally confused and unorganized. Surprise… not.
Onward and upward….
[Still no Comcastic. It seems the Comcast Confusion is now abating and they now know there is a problem are working on fixing our little neighborhood’s connectivity. When we do get it back, we’ll upload all the big juicy photos. We took almost 700 photos.
The Ongaku, Kharma, Meitner system is OK. One more system to go – unfortunately we suspect that that the Brinkmann Balance turntable may have suffered physical damage as the light switch git blown out the wall and ricocheted off of the platter and ended up 25 feet away in front of the Kharmas. Beezarre huh?. We are insured out the wazoo, as they say, so we are really OK, even if thunder now causes Mike to scoot back away from the windows as far as possible, typing with arms stretched out to the max :-)]
Saturday was not very busy. The booth people were much more eager to talk to us (anyone!), which is a good thing and bad thing. They have all been friendly this year – though actually asking them questions sometimes reveals them to be kinda clueless (Sony). Maybe we should have started the conversation with ‘We know how to use a browser’ so they don’t just rattle off info that we can easily find on the web.
We probbbly won’t go back Sunday for the last day. We’ve kind of seen everything, several times.
There must have been some kind of survey that indicated that ordinary Mary and Joes think speakers are unattractive – because there were a lot of booths talking about hiding speakers. Here we see Sony and one of their solutions. 450watts split between 5.2 channels, < 10% THD.
Krell’s new Martenesque Duke Ellington-ish Modulari Duo speaker.
The front of the Talon ‘Hawk, Thunder’ loudspeaker
The rear of the Talon speaker showing how one connects to the other.
An outdoor speaker that can handle being a little (a LOT) wet. Sounded pretty gurgley to me. 🙂 Or is that gargley?
In the Stewart booth, they had a bar with live video – in this case embedded in the actual bar, underneath our drinks. It seemed really cool, and natural, to me. Guess the cost of LCDs and projector technology is getting low enough for all sorts of ‘why didn’t I think of that’ innovations.
Marantz was one of the worst sounds at the show. That is really saying something, too, at THIS show. Again, Totem was sounding fairly good, not just because they don’t suck, but because their booth setup allowed them to screen out a lot of their neighbors noise. Still no picture for the blog, oops.
The Technician Olympics – The AMP THROW competition. Really. Maybe we should start one of these at RMAF? Who wants to donate a couple of amps? Maybe we should have a amp LIFTING competion first?
The new Sony VPL-VW60 $5K 1080p projector, replacement for the VW50.
The big PHC horn speaker. Now THIS can produce dynamic swings and transients – as PHC demonstrated over at T.H.E. Show. The resolution of the mids and highs? Well,….
[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).
