I wasn't at CES 2004, but I can comment on this years show.
I walked into the Wavac room, listened for maybe one minute and hit the bricks. It wasn't worth sitting through. I heard better sound in rooms with $5000 amps.
Best sound of the show was in the VTL room. I have never spent much time with VTL, so I had never formed an opinion one way or another, and I've certainly never seen the big Wilson's where I live, but the system stopped me in my tracks. I thought I would just take a quick peek, and ended up sitting for quite a while. The system was open dynamic without being overly detailed and unmusical. I could have spent a lot of time there, but there was simply too much to see and hear!!!
The Purist room was in 'my' top three, they showed their Venustus cables with a Nagra pre-amp, and a Swedish (?) amp and CDP that I had never heard of, but they did a good job. Another winner was the Star Sound Technologies room. They were showing a new pair of monitors with their own monoblocks, rack, and points, with some dcs electronics. My goodness that little system sounded good!!! The speakers with stands are only $5000 and roll off above 35Hz, but in their room there was not an obvious lack of bass. Virtual Dynamics was worth stopping in. Rick was a lot of fun to talk to, a man of integrity in a world of charletans (that doesn't look right, where's the spell check option???).
There was a big electronics company that had an active speaker setup there which I REALLY wanted to see, and hear. I was very disappointed. In the room they sounded poor, which is not to say they are not a great speaker.
People who go to the show and really condemn a manufacturer or product for sounding terrible are being disingenuous. The best rooms suck, and none of us would buy a house that offered nothing better than the tiny rooms in which these systems are shown. There were obvious attempts to tame the rooms, which worked to a certain degree, but the manufacturers I talked to told me that this is not as much a time to strut their stuff as a time to meet people, and shake some hands. Deals are made by building understandings/relationships between retailers and manufacturers.
Who buys a product based on how it sounded in the store??? What retailer would buy a product based on how it sounded at CES or THE Show???
I had a great time, listened to some great systems, and some of them even sounded good!
I walked into the Wavac room, listened for maybe one minute and hit the bricks. It wasn't worth sitting through. I heard better sound in rooms with $5000 amps.
Best sound of the show was in the VTL room. I have never spent much time with VTL, so I had never formed an opinion one way or another, and I've certainly never seen the big Wilson's where I live, but the system stopped me in my tracks. I thought I would just take a quick peek, and ended up sitting for quite a while. The system was open dynamic without being overly detailed and unmusical. I could have spent a lot of time there, but there was simply too much to see and hear!!!
The Purist room was in 'my' top three, they showed their Venustus cables with a Nagra pre-amp, and a Swedish (?) amp and CDP that I had never heard of, but they did a good job. Another winner was the Star Sound Technologies room. They were showing a new pair of monitors with their own monoblocks, rack, and points, with some dcs electronics. My goodness that little system sounded good!!! The speakers with stands are only $5000 and roll off above 35Hz, but in their room there was not an obvious lack of bass. Virtual Dynamics was worth stopping in. Rick was a lot of fun to talk to, a man of integrity in a world of charletans (that doesn't look right, where's the spell check option???).
There was a big electronics company that had an active speaker setup there which I REALLY wanted to see, and hear. I was very disappointed. In the room they sounded poor, which is not to say they are not a great speaker.
People who go to the show and really condemn a manufacturer or product for sounding terrible are being disingenuous. The best rooms suck, and none of us would buy a house that offered nothing better than the tiny rooms in which these systems are shown. There were obvious attempts to tame the rooms, which worked to a certain degree, but the manufacturers I talked to told me that this is not as much a time to strut their stuff as a time to meet people, and shake some hands. Deals are made by building understandings/relationships between retailers and manufacturers.
Who buys a product based on how it sounded in the store??? What retailer would buy a product based on how it sounded at CES or THE Show???
I had a great time, listened to some great systems, and some of them even sounded good!