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Oakroots Outrageous Opinions - CES 2003

Posted by Oakroot (B) on January 22, 2003 at 17:03:23

Well, another CES has come and gone. I am glad to say, that this year, of the suites I listed in, those that had vinyl and CD playing the vinyl significantly was audibly superior to it’s poor digital cousin. In comparisons using the new Nora Jones LP and CD the LP was the clear winner. As usual CD sounded sterile and flat, the LP fleshed out the instrumental textures in a better recreation of space and air. The inner detail and micro dynamics of the LP was again noticeably better – the subtle vibrato in Ms Jones voice was much more clearly audible on LP and nearly as masked on the digital medium. Well this is just a couple of the numerous examples that were discovered on touring the various suites.

My vote for best sound at show goes to the TG Audio Crump/Curl suite – and it was 100% CD. If they were to put a turntable in that room it would be a near spiritual experience. The music was made by the CTC blowtorch preamp and digital gear with Parasound’s JC1 mono power amps (300 watts per channel). Speakers were my favorite Soundlab M1s. I forgot who made the cables – but they all sound the same anyway (just kidding). TG Audio cables were used and did their job well.

Now, since there is a number of inmate reports that give the positives of the sounds at this years CES I’ll break with the pack and give a few rants and ugly awards.

My vote for worst sound at show goes to Soundlab/Atma-Sphere. Hey wait a minute – how can the same M1 get both best and worst when driven by great electronics like CTC and Atma-Sphere respectively??? It’s called system/room setup and speaker equalization. The big M1 Soundlabs had the brilliance, midrange, and bass potentiometers were all askew. Bass was turned up and the brilliance was way up while the midrange was flat – as expected boom and sizzle was the result. There was also almost no room treatment – and the rooms for the EXPO at the San Remo were very very small – reminded me of a guest bedroom. All this spelled trouble for big systems – just like it did at the Show in New York this last summer. The new Soundlab? It sounded bad too – bass control/crossover was flat, with the midrange and brilliance controls torqued almost to maximum position – yep, that’s right - bright and hard the results. The Buggtussel sub was MIA. Last years EXPO had room that boomed the bass, this year was not the case, and I thought the bass fairly neutral in room, depending upon speaker placement. Last year, the presence and brilliance setting had to be elevated to offset the room boom. This year the room boom didn’t happen to the same degree (except in one suite) so the speaker settings really played havoc with the sound at Soundlab. The volume level of the demos was also on the loud side – which didn’t help. Sadly, I’ve heard both Soundlab and Atma-Sphere sound fantastic in other rooms and systems – but not this time. I would be interested in Dukes and Brian Walshes comments to see if they agree with my impressions.

A special room boom award goes to Classic Audio Reproductions – two large horn speakers placed in corners (no not corner horns). Even in the sweet spot the boom was unbearable – that was just bad speaker placement.

Audio always amazes me. The latest running of the Lemmings over the preverbal cliff is horn-loaded speakers. You take a car audio speaker with a wizzer cone from the 60s put it in a large ugly box and charge lots of money for it. Yeah yeah I know, new engineering, new materials, new applications, yada, yada, yada – its still wizzer cone. After listening to numerous offerings at two CES’s and the show in NY – I am still waiting to hear one that would even come close to any reasonable definition of high fidelity. Tonal aberrations that even Helen Keller could hear euphemistically described as musical are the norm. Now not all horn systems fall into this camp – but the majority do (actually all of the full range driver camp that I’ve heard).

There were many good sounds and suites to be heard at the CES – and for my limited time there I enjoyed them greatly. Systems that had some obvious forethought into their setup and pairings (as opposed to those that are put together through deals over the telephone) really were able to show off the best attributes of high-end music reproduction. Vandersteen, Merlin, are two that come to mind. There is no substitute for good synergy and setup – it doesn’t matter how high the quality of the gear – if either synergy or set up are bad your sound is going to be sub par.

Well, flame away gang.

Cheers,

Oak

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