Into the Dessert

Hosted in the ever-opulent Las Vegas, this year found me with fewer days and lower funds available for my annual pilgrimage to the yearly event in our industry, the Consumer Electronics Show. While the lure of the futuristic non-audio gizmos housed the Las Vegas Convention Center has lost its appeal to me given the throbbing, herd-like crowds one must contend with, the High End exhibitors who populate the Alexis Park still garner my respect and attention. And, Mike Maloney's concurrent running and now somewhat less renegade companion event, The Home Entertainment Show, is now in it's fifth year.

The CEA (Consumer Electronics Association), the host organization for the CES, is claiming this to be the biggest show ever, boasting an attendance of just over 119,000 show goers. While I have no reason to doubt their numbers, I must say I don't think this was the biggest event in Las Vegas to date. Regardless of attendance, this year's event was a very good show.

I'm used to wandering through the campuses of exhibits, finding one oasis of good sound here and perhaps another there; maybe a total of 5 or 6 at the Alexis Park and about that many more at the host site of T.H.E. Show. Well, this year, though the truly great sounding rooms were scattered about both venues in numbers like that, in-between those truly harmonious oases, I found that rooms were in general more musical and more inviting than years past. Another good thing this year, though many rooms were using the standard "audiophile" demo material, I was pleased to hear more "real" music being used to engage listeners than ever before. These overall good trends signal a new healthy attitude in our industry to my mind and one that is both quite welcomed and long overdue.

Happy Odyssey

My commuter Fairchild Dornier 328 flight left a snowy, 15-degree South Bend at 6:45 a.m. and, after a brief touchdown in Cincinnati to change to a much larger Boeing 767-300, I landed just shy of 6 hours later at McCarran airport in sunny 68 degree Las Vegas at 10:25 a.m. To me, the worst part of the trip was about to begin, that of taking the shuttle to the baggage claim area then waiting in the enormously long and slow moving line to catch a cab to my accommodation. Well, I was in for a pleasant surprise this year. Not only were the lines shorter than normal, they were moving a breakneck speed. I found myself stepping out of my cab and into the lobby of the Sam Remo Casino and Hotel by 11:45 a.m. Honestly, in all my years of traveling to this winter electronics convention, this was my least stressful, most glitch and nuisance free trip.

Well, as I had arrived at my hotel long before the daily check out time, I was not surprised to find that my room was not yet ready. So, after checking my bag with the Bell Captain, I was on one of the Shuttles headed for the Alexis Park to pick up my press credentials. Once that was done, I was loose on the Alexis Park campus. I was surprised that at this point of the show, Friday just past noon, there seemed to be such light foot traffic through the hotel. I was beginning to become concerned that the attendance for this year's event may be drastically down.

One of the first folks I ran into was the friendly smiling face of Dusty Vawter, of Channel Islands Audio. We agreed that we should get together over a meal sometime in the next two days to catch up over the last year's events. He also filled me in on his new VPP-1 phono stage, and mentioned that he had one available for me to take home to review.

The VPP-1 will come with a wall-wart power supply like the VDA-1. Also like the VDA-1, it will accept the VAC-1 power supply, and will be in the same "dinky" case. It will have selectable gain (40 or 50 dB) and capacitance (0 or 100 pf), but will have a place on the PC Board for the insertion a fixed value capacitance as well. Resistive loading is selectable between 47 k or 100 ohms, but can easily be changed. The unit is aimed primarily at MM and high output MC carts and will retail for, drum roll please, $299! More once the unit is in house.

Shortly after seeing Dusty while on my way to meet my good friend and Connecticut audio dealer Jonathan Goldman, I ran into Bright Star Audio's Barry Kohan. Barry was handing out samples of his new and improved Isonode™ feet, his effective and VERY affordable isolation product. They come in two sizes; the large units are just 1.25 " × ¾" tall, hold up to 42 pounds per set and are a ridiculously low $19.95 for a set of four. The smaller Isonode™ isolators are just ¾" × ⅜" tall, isolate up to 30 pounds per set and sell for just $12.50! Both sizes come with free shipping to the U.S. and Canada. The set he gave me last year, which occupy a permanent place under my center channel speaker atop my Mitsubishi rear projection monitor, seem slightly firmer; the new ones seem to be bordering on the density, sponginess and "stickiness" of sorbothane. Regardless, given their price and their effectiveness, you cannot go wrong with these ridiculously affordable isolation tools. Good job, Barry!

Well, after about another 30 hellos to friends and readers, I finally made it to find Jonathan. And, I have to say that by 1:00 or so now, the foot traffic had picked up immensely, to the point of congesting the narrow paths throughout the Hotel's many buildings, completely allying my concerns of a diminished attendance. Not long after running into Jonathan, our mutual friend and audio dealer in Atlanta, Steven Harris, showed up. Both he and Jonathan were anxious to have me stop by the Usher speaker room to get my opinion on these products. With Jonathan obligated to assist in the Harmonic Technology room, Steve and I headed off to see the Taiwan manufacturers products.

The Usher products are designed by none other than Dr. Joseph D'Appolito, so I admit that I had elevated expectations. First up was their $8,050 AC-10's. Using their own 10" woofer and what looked like the Accuton ceramic 1-inch tweeter and 4-inch midrange, the cabinets were just gorgeous and offered sonic performance to match. Now, I didn't know any of the electronics (all Usher branded amplification and sources), but what I was hearing was very good. I was then ushered (pun intended) into the "back" room of the suite, to where the smaller, more affordable Compass series of speakers were housed. I apologize for not having any photos, but when I stopped back to take them, the room was closed! Given my limited time this year, I never had a chance to go back. All their products can be seen at their website, so have a look there. Rest assured, you're going to hear more from these guys.

Here again I was struck by the remarkable quality and beauty of the cabinet construction. These cabinets were just remarkable, as were the matching speaker stands. It just drove home the reason why many manufacturers are going to Taiwan built products. The cost versus the resultant quality and appearance is hard to argue with. I was next blown away by the performance of their Compass X-719 mini monitor. A mere 10.6"W × 16"D × 15.75"T, the speakers simply sang with a voice much larger than their diminutive physical presence should allow. I reiterate that I didn't know any of the electronics that was again all branded Usher, but the sound was remarkably promising. I am supposed to get some of these speakers to audition so stay tuned.

For the most part, I spent the rest of Friday stopping in to say hello to colleagues and friends. By six o'clock, as the campus started to close down for the day, I met up with our own Leon Rivkin and we headed back to the San Remo. After claiming my bag, checking into my room and a brief freshening up, I met Leon and Stealth Audio Cables Serguei Timachev in the "rear" of the Pipedreams/VAC suite to enjoy a nice buffet.

Though I never got a drink there, I did spend a couple of enjoyable hours discussing world affairs and martial arts with Dan Meinwald, US marketer of E.A.R., Townshend and Helius, Tim de Paravicini, the designer of the wonderful Esoteric Audio Research products, and Alan Kafton, maker of the very cool audiodharma Cable Cooker. What I found oddly refreshing was that, though we made reference to the circumstances that had brought us all together, we managed to discuss for an extended period of time ANYTHING but our obvious common discipline.

Towards 8:00, I checked in on my messages and was happy to find that our own Bluport Jazz man and Pro Sound reporter Jim Merod had been trying to reach me. Jim is a very hip and humorous cat, not to mention one hell of a recording engineer, and I couldn't wait to sit down, toss back a few and get caught up. I called his room and we ended up in the lounge at the San Remo. We discussed our magazine, our love of this industry and music over several cognacs when we were joined by Oliver Solomon, of Delve Audio. Next to join our impromptu party were publisher Clement Perry and writer and soon-to-be-head of the UltraAudio website, Greg Petan. Next, T.H.E. Show CEO Mike Maloney dropped by. We eventually welcomed Halcro electronics US distributor Philip O'Hanlon to our growing table of unconventional connectionists. The conversation and camaraderie lasted till 'round midnight.

Just as we were about to call it a nigh, Robert Smith poked his head out of the Wisdom Audio suite, just opposite the San Remo lounge, to ask if we wanted to stop in and listen. Given the high praise Clement had to offer earlier that evening about his experience in the suite, we didn't even have to think about it. As Jim, Clement and Mike headed on into the suite, I took off to my room to grab a bottle of 12 year old, special reserve single malt that I had brought along for just such an occasion. Though the Accuphase CD player gave out and we never did get to hear the $225,000 Rush speaker system that night, we did proceed to get a bit tipsy, have a wonderful time and listen to some of the other lesser priced Wisdom systems. By 3:00 a.m. when we all started to agree we should give it a rest, I heard this one Black Jack table calling my name.

I sat down, and the next thing I knew, Paul Garner of VSA was standing behind me tapping me on the shoulder. "Don't you ever sleep," he quipped. I looked up and was surprised to see him in a jacket and wearing his show badge. I asked him what he was doing so early and he just smiled, said, "Look at your watch," as he waked away. I nearly fell off my chair as I noted that it was now 8:00 a.m. I had been playing Black Jack for something like 5 hours! Well, a quick look at my chips revealed I was up about $320, so I grabbed my chips, cashed out and grabbed a shower.

I had a breakfast meeting with Jim Merod at the café in the Hard Rock Hotel just across Harmon Ave. from the Alexis, and then the day began in earnest. With all the preliminaries and back-story out of the way, we can get to the meat of the show; all the cool sounding rooms and awesome looking gear. But that is my next report.