This is my belated CES 2013 report. While not eventful in great scheme of things, I had fair number of niggling issues leading to my sloppy reporting.
First up was my camera. I use a Canon G10 for show photography. I took my DSLR to a show once and it was so heavy and took out much of the enjoyment after I lugged it around for days. The G10 is nice in that it is far smaller and lighter and importantly has image stabilization. I hate flash photography at electronic shows as it makes the equipment look unattractive destroying the lighting they have set up and at any rate, bothers everyone else who is trying to listen. Lighting is poor however so getting handheld shots even with image stabilization can be super challenging. Holding little cameras steady is even harder. But I tried
. One nice thing is that these point and shoot cameras have small sensors which means that they have good depth of field. This allows a lot of the scene to be in focus at once which helps with equipment ID and seeing the detail. The images for web are at 10% of the original resolution but I can zoom in as needed to pick up detail using the local version of the files.
The battery on this camera lasts forever. In the past I had taken the charger with me but never used it. So now I check the battery and if it shows full, I leave the charger home. That is what I did. So imagine my surprise where after about 30 to 50 pictures, the battery level warning came on! The camera had been sitting for a couple of months and self discharging but I guess it didn’t know that. I ignored it and sure enough, it shut down a few shots later. I ask the hotel where to buy a charger and they say the surest bet is to go Frys. With a 5 hour taxi line, that is not what you want to do. So I start to use my camera phone for the rest of the day and find that a disaster. But no choice.
At the end of the day I take the trip to Fry’s. Fortunately they had a charger. It was $26 but cost me $40 for the taxi ride to and from. So nearly a $70 mistake for leaving a charger behind that didn’t weigh hardly anything and is smaller than the camera itself! Living and learn.
So the second day I am happy walking around with the fully charged camera, only to bump it into manual focus. Even though this is a “semi pro” camera with full set of controls like a DSLR, I use it in fully automatic mode most of the time. So I am not used to its silly indicators one of which was trying to tell me with a crude graphic that it was in manual focus. I was wondering why I could not zoom in properly and see the details of the equipment.
You didn’t come here to read about my photography woes but thought I explain why the quality is not where I like it to be even giving the conditions.
Anyway, I had three days total at the show. I spent most of the first day at the main show floor where the “big” companies are. They dominate the “high rent” part of the show floor. This year was different as I reported in the thread on that. There were so many no-name overseas companies. Some of that trend followed into Venetian ostensibly “high-end” suites. You would walk in and realize it is a Chinese company selling bits and parts of electronics or showing some sound bar. Some even looked high end with tubs and such. Most weren’t playing music which I learned was a good indicator and would walk out.
An interesting observation was massive presence of D'Agostino’s amplifier. It was the “borrowed” amplifier of choice in so many booths. Borrowing amps to show your speakers and such is a common thing of course at shows but the choices vary usually. This time the D'Agostino dominated. Clearly that was their marketing strategy and a clever one. The amp has a distinct look and branding so it stood out very easily everywhere it was used. We are easily talking about 20 to 30 if not more amps lent out to people. What wasn’t so clever was that they took this to the extreme in that their own booth was dead: they only had a static sample of their new pre-amp doing nothing and they were not playing any music! A nice lady who I imagine is a principal at the company sat there confident that they didn’t need to show anything.
The most common question asked is “what sound good” or the best at the show. You have to consider that this is herculean task. We are talking about surveying some 200 set ups. And if you are then trying to take pictures and “report” on what is there in just a couple of days, you realize that this is not a proper analysis of what was good and what wasn’t. At least it was well beyond my means to do so. I realize others who do this professionally will try and take the affair more seriously than I.
That is not to say I have no observations. Here are where I heard good sound and bad sounds:
1. Great equipment with great content. That combo had to be there. I walked into rooms that sounded awful. I mean all the negative terms audiophiles use. “Fatiguing.” “Flat.” “Unexciting.” Lacking “micro detail.”D) Then they would play another song from some other album/CD and angels would start to sing. Clearly great content was necessary to give the impression of a great system. Without it, the same system to my ears sounded awful and unlistenable.
2. Great content did not rescue lousy system. Little round globes mascaraing as speakers designed to look good but not sound good did exactly that. It was pretty hard to get around poor speaker performance. On the other hand, I did not see electronics being a limitation nor sources for that matter. Yes, you can start to stone me now for this comment.
3. Poor demo material and staff ruined the experience. I walked into rooms where the people were over occupied with pleasing the one person already in there and ignoring anyone else coming in. After looking around for a couple of minutes and taking pictures I would leave. Fortunately most staff were welcoming but bad demo material was ever present. Folks need to go back to marketing school or simply copy what the other guys are doing as far as content. Per #1, that is critical.
So what this means is that one’s choice of which room sounded good is really up to chance. It had to have good content, good components (at least speakers), and willing staff to show enough variety of content to please whoever walked in (assuming you were like me and did not bring in material and to have enough time to listen for a long time).
All of this said, I wrote notes the first day on rooms that sounded nice to me. That list included Raidho, Genesis, MSB, VTL and Hegel. The second day I got too lazy to take notes. But stand outs were Revel with their new Rhythm 2 sub which produced the highest performance bass in any music product I have heard at a show (I am talking my pant legs moving), and Dynaudio showing off the Evidence Platinum speakers. The latter played the clip I am very familiar with from the Dead Can Dance CD and it was the best rendition I have heard yet.
You may have seen some of the pictures I have uploaded. I have about twice as much more to upload. I have been slow at it because I came back with some kind of virus which put me in a chair for a few days. The worst is over so I will get the pictures out as I can. So stay tuned.
First up was my camera. I use a Canon G10 for show photography. I took my DSLR to a show once and it was so heavy and took out much of the enjoyment after I lugged it around for days. The G10 is nice in that it is far smaller and lighter and importantly has image stabilization. I hate flash photography at electronic shows as it makes the equipment look unattractive destroying the lighting they have set up and at any rate, bothers everyone else who is trying to listen. Lighting is poor however so getting handheld shots even with image stabilization can be super challenging. Holding little cameras steady is even harder. But I tried
. One nice thing is that these point and shoot cameras have small sensors which means that they have good depth of field. This allows a lot of the scene to be in focus at once which helps with equipment ID and seeing the detail. The images for web are at 10% of the original resolution but I can zoom in as needed to pick up detail using the local version of the files.The battery on this camera lasts forever. In the past I had taken the charger with me but never used it. So now I check the battery and if it shows full, I leave the charger home. That is what I did. So imagine my surprise where after about 30 to 50 pictures, the battery level warning came on! The camera had been sitting for a couple of months and self discharging but I guess it didn’t know that. I ignored it and sure enough, it shut down a few shots later. I ask the hotel where to buy a charger and they say the surest bet is to go Frys. With a 5 hour taxi line, that is not what you want to do. So I start to use my camera phone for the rest of the day and find that a disaster. But no choice.
At the end of the day I take the trip to Fry’s. Fortunately they had a charger. It was $26 but cost me $40 for the taxi ride to and from
. So nearly a $70 mistake for leaving a charger behind that didn’t weigh hardly anything and is smaller than the camera itself! Living and learn.So the second day I am happy walking around with the fully charged camera, only to bump it into manual focus. Even though this is a “semi pro” camera with full set of controls like a DSLR, I use it in fully automatic mode most of the time. So I am not used to its silly indicators one of which was trying to tell me with a crude graphic that it was in manual focus. I was wondering why I could not zoom in properly and see the details of the equipment.
You didn’t come here to read about my photography woes but thought I explain why the quality is not where I like it to be even giving the conditions.
Anyway, I had three days total at the show. I spent most of the first day at the main show floor where the “big” companies are. They dominate the “high rent” part of the show floor. This year was different as I reported in the thread on that. There were so many no-name overseas companies. Some of that trend followed into Venetian ostensibly “high-end” suites. You would walk in and realize it is a Chinese company selling bits and parts of electronics or showing some sound bar. Some even looked high end with tubs and such. Most weren’t playing music which I learned was a good indicator and would walk out.
An interesting observation was massive presence of D'Agostino’s amplifier. It was the “borrowed” amplifier of choice in so many booths. Borrowing amps to show your speakers and such is a common thing of course at shows but the choices vary usually. This time the D'Agostino dominated. Clearly that was their marketing strategy and a clever one. The amp has a distinct look and branding so it stood out very easily everywhere it was used. We are easily talking about 20 to 30 if not more amps lent out to people. What wasn’t so clever was that they took this to the extreme in that their own booth was dead: they only had a static sample of their new pre-amp doing nothing and they were not playing any music! A nice lady who I imagine is a principal at the company sat there confident that they didn’t need to show anything.
The most common question asked is “what sound good” or the best at the show. You have to consider that this is herculean task. We are talking about surveying some 200 set ups. And if you are then trying to take pictures and “report” on what is there in just a couple of days, you realize that this is not a proper analysis of what was good and what wasn’t. At least it was well beyond my means to do so. I realize others who do this professionally will try and take the affair more seriously than I.
That is not to say I have no observations. Here are where I heard good sound and bad sounds:
1. Great equipment with great content. That combo had to be there. I walked into rooms that sounded awful. I mean all the negative terms audiophiles use. “Fatiguing.” “Flat.” “Unexciting.” Lacking “micro detail.”
D) Then they would play another song from some other album/CD and angels would start to sing. Clearly great content was necessary to give the impression of a great system. Without it, the same system to my ears sounded awful and unlistenable. 2. Great content did not rescue lousy system. Little round globes mascaraing as speakers designed to look good but not sound good did exactly that. It was pretty hard to get around poor speaker performance. On the other hand, I did not see electronics being a limitation nor sources for that matter. Yes, you can start to stone me now for this comment.
3. Poor demo material and staff ruined the experience. I walked into rooms where the people were over occupied with pleasing the one person already in there and ignoring anyone else coming in. After looking around for a couple of minutes and taking pictures I would leave. Fortunately most staff were welcoming but bad demo material was ever present. Folks need to go back to marketing school or simply copy what the other guys are doing as far as content. Per #1, that is critical.
So what this means is that one’s choice of which room sounded good is really up to chance. It had to have good content, good components (at least speakers), and willing staff to show enough variety of content to please whoever walked in (assuming you were like me and did not bring in material and to have enough time to listen for a long time).
All of this said, I wrote notes the first day on rooms that sounded nice to me. That list included Raidho, Genesis, MSB, VTL and Hegel. The second day I got too lazy to take notes
. But stand outs were Revel with their new Rhythm 2 sub which produced the highest performance bass in any music product I have heard at a show (I am talking my pant legs moving), and Dynaudio showing off the Evidence Platinum speakers. The latter played the clip I am very familiar with from the Dead Can Dance CD and it was the best rendition I have heard yet.You may have seen some of the pictures I have uploaded. I have about twice as much more to upload. I have been slow at it because I came back with some kind of virus which put me in a chair for a few days. The worst is over so I will get the pictures out as I can. So stay tuned
.
