CES 2012 show report

January 27, 2012 by Michael

CES 2012 – Triode Corp, Acoustic Zen, Nittobo Acoustic, Orb Jai

Acoustic Zen ‘Crescendo’ speakers on Triode Corp electronics using Nittobo Acoustic room treatments.

OK.

Surprise, surprise, Neli was here. I hardly ever, ever run into her when I cruise the show exhibits. So I spent my time wondering whether this was the first time she has ever seen me photograph a room for the show reports or not [I do an unorganized sloppy job on our own exhibit rooms – don’t know why, and I am trying to be better].

All to say that I did not listen much to this room.

But she did: really good layout of the soundstage, really good soundstage depth [we are used to some of the best soundstage layout and depth I’ve heard anywhere – here on a day to day basis – so this is an extreme compliment]. She also thought, whether because of the room treatments or the amp’s innate abilities, the sound was not flabby in any way [we talked about and we really like the way the speakers degrade really, really well when paired with less than optimal equipment – i.e. we are not sure they EVER get flabby and uncontrolled. They degrade well enough that one could put a $1K solid-state amp on them and still get something worth listening to. ]

The Crescendo [and smaller Adagio] are really, really good general purpose speakers for general purpose listening and an extremely good bargain at their price points. They do like power [see how the watt meters in these amps in this room behave in the photos below], and, although we do carry them here, I did not intend for the previous sentence to be salesy [go ahead and buy them somewhere else then – most people do 🙂 – the vast majority of our customers are looking for extreme high performance in $30K+ speakers or extreme high-efficiency (or both :-)) . But the Crescendo and Adagio are still great speakers].

Sweet Neli in the sweet spot

The system in the Acoustic Zen, Triode Corp room

The Acoustic Zen ‘Crescendo’ loudspeaker

The Triode Corp (Tri) TRX-M845 monoblock amplifier

The Triode Corp TRX-M845 amplifier

The Triode Corp (Tri) TRX-M845 amplifier

The Triode Corp TRV CD5SE CD player

The Triode Corp TRX-1 preamplifier

Nittobo Acoustic’s Acoustic Groove System room treatment

Nittobo Acoustic’s Acoustic Groove System room treatment on the side wall first reflection points

The Orb ‘Destat’ CD destaticizer. Removing static from CDs really does work, in our experience, but it has been hard for us to incorporate it into day to day listening.

January 27, 2012 by Michael

DLS Sweden

DLS Sweden makes in-wall (on-wall) loudspeakers.

As I remember it, these didn’t sound too bad at all. Problem is that my expectations aren’t very high – but I thought that the sound was pretty good, not high-end audio, in my opinion, but they had a lot of company at this show in that department [:-)]. And definitely WAY better than, say, the in-ceiling sound at our gym [my problem here is that I do not have much to compare these kind of speakers to] .

DLS Sweden in-wall (on-wall) speakers.