Favorite system at CES. It's time to talk about sound & music, no not The Sound of Music. CES was full of great sounding equipment. Walking suite to suite in the Venetian was really a treat. I'm not aligned with some of the other writers who hated CES because of elevator lines or the distance between halls etc... There is arguably nowhere else on Earth an audiophile can experience all of this sound and music. Back to the great sounding equipment. Countless manufacturers put on demonstrations that that really showcased their equipment. My only problem is they were showcasing their equipment. I know that sounds funny. Let me explain. One manufacturer said to me that he was playing Joni Mitchell because her voice hit the crossover point of his speakers perfectly. I'm cool with people who like to listen to equipment as opposed to the music. It just doesn't work for me. I can only hear Patricia Barber and DIana Krall so many times in one week. These artists do have some really good music, but it was too often used to showcase equipment. Some might also say that the manufacturers are there to showcase equipment. OK, point taken. But, the end product of all of this is listening to music, not sound, and selling more of your products to the end consumers. Let's face it people make decisions based on emotion. Does the sound of a female voice hitting right at the crossover point bring out emotion in you? Does listening to a great reissue of James Taylor's Sweet Baby James bring out emotion in you? For me, the James Taylor scenario wins hands down. I wasn't even a big fan of James Taylor before CES. Now I am looking all over for the CD version of what I heard in the McIntosh suite at the Venetian.
The second edition of CES Ramdom Notes is here. It is based on information I gathered at CES and T.H.E. Show. Music servers, memory players, wireless transport/DACs, and a whole bunch of contradictory information.
CES 2008 is over so it's time to parse through my notes and translate my "chicken-scratch" into intelligible sentences for the Computer Audiophile readers. Here is the first Random Note based on information I gathered at CES and T.H.E. Show.
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The third and final CES 2008 photo gallery is now available. This gallery also contains many photos from T.H.E. Show over at Alexis Park & St. Tropez. The audio equipment at T.H.E. Show was just as good as CES and the environment was a lot less crowded. This allowed more time to talk with manufacturers, sole proprietors, other attendees, etc... As I wrote about earlier, the music for sale at Alexis Park was wonderful. Most of the audiophile quality music vendors were there and they all brought their best-of-the-best recordings to sell. My wallet was a little thinner after leaving T.H.E. Show. I finished up the day at the Venetian taking some time to really enjoy the music on some of my favorite systems and talking to a few people. I spent by far the most time in the McIntosh / Richard Gray's Power Company suite. This system was the most musical and enjoyable system of both shows. I spent quite a bit of time talking to Dick McCarthy, President of Richard Gray's Power Company, about the history of the company, RGPC products, and who exactly is Richard Gray. Dick not only knows RGPC products backwards and forwards he really believes in them. Sure the presidents of every company should believe in their products, but with Dick there was a passion and sense of confidence that wasn't apparent in many other suites at CES. Fortunately I am a RGPC customer so I knew Dick's products backed up his words. While there was a bit of salesmanship in what Dick was saying (he has been a very successful businessman leading other companies as well) it was evident that he was an audiophile first and foremost. Anyway, here are the photos from Day 3 at CES / T.H.E. Show. Please remember that I will go back and put captions by the photos, but I want publish them for everyone to see as soon after the show as possible. So, be patient, if you want to know what a certain piece is or how it sounded send me an email and I'l be happy to let you know. Enjoy the show.
Day 3 was a little different from the first two days. I spent the majority of the day over at T.H.E. Show, then came back to CES. My favorite part of T.H.E. Show was all the music on sale. Nothing like this is available at CES. It was like a dream walking into a huge room full of audiophile quality music. Unless you live in Kansas next to Acoustic Sounds you don't have a local dealer with a selection like this. Acoustic Sounds, Music Direct, Mobile Fidelity, Cisco, Reference Recordings, Elusive Disc and many more were there with hundreds of titles. Personally I liked this room more than any other at the show and there was no sound coming from the room! Needless to say I picked up a few new titles, including some new K2HD releases from First Impression Music. I have heard some great things about the quality of these titles. I look forward to sharing my thoughts on them and how they compare to the original K2 and XRCD releases. Also, Reference Recordings will have their HRx 24/176 music available in a couple weeks. I can't wait for that. For now, I'll leave you with some pictures of all the music.
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