CES 2009

According to Wikipedia, "In film and video, footage is the raw, unedited material as it had been originally recorded by video camera, which usually must be edited to create a motion picture, video clip, television show or similar completed work." The follow four videos are definitely in the footage category, but the word lost might be a bit of a stretch. It sure makes the title sound more important though. This footage has been sitting on my MacBook Air since the 2009 Consumer Electronics Show back in early January. As usual other topics have jumped the queue and made the front page of Computer Audiophile before I had a chance to publish these videos. Since this stuff is raw and unedited I hope it at least gives the readers/viewers a feel for what the show is like if nothing else. Some of the footage is blurry, but video of the Manley suite is always good considering the very cool vibe that perpetuates in there year after year. Other footage includes Kimber Cable, Boulder, PS Audio, dCS, and Red Wine Audio. Enjoy.

Old school analog and new school digital were definitely coexisting and thriving at CES 2009. This was never more evident than in the TAD suit where high resolution music was playing back from a music server and a tape machine. There were also suites dedicated to each playback method. For example Winston Ma's hospitality suite featured a MacBook Pro with Amarra and Sonic Studio's FireWire hardware. On the opposite end of the spectrum was the J-Corder suite that featured nothing but custom reel-to-reel tape machines. Both methods of playback were equally as impressive and enjoyable in their own right.

The TAD suite at CES this year produced some of the best sound of the entire show. OK, I must admit to being a little bias because I did build the music server TAD used for the entire show. Fortunately everyone who sat through a demonstration from TAD's Andrew Jones was very pleased with the sound as well. Thus you can be sure I'm not exaggerating just because I was involved in a tiny piece of the sound quality. Much of the build information about this exact server can be found in my previous article titled Absolutely Silent Audiophile Music Server. The hardware is pretty close to what Robert Harley used for his music server article in the January issue of The Abso!ute Sound. In addition to fine tuning the OS I configured Windows XP to operate using only three services and 57MB of RAM at startup. Scaling back a Windows operating system is never a bad thing in my opinion.