Full Report
CES
January 8th-11th, 2007

We also cover about 2/3 of the main conference held in the Las Vegas Convention Center (LVCC) and all of T.H.E. Show held simultaneously with CES which also focuses on high-end audio.

This report tries to convey how it looked and felt  to actually be at the show. As such we do not talk about product announcements, prices, specifications, release dates and availability, or upgrades, or any of that boring 1000-brochures-masquerading-as-show-report stuff. Who wants to spend their time talking to sales people and reading brochures, which, face it, one can do any day of the week.

Instead, we post 1000s of you-are-there photos and describe in no-nonsense WTF terms the quality of various products and systems, as we see it, just like someone, say... maybe... you?, who was at the conference who didn't have to work and could just wander around checking things out. Someone who wanted to see and hear what was happening - to experience this, the ultimate, biggest, flashiest, most outrageous high-tech toy display case in the World which only appears for a very few days each year at this time.

This page is the table of contents of the show report, and is organized by displaying a photo of some location at the show, followed by links to the reports for that location.

To scroll down to the main conference coverage which focuses on wandering around gawking at home theater gear, LCD monitors, computers, video games, etc. click this.

Otherwise, the following starts off with the high performance audio portion of our program.

SUMMARY OF SHOW - High-End Audio

The show was held on Monday through Thursday this year, instead of over the weekend, which is not conducive to letting people who have day jobs attend - then again it may be just one more way CES is being more strict about making sure only industry representatives go to these conferences (who presumably get to go because it is their 'job' to go). It will be held on Monday through Thursday in 2008 as well.

We shared responsibility for the *Audio Note U.K. rooms, which were kind of 'our' rooms and kind of not. If they were really ours we could talk about how we liked and did not like the sound in the room, like we do for our room at the Denver Rocky Mountain Audio Fest (RMAF) show - but they would be ineligible for best of show. If they weren't ours we could talk about how we liked and did not like the sound in the room - and they could be in the running for best of show. But here we have this in-between state that means that we can't vote for our own room, nor critique our own room.

So, on to the summary, then.

Equipment and rooms that didn't make it this year that we usually see:

Wilson Maxx 2 loudspeakers, Cogent True-to-life loudspeakers, *Walker Audio, Blue Light Audio [more to follow as I remember those ridiculously temporary mental notes I made during the show]. *Nordost was over at the Mirage but we didn't find out until after the show.

Sound at the Venetian:

It was much more like the sound at a Stereophile Show; nothing was as great, and not as many things truly sucked, like at the old CES at the Alexis Park Hotel. This was perhaps because it was everyone's first time in this hotel [and similarly, the Stereophile Show jumps around like a hot potato - a different hotel each year] and over the years exhibiters learn how to optimize the sound in particular rooms; perhaps because the Venetian police were distracting people away from their system setup and optimization duties. Or perhaps because the 'vibe' from exhibiting in a casino is distracting and lends an air of make-believe to the whole affair.

The sound in the tower was hampered in many rooms by a chest of drawers sitting in front of the left or right channel that could not be moved. The room was sized about the same as a small- to medium-sized room in a house. There were, however, also many rooms that were uniquely sized. The rooms in the Tower were, in general, good rooms for modestly-sized systems.

The sound in the meeting rooms was hampered by temporary walls (but I doubt they were less substantial than those at the St. Tropez). Many of the rooms were quite big, the smallest being the size of a medium sized (modern American suburban home's) livingroom. These were good rooms for statement systems. Rooms like the MBL room in the Tower really needed to be downstairs because of the ridiculous amount of space they had to display their new statement speakers - though now that I think of it, maybe MBL likes to put giant systems in small rooms (except at RMAF).

I personally did not hear anything to make me think that one location, Tower versus Meeting Rooms, was intrinsically better for the sound than the other.

I read one report which mentioned how happy exhibitors were in the Venetian Tower with the show. I found quite the opposite - high-end audio is being marginalized by CES, right when Home Theater is in DIRE need of some infusion of decent sound. The Venetian seemed openly hostile to the exhibitors in the Tower, and at least indifferent, if not contemptuous, to exhibitors in the Meeting Rooms. This was in very stark contrast to the helpful if unorganized atmosphere at the St. Tropez, or the blasé attitude at the old Alexis Park.

I think I wrote this elsewhere, as well, but the behavior of the attendees was different, from my observations, in the Tower versus the Meeting Rooms. Up in the Tower there was a furtiveness, a darting in and out of rooms, a lot of walking up and down halls looking for a room they wanted to go into. Perhaps it was the overwhelming number of rooms to visit, visible by looking at all the signs visible from any location in the very long hallways - that confused people like kids in a candy shop trying to decide which one out of 1000 different kinds of candies they want next.

Downstairs, in the meeting rooms, the attitude was calm, if perhaps a little somnolent, and people seemed to go into rooms and listen to several songs - even if the room's sound was not worthy of this dedication, to the ears of this show-goer, anyway. I've heard it suggested that a lot of these people were non-audiophiles from CES. If so, I wish their first exposure to the high-end would be a little more organized and of higher quality.  There were some good rooms down there... can I post a big sign down there saying "New to high-end Audio? Check out these rooms first: ..." [The answer is NO, the Venetian seems to remove anything that is not authorized immediately - a poor lost fella can't even find a discarded directory lying around to determine where the heck they are - they have to go back to registration each time they forget theirs :-)].

Sound at THE SHOW at the St. Tropez:

Looking at last year, some people moved from CES (at the Alexis Park) to THE SHOW (Kharma, Audio Note, etc.), some from THE SHOW to the Venetian (Magico, Von Schweikert, etc.). I think the people who stay in one room over several years learn to get better sound - or at least consistent sound. The traffic was lower than expected at THE SHOW and this may have encouraged many exhibitors to focus more on doing business, and socializing, with other exhibitors than optimizing their sound for the occasional attendees.

The Sound in General:

The sound was better at the Denver Rocky Mountain Audio Fest (RMAF) show than either of these two venues. The overall energy was better as well (it is also better at the Montreal Show). I have always liked the energy at CES in the past, even from the point of view of my audiophile-self. It was always a place to find new, over-the-top, experimental, or just plain weird, equipment. RMAF does not have much of this energy. Nowhere else does. This year neither did CES.

There is usually this 'Hey, what did X bring this year? How did that new Y sound?' upbeat kind of energy [perhaps it was just this kind of energy that turns some audiophiles off who are just looking for a nice pair of reasonably priced speakers - but I love it]. This year it was more one of survival and dismay. Or should that be dismay and survival. And lots of looking toward, and speculation about, next year.

The Sound in Particular:

Have to admit, I found myself being drawn toward big open r-e-l-a-x-e-d sound [think: Reggae], namely that provided by the *Edge Electronics room using the big Nola speakers and Edge amps, and that in the Hansen room, provided by the big Hansen speakers, I think they were the Kings, and CAT amp. We don't have that particular sound here right now, and I miss it. Not sure if either of these two speakers address all the things I would want out of a relaxed kind of sound, assuming we had room right now for such a thing, but right now the Hansens come closest.

The MBL statement speaker system was pretty close to being on this list, but even though the sound in this room seemed to have more resolution than their rooms previously have had - it is still too hard for me, personally, to tell the difference between an electric guitar and an electric piano. Am I nuts? Maybe, but these are just a hairs breadth too far from 'Real' for my taste. YMMV - and I correspond with people whose mileage varies a lot. So there you have it.

The other big speakers at the show did not do 'big open relaxed', or were constipated, or all dynamics, or just plain weird sounding.

I am sure that people would like me to mention that the Hansen system was playing a *Brinkmann LaGrange turntable [as well as various *Audio Aero players, both the Prima which I saw and did not hear, and a Prestige, which was there when Neli was in this room] and the Edge system was using Pranawire cables. Neli liked the Hansen system as well, but thought it lacked finesse and delicacy (Sophistication) and I agree - and we both think that perhaps a different amp would be in order, to better suit our tastes, as the CAT is very competent, but slightly compressed-sounding and the tiniest bit too cool sounding to our ears.

As for the Nola, it has some inherent problems, but I enjoyed the sound of the system it was in and, for me, it was one of the most enjoyable sounds of the show.

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Why is it that speaker manufacturers look at me like I am nuts when I say the speaker would sell like hot-cakes at half the asking price? I mean, I AM nuts, but I have probably said this to maybe a dozen manufacturers of speakers I like and they all look at me the same way... :-) And then they try and drown me with Major Boring Shtick that has nothing to do with how they sound.

All I am looking for is something that is a slam dunk bargain at its price point, like the *Acoustic Zen Adagio. The biggest problem with the $4,300 Adagios is that people want to compare it to $10K speakers.

Anyway, didn't find any slam dunks, but I think they are indeed a few very competitive speakers at the show, even at their asking price, at least from the perspective of sitting here in Audio Federation-land of very high-performance, high-quality audio gear.

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Sometimes I look a these reviews in these magazines we get [the latest being the new Inner Ear, very different, yet the same, as the old Inner Ear - check it out], with a big smiley face stamped on all the reviews, the good with the bad, and wonder if we shouldn't critique the critiques. Like, for example, rate each component with a value equal to the number of days we would keep it, as if we were given it free of charge, before putting it up on Audiogon, Audio Circle, AudioXSell, ebay, whatever.

With respect to this report, we could rate whole systems this way - but there would be a lot of 0's. I know a lot of you know people who turn over equipment on a weekly basis, even when it is great, so I would just like to add that we do not - whether due to sloth, caring for gear like they were our pets who we hate to part with and only then to a deserving home, or because we are too darned busy, let that be our little secret, but we still have our old Sonus Faber Electas hanging out... :-) So rating a system a '0' says a lot about what we thought of the sound in these rooms at this show - not that they were horrible, for the most part, but that we wouldn't want to live with them.

In older reports we have referred to a similar metric by which each was rated by How much we wanted to take the system home with us. Let's use this.

Let's see... We are getting this stuff free, right? Just want to make sure before I commit myself... :-)

Actually, I'd take the *Lamm room system home. The Wilson sound has it challenges, but I know we could handle them :-). The Metronome stuff is... very pricey... but it is for free, right? so... Yeah, so Mike Fremer didn't like the table, but of course I would still want to hear it for myself here before I would write it off :-). And we get the ML3's right? Even if only one of them has a transformer... We'll take it, thank you. Yes, please. And the ML2.1, you can't ever have too many ML2.1's...

Next would be the Hansen and AudioMachina rooms [and the Kondo room, though this is largely just based on my intense curiosity about just how it sounds compared to the Audio Note equipment, which we did take home :-)]. We would probably start mucking with the upstream equipment on both the Hansen and AudioMachina, mostly playing with different amps to get a sense of the speakers, whereas the Lamm system we would probably just swap in and out the turntable and digital front ends to get a sense of those particular digital and analog front ends.

Maybe a better metric would be "How Long Could We Live With A Show System Before Selling It Or *MODIFYING* It?"

Given that this measurement is going to be in days, if not hours most of the time....

No, still not right. Sorry about these train-of-thought ruminations on how to think about and rate the sound at a show in a meaningful way. These other reports, if they say anything, talk about "Great Bass!" aka "treble scratched my ears out".... "Awesome Dynamics!" aka "zero micro-dynamics and emotional content, I couldn't even recognize the music on my own CD".

How about, If you had to live with just one system, the system from any room at the show, UNCHANGED, which ones could you live with the longest?

Using this metric: *Lamm, Hansen, and probably the Continuum / Peak Consult / Berning room, big Magico, and AudioMachina rooms are tied. This is a very fuzzy metric. Kondo might be here too if I could listen with my ears in that room and not my curiosity.

There were a lot of rooms at the show that sounded 'OK', which is probably what most people are looking for. But I am picky, and Neli is even pickier, so if an 'OK-sounding system' were to be on this list, it would have to be darned inexpensive. Nothing met this criteria for me this year.

To provide some context, let's use this metric for, say...

Overall Best Of Show, over all shows this last year, going back to and including CES 2006:

The results (excluding our own rooms, of course): Cogent True-to-life from CES 2006 [not the one at RMAF], *Kharma Midi Exquisites / MBL system from RMAF 2006, and, uh, ... I guess the Lamm / Wilson rooms and the Continuum / Peak Consult / Berning rooms [(the latter) at Montreal, HE 2006 and CES 2007 - both of these room's systems are very consistent in their sound, like them or not, and I do, they have a certain quality which they seem always able to achieve]. At the less lust-worthy but significantly less expensive side of the spectrum we have the Odyssey Audio, Epos / Music Hall / Creek, and little *Audio Note [albeit at a somewhat higher price] rooms

There, that should give you all a feeling for what this show was like - big, confusing, spread out, disturbing, and kind of boring. But we can barely wait until next year to do it all again! :-)

These floors were only partially populated and we never made it to floor 35 at all. Floor 29 (see reports below) had most of the action that was happening in the Tower and for those that took the stairs, getting from 29 to 30 and back was fast and easy (although you had a 2 in 3 chance of coming up to floor 30 in the wrong wing, which meant you had to walk down a hall way bereft of eye and ear candy - allowing time for withdrawal symptoms to start wracking your mind).

We'll talk more about visitor flow in the blog, but it was very much an audio-sampling party in the Tower: lots of traffic in the hallways, people going in here or there for a little listen, and then bamm, back out. Perhaps it was just the easy availability of so many tantalizing rooms, so close by, that generated a fever pitch 'gotta see everything' attitude.

Part 1 [50 photos]

Part 2 [50 photos]

Part 3 [25 photos]

Did you notice we went from 50 photos to 100+ photos per each section of the report? If not, good. If you did, well, the report was getting out of hand, too many sections means too much clicking. The heck with that. Our poor click fingers get enough abuse. Let the network work a little harder to download the pages - that what it is there for, right?

The Tower was mostly a nearfield-only experience - but at an estimated 8 - 12 feet, that is not so different from an average livingroom at home. You entered a room and walked down its length with your big curious eyes and ears. Then you went down a few steps past the iron railing into the small 'livingroom' area of the hotel room. There, if you were lucky, you got to sit and listen - and most of the times it was not very crowded in the suites, and even with only 3 chairs in many rooms there was usually seating.

Once there, and if the exhibitor was interested in making an attempt at creating a decent system to listen to and not just conduct business, you got to hear some great music on a nice high-end home audio system that was put together, played to death, and then torn down in the space of 5 days or so, perhaps never to be put together again (for which we are sometimes thankful and sometimes saddened).

Wing 1 [125 photos]

Wing 2 [150 photos]

Wing 3 [110 photos]

The meeting rooms at the Venetian were big, tall rooms with temporary, yet fairly substantial walls. This level, level two, had the most traffic, but not necessarily the best sounding systems. They had the most traffic because they were directly accessible by pedestrians who walked down the walkway from the casino or across the main walkway from the other CES activities.

The other levels were accessible by escalators - which were right there in plain sight, but it was not obvious that there was something worthwhile seeing on the higher levels to those pedestrians on level 2 unless you had a directory with a map - and THOSE were very difficult to find.

Looking at the map - it is not 100% accurate. I do not remember any Thiel rooms, and although I may have missed a few rooms, as it took awhile to grok the layout of the rooms - the map, all the maps, needed updating. I do regret missing getting photos of the nice looking equipment racks in the pARTicular room - it was a static display but there were unfortunately too many people to photograph around and between at the time I was going by that part of the conference.

This level was the most populous, at least based on the number of photos. Or maybe it is just the quirky and seemingly unpredictable ways the photographer likes to photograph some things to death and others hardly at all just coming to a local maxima on this floor. Who knows. Certainly not me (the photographer).

This show allows one, no requires one, to go out doors in order to mosey from building to building. This means that during the 60 degree days of the show, one has access to sunlight and fresh air, such as it is in Las Vegas a mile or so from the strip.

THE SHOW at CES 2007: Part 1 [55 photos]

THE SHOW at CES 2007: Part 2 [80 photos]

THE SHOW at CES 2007: Part 3 [100 photos]

THE SHOW at CES 2007: Part 4 [115 photos]

THE SHOW at CES 2007: Part 5 [90 photos]

South Halls Ground Level

This hall had lots of home theater gear, loudspeakers, flat-panel mounting brackets, flat-panel mounting brackets, flat-panel mounting brackets, cushy chairs that vibrated or thumped ya. Cool stuff. We liked it.

Part 1 [50 photos]

Part 2 [50 photos]

Part 3 [50 photos]

Part 4 [25 photos]

South Halls Upper Level

We did not cover the South Hall Upper Level. It was too boring. Mostly printers and memory cards and, well, boring stuff. We could be wrong, it is a big floor and we only spent about 10 - 15 minutes wandering around. But...

Central Hall

Even CEDIA. Even both South Halls. Did not. Prepare. One. For. The hugeosities; the apartment-sized, Godzilla's condo-sized, exhibits in the Central Hall.

Part 1 [75 photos]

Part 2 [75 photos]

North Hall

We didn't even get to the North Hall. We are so bummed. Front projectors, front projector DEMOS, car audio, all this cool sssstuff. Next year. Next year we will be better. Walk faster. Pay the taxi driver even more to drive even faster....

The main show at CES  extended from the Convention Center to the Sands - Expo and Convention Center, which is attached to the Venetian. I am not sure what was supposed to be in these particular halls - the map calls everything TechZones. Geez, the whole conference is one big TechZone. We know this, guys. More detailed information would be nice...

Anyway, it had a hodgepodge of household robotics, connectivity / networking, electronic gaming and... well, a bar. After geeking out on a transparent PC case that displayed various, and very likely programmable, slogans on the transparent fan in the front of the case, a full geek out was in order and some very large photos of the Zalman motherboards and chassis were then pasted in to this report even though they originated in the South Hall of the LVCC.

CES 2007 - Sand Expo and Convention Center - Photos and Commentary [45 photos]