The best way to view the CES 2015 High-end Audio Show Report is by using the CES 2015 Show Report index. You can find a link to  this index, on most  pages, in the sidebar there ===> near the top of the page and high-lit in, currently, ‘orange’.

177 rooms. 2500+ photos.

With the end of THE SHOW, held at the Flamingo Hotel, this is the smallest show, OVERALL, we have seen in a long time. We saw 194 rooms, combined between the two shows, in 2013, and 244 in 2009, only a year after the crash. It was  even bigger in 2007, and before then, but I do not have precise numbers.

[Have to admit it was convenient /  time-saving  / warmer to not have to walk the half-hour walk back and forth between the two shows everyday. Still… a  loss. The featured photo shows the ad for the show that replaced THE SHOW Las Vegas… THE SHOW NEWPORT].

For our part we brought  out-performing Acapella Cellini speakers  ($50K+) [and a kick-ass Audio Note front end  :-)].

The first and last days  were really, really  slow. The middle two days were much busier, and high-quality focused listeners [as opposed to looky-loos going quickly from room to  room with little listening and little understanding what they are seeing.]

As a listener and show photographer, I like the slower days 🙂 As an exhibitor… our room with Acapella was positioned well-enough, and with an attractive setup that stands out [aka brilliant red horn speakers], that  traffic remained good all 4 days.  I didn’t hear anyone else complaining either, so perhaps, even on the slow days, show goers were intent on listening and exhibitors had someone to listen to the music they were playing.

When they were playing  music, that  is…

What  seemed to be a new trend this  year, many  rooms were either playing music incredibly softly  [merely background music], or not at all.

This  is, after all, a show  for people to make business contacts right? Trade-only? Held in the middle  of the week?

But the reality has been that hard-core audiophiles have always ‘snuck in’ and these people played an important part of the economic viability of CES  for  high-end audio exhibitors.  But these people now have other, more welcoming, shows to attend.

Between CES not really caring about the High Performance Audio  part of the show [the CES staff are nice, and to a degree, helpful, but they are still largely ignorant about everything except for  our existence], and high-end audio caring less and less about CES… [most forums do not even have a CES thread for the shows anymore].

See the trend here?

Sad because traditionally CES had the best sound of all the shows,  at least at the ultra high end  part of the hobby.

This year? Not so much.

This is in large part why  I have decided to punt on describing how things sounded.

————————————

When I take photos, many exhibitors point out what is new this  year.

This is nice, and I make  sure to take a few extra photos of the new things.

But, unlike the ‘Press’, I  want photos  of everything. For  many people, YOUR WHOLE BRAND  is new. To others, those old pieces of gear that  came out last year? They are the ones at their local dealers, or on the used market, that  they  have been looking at actually buying.

I know Arnie tried this at Audiogon with limited success, but…

EXHIBITORS, feel  free to POST YOUR MARKETING BLURB, describing your gear, in the comments section for your room. 

I know, Stereophile and HiFi+, etc do this for you sometimes [if you had something new this year, and they visited your room]. But if you want to get the word out about your other gear, and in your own words… here is your chance.

The featured photo is a shot from near one of the doorways. This is about 1% of what was here and about 5% of the Health and Fitness in Technology section of the show that I was interested in in the context of Yet Another Job I have been working with for a year or two now.

It says Venetian Ballrooms but it is upstairs from the Sands ballroom and outside the building it says ‘Sands’, so…. well, if one tries to make sense of things in a casino, one is going to get a headache.

Several years ago, we would have turned right here to get to the additional High Performance Audio exhibits that did not fit in the tower or wanted large rooms. This hallway is a very long hallway with masses of people going back and forth all day long, with occasional reductions in density like this that allowed me to hold the camera up high and take a photograph.

Here are a couple of ‘hearing aid’ booths – and there were several others. The line between in-ear headphones and ‘ear phones’ for the hearing impaired is narrowing and they all talk about audio performance being great. For hearing impaired audiophiles, and we all may be members of this community at some point, I can’t but think this is great news.

I think Star Sound builds OEM speakers…

Aurender / TVLogic was also upstairs in the Venetian Towers and we covered them as part of the main show report. Not sure if it was a good decision on their part to be down here as well… or not.

There may have been other high-end audio-related booths here, but I covered [walked. lots of walking] about a third of this ballroom, out to Robotics and 3D printing, and didn’t see any others.