We linked to Audioholics this year off of our main CES 2007 show page.
Boy, those guys have a bad attitude. If you read their suggestions for CES – geez. No wonder the Press are in disfavor and rapidly approaching lawyers in likeablility.
Anyway, getting to their Best of Show:
They like Snell and RBH. OK. Fine. They cover the low end of the Impressive speaker market.
They liked the Hansen Emperor speaker room too. Good for them, so did we. Hansen has a professional demeaner, I am good with that – but these guys think they are getting dissed because they only cover the low-end.
Then they described the MBL room as “screechy and fatiguing” and complained about Grace Jones not being ‘music’ enough for them.
Well, in previous show reports we’ve already talked about people, especially press, who only want to hear their kind of music and treat everyone else’s like it is personally offensive.
But as for the MBL’s – I just don’t think MBL *CAN* be ‘screechy’ [it can be fatiguing, but not because it is screechy]. I don’t think there is an amp BIG enough to make them screechy. 🙂
So what in heck are they referring to that they call ‘screechy’?
Was it too loud and they were hearing room anomalies? Perhaps they both listen to music in treated rooms – after all, Home Theater SPLs are right up there with Rock Concert SPLs [at least that is the level I like to play ours at, whenever it is possible :-)], and mid-fi speakers need all the help they can get at those levels.
And there was no way the MBLs themselves, nor their amps, were overdriven in a room as small as theirs at CES without doing real damage to the walls and ceiling, not to mention ear drums.
MBLs aren’t our favorite speakers, in fact it is their inability to be screechy that we think they are somewhat flawed, lacking the resolutoin and ability to form notes quickly enough.
So, anyway, it was probably just a way to impres their readership by making fun of the high-end. This was the first time I have scoped out their show reportage and I expected … something different I guess.
So, yes I am finally really truly back from CES and the blog gets to go back to Pursuing the Ultimate Music Experiences.
