CES News Flash

[Steve williams]

One interesting point re 2 of the superspeakers...........

Several weeks ago when Wilson Audio announced the release of the new XLF people were taking him to task re his choice of changing his tweeter to a silk dome one as they felt it is old technology. Unfortunately it was a static display and couldn't be heard to comment one way or another.

For my money and my ears,, the overall show stopper was the Sonus Faber Aida which BTW, also uses a silk dome tweeter. Coincidence or are the 2 companies onto something?

 

[Steve williams]

Great report Steve. Myles, sorry I missed you, every time I tried calling "call failed". I thought the sound was over all "good". The Venetian has a way of imparting its own sonic signature on everything. The biggest surprise of the show for me was the Avantgarde room. They are now manufacturing amplifiers to mate with the speakers. I walked in the (packed) room and the words jumped from my mouth "wow, no hand cup horn coloration". I said it a little too loud and every one turned, I though the rep was going to kick my butt but he ran over and smiled and said thank you for speaking out and saying it! He said we made the amps so you can't screw up the wound with oddball (did he mean SETs?) combos. Hmmmm.

Peter

I looked all over to find you and it seems I had just missed you in the Carver room

 

[LL21]

I will say, i have long enjoyed the silk dome tweeters used by SF in their Guarneri and Stradivari speakers which i enjoyed tremendously when i had them.

 

[Peter Breuninger]

Dammmmmm Steve, it would have been great to connect.

Let's plan an entourage at the next show. I could film everyone's opinions and expressions. An idea... we could preselect some of the top room potentials (five or so) and call it the WBF-AVS Tour. I could give the video tour its own show page. Perhaps it could be a new legend. Think TWBAS.

 

[Steve williams]

My next stop will be RMAF this year.

 

[garylkoh]

Let's plan an entourage at the next show. I could film everyone's opinions and expressions. An idea... we could preselect some of the top room potentials (five or so) and call it the WBF-AVS Tour. I could give the video tour its own show page. Perhaps it could be a new legend. Think TWBAS.

I think that would be a great idea! Guess that I was one of the lucky WBF guys to manage to meet Peter at CES - it's always great to finally connect IRS and put a voice and face to a name/handle. I also got to meet Kal and finally place a face too!!

All in, I had a fabulous show - my best CES in 5 years.

 

[amirm]

Looks to be evolutionary in the 3D technology. Glasses are a handicap to the proliferation of TVs, but cheap polarizing glasses lower the barrier to entry.

Sadly passive glasses halve the vertical resolution of the TV. In all the LG demos I watched, you can see black horizontal lines, reminiscent of interlaced video.

What about that LG in other respects? What makes it so great? Contrast? Color gamut? Brightness?

I think what was new this year regarding 3-D is that all the companies had wised up and were using specially produced demo material that looked really good in 3-D, avoiding common problems for the technology. Last year, they would all play movies which with some exceptions, can look horrible on these sets. Example is having fast motion which will seem like strobing, and with LCDs usually has ghosting.

That said, OLED helps in that it has very high speed which means ghosting is removed. Ghosting in 3-D is caused because the display needs to switch instantly from the from for left eye to the right eye in each frame. But with LCDs current slow response time, this doesn't happen. OLED solves this.

 

[Elliot G.]

One interesting point re 2 of the superspeakers...........

Several weeks ago when Wilson Audio announced the release of the new XLF people were taking him to task re his choice of changing his tweeter to a silk dome one as they felt it is old technology. Unfortunately it was a static display and couldn't be heard to comment one way or another.

For my money and my ears,, the overall show stopper was the Sonus Faber Aida which BTW, also uses a silk dome tweeter. Coincidence or are the 2 companies onto something?

Steve, why is it that people are concerned with the parts and not the result?
Does it really matter what type of driver they use if the result is excellent. I think too many are always looking for the silver bullet when in fact there isn't one. The cabinets don't need to be aluminum or the tweeters out of exotic materials and have strange named magnets. Audio is as much art form as it is science. We still don't have measurements or reasons for why things that measure the same sound different.

 

[microstrip]

Steve, why is it that people are concerned with the parts and not the result?
Does it really matter what type of driver they use if the result is excellent. I think too many are always looking for the silver bullet when in fact there isn't one. The cabinets don't need to be aluminum or the tweeters out of exotic materials and have strange named magnets. Audio is as much art form as it is science. We still don't have measurements or reasons for why things that measure the same sound different.

Elliot,
You anticipated me. I have been thinking about writing a post about this clubbing attitude towards metal versus soft cloth tweeters. The only good think of this talk is to make X2 and owners of current Wilson speakers nervous, and as a consequence of that people like me can dream they will sell their horrible speakers at one fifth retail price ... Steve, should WBF members start queuing?

 

[Steve williams]

No they shouldn't however there is a dealer in Arizona that carries both XLF and Aida and myself and a friend who attended CES with me are contemplating a short day trip there to compare both speakers side to side

 

[microstrip]

(...) For my money and my ears,, the overall show stopper was the Sonus Faber Aida (...)

I feel happy with your choice. After I listened to the TheSonusFaber I felt the same as you. I hope that as soon as you have posted your eagerly anticipated pictures you have the time to come again to the tight sweet spot aspect - it was not my feeling with the the larger sister.

 

[Elliot G.]

No they shouldn't however there is a dealer in Arizona that carries both XLF and Aida and myself and a friend who attended CES with me are contemplating a short day trip there to compare both speakers side to side

WOW good for him that's a lot of scratch tied up in just two items. I would think that there will be less and less of these type of places going forward. Just selling one of those lines is a Major investment. In the past Wilson was not really happy about things like that as well. Maybe they have changed and softened with age.
Elliot's number one rule of Audio
A technical advance is not necessarily a sonic advance!!!!!

 

[Steve williams]

Micro

Many people commented that "the magic suddenly came to life in the sweet spot" including John Atkinson beside whom I was sitting

As for photos, after seeing Amir's pix I am getting sheepish as I had my faithful Canon S95 with me and as good as it was I had difficulty in low light conditions (which most of the rooms were)

 

[Steve williams]

WOW good for him that's a lot of scratch tied up in just two items. I would think that there will be less and less of these type of places going forward. Just selling one of those lines is a Major investment. In the past Wilson was not really happy about things like that as well. Maybe they have changed and softened with age.
Elliot's number one rule of Audio
A technical advance is not necessarily a sonic advance!!!!!

In fact it was the Sonus USA distributor who told us this and suggested we listen to both side by side

Here is what he also said "you'll find the XLF to be more dynamic but the Aida more musical".........grrrhhhh that word "musical" again

 

[Elliot G.]

Musical- a universal word. A word which covers a multitude of things that we can not or choose not to define.
In Audio it is used when we don't know what else to say. LOL

 

[DonH50]

It is also all too often used to attribute greatness to something not so great, and/or denigrate the competition... "Yeah, X has better specs, but Y is more musical." My main problem is less the complete dismissal of objective criteria than the fact the "musical" means something just a little different to each of us.

Steve, thank you for all the work! Glad some of us can attend and report on these things, keeps them honest! - Don

 

[microstrip]

In fact it was the Sonus USA distributor who told us this and suggested we listen to both side by side

Here is what he also said "you'll find the XLF to be more dynamic but the Aida more musical".........grrrhhhh that word "musical" again

Unhappily this type of nonsense happens all the time. I have owned many Sonus Faber's and Wilson's. Both sound dynamic and musical (in the sense can reproduce music with high quality), but people are strongly influenced by the marketing guys and the old designs of each brand - may be this classification was true some twenty years ago, when musical was often associated with forgiving. Not any more.

I can not imagine how any one will dispute the Alexandria X2's "musicality". I have experience with them and with the The Sonus Faber and can not understand what someone could mean with "more musical" comparing these speakers. Surely, I can easily accept that the dynamic range of the X2 is larger than that of the Aida - but would need more experience to comment on that of the X2 versus the The Sonus Faber.

Steve, did you tell the distributor he should start reading WBF?

 

[marty]

Wow. My first day back and I see I am already 14 pages behind in providing a CES report thanks to Steve “the Energizer bunny” Williams who takes no prisoners when it comes to posting minute by minute updates. Before going right to the heart to matters with equipment reports, let me just say that some of my favorite non-listening moment were hanging out and just comparing notes with other audiophiles in the halls in addition to meeting some great folks (i.e. Myles Astor, who I had only known from emails previously).

I think there were some general themes for me that I’d like to share. But first, let me say unequivocally that whoever invented the room cleaner they use at the Venetian ought to be shot. The Venetian has a smell of its own- nothing else like it in Vegas. The repugnant odor of whatever concoction they use to hide cigarette odor, body odor and other odors is just in some kind of vapor world of its own. I strongly suspect that one probably loses one IQ point for every hour spent in that place. Ah, but I digress…..

My recent experience at CES over the past few days could be captured basically in one sentence: "where's that damn EQ when you need it!" It was like attending a clinic in audio deficiencies, most demos of which could easily be corrected with a little EQ. Some great examples of floor cancellation causing mid-bass suck out were easily found (i.e., PerfectEight- a 150K speaker-that is not a typo- that was tragically marred by floor cancellation at 150Hz. Midbass suck out due to floor cancellation was also sadly evident on the big Lansche loudspeaker (driven my mega-buck Ypsilon electronics). Bright top end? Yup, plenty of that too. The most egregious was the new Magico Q7, which would have easily benefited from some EQ there. I swear, this Magico worship thing has gotten out of hand. People were congratulating the designers as if they had drunk the kool-aid but forgot to listen to the speaker. It was a perfect example whereby a bit of EQ would have made a big difference. There was also a clear grunge at 2500-3K that I wish would have gone away, in addition to the usual non-rolled off top end that makes the speaker simply sound too bright for my taste. I could go on with example after example but the take home is the same. Why anyone in the "high end" eschews EQ as unworthy or not necessary is just ridiculous, and the proof is in the well-intentioned by highly flawed sonic demonstrations found broadly throughout CES.

To be fair I should also mention that EQ is not always the answer. For example, the big Wisdom system was impressively DSP'd but in my opinion sounded horrible because they were using class D amplifiers to drive the panels. I listened to the beautifully recorded EMI Ashkenazy/Kissin Prokofiev 3rd Piano Concerto (3rd movement) and while the piano sounded decent, the orchestra was a mush of ill-defined squeeching that I attributed to the electronics and not the speaker.. However, when I played the same piece on the new Sonus Faber Aida speaker at the Audio Research booth, the sound was just glorious, yet there was no EQ in the system!

But by and large, most of the CES demos could have benefited substantially from some modest EQ. The great mystery is why that remains to be the case year after year.


Let’s go back to the ARC Sonus Faber Aida. I spent a lot of time there. I brought my own demo disc that was graciously played, but the “killer piece” for me this year was the Prokofiev piano concerto mentioned earlier. Track 7 (3rd movement) was simply not worth playing on most systems unless the system was capable of handling dramatic orchestral fundamentals and explosive transients of the piano. The Sonus Faber did this with aplomb and to my ears, there wasn’t a close second at the show. It made, for example, the Magico Q7 sound like a PA system (and a 40K more expensive one at that- go figure!). The Aida was simply magnificent. In a nutshell, it sounded like music, and that was the key to its beautiful sound.

There were only two other speakers at the show that did this piece justice. The first were the Hansen. (not sure of the model-Prince something or other- price about 68K?). Next was the new Rockport (30K) playing in the VTL room. These are both very compelling speakers at their price point. They were both beautiful in that they rendered full-tilt orchestral music honestly.

I also enjoyed the “behind the screen so you couldn’t see them” Magnaplanar display. Wendell Diller pulled another rabbit out of his ass by playing a pair of $600/pair direct from Magnelanar speaker to good effect (although he was using a Bryston 28 amp to do it).

While the Sonus Aida clearly captured my heart, the other contender for best of show (in a weird way) for me was the $350 show special Sonawall speaker Steve alluded to earlier. It was a two satellites and a sub system for $950 retail ($350 at the show) that blew many of us away for what is was. I love giant killers and this was a good one.

 

[DaveyF]

One interesting point re 2 of the superspeakers...........

Several weeks ago when Wilson Audio announced the release of the new XLF people were taking him to task re his choice of changing his tweeter to a silk dome one as they felt it is old technology. Unfortunately it was a static display and couldn't be heard to comment one way or another.

For my money and my ears,, the overall show stopper was the Sonus Faber Aida which BTW, also uses a silk dome tweeter. Coincidence or are the 2 companies onto something?

Those same people who were taking DW to task probably did the same thing to William Zane Johnson when he brought back tubes. Have to question why so many supposed a'philes buy into the idea that all new technology in the audio realm is an advancement

IMO, the silk dome is FAR superior to almost all tweets that I have heard and certainly so in comparison to the various titanium domes on the market. Again, IMHO, even the beryllium domes are too bright and 'shouty' unless extremely well implemented, as in the top of the line Magico's.

 

[microstrip]

(...) While the Sonus Aida clearly captured my heart (...) .

Marty,
I really appreciated your views, can you give us two extra lines on the Aida sweet spot?