by Michael

CES 2008 coming right up…

This year I registered as ‘Press’. Last year a security guard threatened to confiscate my camera because I wasn’t press. We’ll see if they think I qualify as a member of the ill reputed ‘press corp’.

A number of industry people we usually see at shows have decided to skip this year’s CES. Kind of sucks…

This year we will have two Audio Note rooms. We should know next week exactly what we are taking… but it is going to be great. A large, or rather expensive, room with lots of goodies and the same small room we had at RMAF, but with 4.1x CD player this year.

We will have a small HRS SXR rack and, well, we’ll see… 🙂

We’ll be at the Alexis Park. There are going to be lots of exhibitors… hopefully lots of people too. Not that exhibitors aren’t people, per se… 😉

in CES 2008 / High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo 0 comments
 by Michael

CES 2008 etc

At this time of year we get preoccupied with CES, what to take, how to get it there, what to ship and what to put in the car, will there be SNOW between us and Vegas, and how MUCH….

The Odin is still settling in on Kharma system. After such an intense burn-in process, it helps to just leave them in one place for a week or two.

We put the Emm Labs CDSA on the system with the ODIN, so we have CDSA -> Audio Note Ongaku. A little more detail, a little less warmth.

Detail fans are just going to go ga-ga over the Odin, especially the interconnect. There is so much more on the CD and LP than I ever had imagined – and I thought we had pretty high resolution here before …

And, as you can quite imagine, looking at Nordost’s line of cables as it extends up through Valhalla – the ODIN has w-o-n-d-e-r-f-u-l tone.

The Jorma Prime might have more emotion (though we haven’t done the shootout yet) but the musicality and tone on the Odin is way, Waaaay out there – very close to the real thing – recorded electric guitars really invoke the sound of my old electric guitar and amp [over and over again, it is not like it sounded like this once, on one CD, but many times, many CDs, springing out at me when I was just listening casually], significantly unlike anything I have heard.

in CES 2008 / High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo / Nordost 0 comments
 by Michael

Other 2007 RMAF reports trickling out

Six moons recently posted their RMAF show report by Marja and Henk.

They said nice things about our room. Of course, they said nice things about E-v-e-r-ybody’s room [but Neli tells me it is just that they are more subtle than my ‘most horrible of show’ approach :-)].

But they said extra super special nice things about our room, [so we can tell they liked ours the best :-)], and we appreciate it. Thanks you two.

It was in the style of the very large reports Srajan used to write. In fact, it may have been larger, being almost(?) comprehensive. Now please, please, please do these kind of reports for the shows in Europe that are under-reported on so we can see what is going on at those other shows [Seems like every country in the E.U. has their own show… that’s a LOT of shows. And yes, we peer intently at those other reports of shows we don’t attend (and even the ones we do :-))… maybe not with a magnifying glass… well, maybe not all the time with a magnifying glass…. :-)].

Josh at Sonic Flare is back to posting their “room a day report” of the RMAF 2007 show. I can’t decide if this is a brilliant use of content, or doomed to wear thin in the context of people wanting their news to be kind of reported soon after its occurance.

At this rate, with 140 rooms at RMAF and 200+ rooms at CES 2008, by the time these show reports are done it will be time for RMAF 2008… 🙂

Anyway, another report with detailed information and analysis and with nice things to say about all the rooms.

My poor ears, they hear various problems with all the systems at shows, unfortunately – some serious and some forgivable – as well as various things they may do better than anyone else, all in the context of what have learned to be several, linearly independent, categories related to people’s sonic preferences.

Maybe I am just too darn picky.

But truth be told – this learning to differentiate the large number of subtle variations between good and bad is one of the things that can make life so rich and interesting – and the only way I know to appreciate the true artisans in this world, who spend their lives perfecting their art, whether they be musicians, painters, martial artists, manufacturers, or just people who make their profession being nice and good hearted. [Add fine furniture and autos here too – except Lamborghinis, Coltrane Supremes beat them out :-). Kind of straying away from talking about show reports to talking about life, and politics kind of, in case you haven’t noticed :-)].

Boy, if I could just get rid of this pickyness life sure would be a lot less expensive around here. 🙂 Of course, Neli is picky too, …really, REALLY picky …so she would need to Just Stop It. [Yeah, Neli, just cut it out…:-) .. Yeah. Right. Someone else is going to have to try and convince her… :-).]

So, until then…. hee hee hee …. Norodst ODIN is still burning in, and then we have the Audio Note SOOTOO to burn in, and then….

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