Best and Worst sound at the CES Show 2004

I really liked the Vandersteen/Joule room a lot. To me, easily best of show.

That said, I'm not a Vandersteen fan. Go figure :)

Many of my friends like the ARC/Wilson room the best.

There were 3 rooms that really impressed me.
There was a new company, April Electronics, with several product lines (Oasis, Eximus, Stello)of amps, dacs, cd players. Their products were featured in the Dali and Metal Sound Design rooms, both of which had very rich, detailed, and exciting yet non-fatiguing sound.
Audiopax' room had a sound that combined the best of solid state with the best of tube sound; detailed, musical, reasonably deep and tight bass.
Audio Aero's booth had a sound that really made you forget about the equipment, and listen to the music - rich, detailed, non-fatiguing. Bass transients were very soft,though, although sustained notes went very deep, and bowed bass notes had an appropriate level of vibrance. Synthesized bass didn't have the excitement factor of a good solid state system. If I didn't think about it, I didn't bother me, but on recordings that I knew had serious bottom-end oomph, it never materialized.
I was quite disappointed in the Rowland / Rockport room. The system really spotlighted the upper midrange, resulting in a very fatiguing sound. This was surprising, due to all the very positive press given to the ICE amps here recently, and the raves from the big mags over Rockport's speakers.
Vmps was also disappointing, as they often like to tout their best-of-show votes in their advertising. The system was very boomy. I understand VMPS has a way to adjust the boom factor, but it sounded like they didn't bother.

I didn't attend CES, but what amazes me about these reports is how two people can listen to the same system and make completely different observations about the sound. Then again, different times of day, different levels of listening fatigue, one's mood, various recordings playing during audition, etc... can all affect what we think. A perfect example of this were the comments posted by Celtic and Nrchy about VTL i.e. extreme polar opposite opinions.

I know that i've encountered this myself in the very same room. A few years back, i listened to a system that sounded very lush, full bodied, delicate and smooth. The system was all SS, but had a very definite "TOOOOB" flavouring to it. My Brother heard it and thought much the same thing.

When bringing another friend into that room the next day, the rep's were away from the room and were letting people play their own discs and use the system as they would their own. A very nice touch. One couple put in some type of Opera ( pardon my ignorance ) and proceeded to sit front and center with their eyes closed. After a short period of time, i wanted to run from the room. The sound was ear-shattering i.e. hard & glassy sounding upper mids, treble that was brittle and breaking up i.e. very piercing and anything but "smooth, soft & airy" as i had experienced the day before. I don't know if it was the disc or if something had changed in the system, but i can bet you one thing. I'll bet that the guy that i took to hear that system had a COMPLETELY different take on it than what my Brother and i had the day before.

Having said all of that, i've heard those same components in other systems and always thought that they had a "toob" flavouring to them. As such, it had to be the disc that they were playing. If someone had walked in the room at that time though, i'm quite certain that they would have thought the components / speakers sounded shrill as can be.

I ran into another situation in a room that had Vandy 5's powered by ARC gear a few years back. On one day, the bass was somewhat flabby sounding and lacked definition. After Richard dialed the system in a little better the next day, the bass had tremendous slam and impact. Some people thought that the bass was TOO visceral, including my Brother. Needless to say, the differences were night and day. Do you think that someone hearing the system on the first day would have the same opinion as a different person hearing the system the second day? I don't think so. I know i didn't.

Just goes to show that one really can't form much of an opinion about sound with show conditions, especially during one visit that is very brief to each room. This is why i try to hit each room that may have something i'm interested in several times on different days. This allows one to form a more qualified opinion of what's going on there and even that may not be all that accurate.

As such, i'm with Nate on this one. Shows are strictly for checking things out. Then again, if they can get a system dialed in to the point where it grabs your attention under show conditions, chances are, it can be even better under more idealized normal-use conditions in your home. After all, how many folks can get a system REALLY dialed in overnight in a completely foreign room with unknown acoustics? Industry professionals or not, we should take that into account. After all, many of the "industry professionals" that attend and set up the gear at shows are simply sales rep's, not engineers or acousticians. Sean
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I very much liked the Joseph Audio room. Excellent sound.
I will collect my thoughts and give my other impressions when I have more time.

I agree with Keithr. The Vandersteen/Joule room was very impressive. In fact, many rooms mentioned in this thread I agree with.

Purist seemed like it had some room issues in the bass, but otherwise was excellent. Wilson and VTL stuff may not always sound the best, but it's hard to argue they aren't SOTA and sound magnificent in most cases.

I also liked the StarSound room, but have to disagree about characterizing the price as "ONLY" $5k. It's definitely an appealing speaker, but a bit pricey in my book. They were also using $8k amps and a DCS stack that was probably $20k+, so I'm not sure that room qualified for "budget" status. Nevertheless, a great room which betterd many more expensive rooms, so maybe that's "budget" to some.

In fact, most rooms sounded pretty good, but almost none were "real world" systems. If you add the cables and room treatments, not too many rooms were less than $20k, with many being $40k+. That's alot of money for just 2 channels for most people.

The most intriguing and memorable thing I noted were the Murata supertweeters. I was surprised and impressed with what they did in an A/B demo. Again, they are pricey, but that seems to be the theme nowadays.