Show Report
by Chris Boylan
Enjoying the Music at Home
Entertainment Expo
– Is It Possible?
Part I
Greetings, fellow audio and home theater
junkies! I write these words bathed in the afterglow of Home
Entertainment Expo 2001 – the annual Mecca of audio and home theater
lovers everywhere. Overall, it was truly a revelatory experience, with
the opportunity to hear and see some of the very best audio and home theater
gear and discs available on the planet. Cutting edge equipment and
recordings… designers, dealers, reviewers, and musicians who are truly
passionate about what they do… individual systems worth a cool half a
million bucks… You would think this is the ideal place to sit back and
enjoy the music (and movies), right? Perhaps… perhaps not. Read on and
find out. Let me state up front that this is not a comprehensive guide to the show. In
two and a half days, it is simply not possible for one person to see all
the marvels this show had to offer. Nor is it a completely detailed
treatment of all of the equipment in each of the rooms that I did manage to
visit. 26 hours to see over 180 exhibitors sprawled over five floors with
horribly slow elevators – do the math. So for those hard-working
exhibitors not mentioned here, humblest apologies in advance – maybe next
year?
Secret Audio Reviewer Man
First some background… Our intrepid editor, publisher and fellow
music-lover Steve Rochlin offered me a press pass to gain admittance to the
show early – before the "great unwashed" as one particular
reviewer liked to refer to us regular audio geeks. This magical badge of honor
helps pave the way to getting the best treatment, the best seats and, sadly, a
slightly skewed view of the show. I chose instead to go completely incognito
– paying my own way, and sporting a non-descript badge that read simply
"Show Attendee."
I waited in lines, fought over the sweet spot with everyone else and was
privy to some behind-the-scenes action that just wouldn’t have been possible
with press credentials. Like, for example, a war of words between cable
designer and audio fanatic that progressed into the threat and even the
reality of physical violence. But more on that later…
Five Star Facilities… well, mostly…
With a few exceptions, the facilities and the organization of exhibits were
top-notch. The New York Hilton has apparently undergone significant
renovations lately and it shows in the quality of the rooms, the halls and
surroundings. Yes, there was some bleed between rooms as the low bass rumble
of a desperate dinosaur occasionally overpowered the string quartet next door.
But for the most part, everyone tried to play nice and it was certainly
possible to put on a great demo in any of the rooms. Future exhibitors might
take notes from Sony, whose multi-channel SACD demo room was dead
silent – completely covered with sound treatments – and who virtually
walked away with the best multi-channel sound in the show (in my humble
opinion, at least). But more on that later.
Some of the rooms on the upper floors were a little problematic. In most
cases, demo rooms had empty rooms between them and the next demo room – in
fact many of the rooms were multi-room suites, which guaranteed you'd have
an empty room on at least one side. But in the cases where demo rooms butted
up against each other, you got some bleed. Hey, this is a trade show and you
have to expect things not to be perfect. Now as for actually
getting
to the upper floors, well that's a totally different story.
The exhibits on Floors 2 and 4 and the live performances on the 3rd Floor
were easy to get to due to the escalators and a wide choice in elevators
serving the lower floors, but getting to the upper floors was nothing short
of a fiasco. Only one bank of three elevators served the 42nd
floor and it seemed like one elevator came about every 20 minutes, stuffed
beyond capacity with grumpy, sweaty, smelly audiofools (including yours
truly). And, of course, the 42nd floor housed some of the most
desirable and finest sounding systems like Innovative Audio's
wonderful Spectral and Wilson Watt/Puppy combo, the TacT
Audio/B&W system AudioReview.com's punchy but
affordable home theater/stereo set-up, the all Legend system, and the
EgglestonWorks demo system, among others. Getting to the upper floors
was definitely worth the trip, but the elevator wait was among the low
points of an otherwise excellent show.
First Stop – the Gift Shop
The first floor main entrance pavilion housed most of the software and
tweaky gadget vendors hawking their wares to a widely appreciative crowd. You
just can not find a lot of these wonderful recordings in Tower Records or in
your average local CD hut. It was great to have Chesky Records, Music
Direct, Classic Records, Elusive Disc, Acoustic Sounds, and May
Audio (among others) providing us with our fix of rare vinyl, 24/96 DVD,
SACD, DVD-Audio and MFSL Ultradiscs. Some vendors even allowed you to try
before you buy with on-site listening stations or the offer to test the disc
in one of the show reference systems before purchase. This is most
appreciated, particularly since many of the artists and recordings on
specialty labels are not as widely known as their major label counterparts.
A company called AIX Records also had a booth where they were giving
away free samples of a hybrid DVD-Video/DVD-Audio packed with 5.1 channel
music sourced from 96KHz/24Bit masters. One side was standard Dolby Digital
DVD, and one side was DVD-Audio. Alas, I was unable to audition the DVD-Audio
portion, but the standard DVD side included some decent sounding tracks, plus
some useful set-up information and a quick overview on the benefits of higher
sampling rates and larger sample words in digital audio. I imagine that the
info would be quite helpful to a digital audio newbie, but I take umbrage to
their claim that 24/96 digital recordings are superior to all analog
recordings. C’mon guys, I know you're trying to sell your upcoming catalog
of new recordings, but saying that everything that came before 24/96 was crap
is not the best way to do it.
Next Stop - Portable Pleasures
Also on the first floor was a portable audio paradise assembled and hosted
by god’s gift to the traveling or isolationist audiophile,
Headroom.
The inimitable and always friendly Tyll Hertsens, founder and president of
Headroom, and his team assembled a vast collection of the best headphones,
amps and headphone vendors in one location, with surprisingly little
bloodshed. Vendors included
Grado Labs,
Stax,
Sennheiser,
Beyer Dynamic and
Etymotic Research. (For Tyll’s inside
views on the reality involved in pulling off such a mighty feat, see his
report by
clicking
here.
The Grado booth proved extremely popular as they gave away one set of their
flagship RS-1 headphones plus their RA-1 headphone amp (total list price
somewhere around $1,000) each day to one very lucky show attendee. The first
day’s winner shyly asked, "Will these work on my boombox?" Yes,
ma’am! And another burgeoning audiophile is born...
Grado had on display their prototype surround sound headphones, employing
the new Dolby Headphone circuitry. These are designed to appeal to the home
theater aficionado who watches movies on the road or late at night and wants
to experience the joys of surround sound without bothering the neighbors or
waking significant others. I listened to the Super Speedway DVD on these
puppies and the effect was quite startling. There was a real sense of front
to back as well as left to right as CART racers seemed to zoom around my
head. How do they do that? When these ‘phones make it onto store
shelves, they’ll definitely be worth checking out by anyone who loves to
enjoy a good movie in the privacy of his own head.
Another stand-out from the crowd was the
Etymotics Research display
which included their ER4P and ER4S in-ear ‘phones.These headphones not
only sound fantastic, but they are the absolute best choice for travelers,
particularly frequent flyers. Etymotic’s in-ear canal design eliminates
virtually all background noise including ambient aircraft noise. Forget
about those horrible Bose noise-canceling headphones with their inadequate
and intrusive phase-cancellation nonsense. The Etymotics eliminate noise the
old fashioned way – with 23dB of acoustic isolation! It’s basically a
pair of comfortable earplugs with great-sounding headphones built in. If you
thought it impossible to enjoy music in a noisy environment, think again,
and get your hands and ears on a pair of Etymotic earphones. Mate them with
one of Headroom's portable headphone amps and you have instant portable
audio bliss. I took advantage of the on-site 5% discount to order my own
pair and I am eagerly awaiting their arrival.
I would be remiss were I not to mention Headroom's own gear. Tyll was
showcasing Headroom's newly redesigned flagship Headroom Max amp, fondly
referred to (appropriately enough) as the New Max. A six month labor
of love, this represents a total tweak of the already exceptional headphone
amp from the ground up. With substantial upgrades to the switches,
connectors and even the resistors, the New Max represents true state of the
art in headphone listening. Alas, I was not able to audition the New Max amp
myself (did I mention the time crunch here?) but the buzz at the show was
that it was something special. You can read all about it at Headroom’s
home page at www.headphone.com.
If it’s not Scottish, It’s Crap!
Continuing on into the bowels of the 2nd floor and
into the traditional displays of fine audio and home theater, I
came upon the Linn room. The entry room featured some
fine multi-channel home theater systems including an all LINN
signal chain from pre/processor to amps to speakers. Video
monitors of choice were a 42" widescreen plasma display in
one corner and a dead-sexy Loewe widescreen CRT monitor
in the other. All in all, some fine sights and sounds were
emanating from these systems, with all the finesse of this
purebred Scottish system (no, they were not showing Highlander,
though perhaps that would have been apropos).
Linn Komri
But the real treat was to be found in the backroom where the
mild-mannered Scot, Ivor Tiefenbrun himself (founder of Linn)
was spinning black and silver discs to show off his new KOMRI
studio monitors. With a usable frequency response of 10Hz to
40KHz, and built-in powered woofers employing active servo
technology, the KOMRIs are an impressive set of speakers – for
$40K a pair they should be! And in the true spirit of
excess, they were quad-amped (!) with Linn’s Klimax amplifiers
all around. The front end consisted of a CD-12 for silver discs
and the audiophile favorite LP-12 for vinyl feeding a Linn
control amp .So we’re basically talking about a system price
well north of $100,000.
How did it sound, you ask? Like a studio engineer’s wet dream! I have
participated in a fair amount of studio recording (as a performer) in some
pretty high quality studios in New York City. Sadly even many well-regarded
studios consider the execrable Yamaha NS-10M monitors to be "reference
standards" (which may be one reason why so much popular music ends up
sounding like so much noise on a decent Hifi system). The Komri’s give the
term "reference standard" new meaning.
Supreme accuracy… tight tuneful bass… warm
musicality. Many superlatives come to mind. But more importantly, my toes
started tapping as soon as the Tracy Chapman tune started playing. Of course
they threw a precise, well-defined soundstage and recreated the timbre and
texture of female vocals in a highly realistic manner, but more importantly
– they were fun! I dug sitting there listening to them. To check out their
portrayal of percussion and drum sounds (something with which I am more than
passingly familiar) I asked them to put on Stevie Ray Vaughan’s Couldn’t
Stand the Weather LP. Drums sounded real and had the proper attack and
decay and the finer details like the subtle hi-hat closing in time with the
beat in the intro of the title track were presented with realism and
finesse. I only wish more studios had reference monitors as accurate as
these. Then maybe we’d have more mainstream recordings that approached the
quality and realism of the audiophile label stuff.
The Sonic Wonder that is Super Audio Compact Disc
Yes, you have probably heard the hype. And you may be aware of the format
war brewing between DVD-Audio and Super Audio Compact Disc (SACD). But I'm
hear to tell you, friends, that Sony's new multi-channel SACD system
provided the best multi-channel sound reproduction I have ever heard, bar
none. The system on display was comprised of their new flagship SACD player,
the SCD-XA777ES.With a list price of $3,000, this player was driving a
quintet of Pass amplifiers, which in turn fed five of Sony’s SS-M9ED
speakers. When the first cut came on – a choral recording produced
and engineered by DMP's Tom Jung – the boundaries of the room disappeared
and I was literally fooled into thinking I was in the hall where the
performance took place.
It certainly helps that Tom Jung is an engineering genius and an audio
purist. The rear channels were apparently used only for room ambience with
one mic toward the rear of each corner of the hall capturing the natural
acoustics and reverberation of the space. Images were rock solid, vocal
textures were unbelievably accurate, with no noticeable colorations and the
soundstage was wide open. But trying to describe the sound in quantifiable
terms almost seems inadequate. It sounded real. End of story.
When I went back to the room a second time, sharing the experience with a
budding young audiophile friend, we were treated to a wonderful recording
that technically "does not exist." It was another Tom Jung
creation – but one that has not been released yet. This one was a Jazz
trio with the drums placed precisely in the left of the soundstage, the
stand-up acoustic bass in the center, and the piano on the right. Again, the
rear channels were used for acoustic ambience only and again, the illusion
of three-dimensional space was almost unsettling. I want my multi-channel
SACD and I want it now! I also want a few of these Sony speakers… they
ROCK!!
Sony SS-M9ED Speaker and Pass Amplifier
Did He Just Say "Sony Speakers Rock!!??"
I never met a pair of Japanese speakers that I liked… until now. I've
been a fan of Sony's ES line of CD players, tape decks, preamps and power
amps since the late 80's when I used to work in a Hi-Fi Shop down south
and had a lot of time on my hands to audition and compare equipment. But
as for Sony speakers – or really any Japanese manufacturer’s speakers
for that matter - well, I have not heard much to write home about. But I
forgave them… after all, you can't do everything right, can you?
Apparently Sony can.
The SS-M9ED is a fairly traditional design - 4 way, with five drivers
in a trapezoidal kind of cabinet with the tweeter free-standing on top of
the cabinet to eliminate diffraction. According to Sony, they are "optimized
for Direct Stream Digital" (DSD) sources, like SACD. But frankly that
sounds like a bunch of marketing malarkey to me, not unlike the ridiculous
"Digital Ready" moniker of the early days of CD. I am sure they
would sound wonderful with a killer analog rig on the front end.
Technically, they are not Japanese - these babies were designed and
manufactured entirely in the United States. But still, the days of
domination of the high-end speaker market with American, British and
Canadian brand names may be waning. But maybe a little extra competition
from the East is not such a bad thing? The SS-M9ED ain’t cheap – $8,000
each – but from what I heard at the show, they may actually be worth it.
Hell, I lost more in the stock market last year than the price of this
system, and listening to these speakers would have been a whole lot more
fun than watching my tech stocks tumble!! In other words… it's all
relative…
Into the breach of Home Theater land
In other rooms on the second floor were various home theater displays.
Sony did a fine job of illustrating the benefits of progressive scan DVD
– or really the benefits of line doubling in general – by showing a
comparison of interlaced vs. progressive output. If you’re already a
video maven, or are not even slightly interested in video technology, then
skip down a couple of paragraphs to get back to the non-techie stuff – you
have been warned! And now back to our regularly scheduled
geek-speak…
In Sony's example of an interlaced video signal, diagonal lines clearly
displayed a stair-step effect caused by the presence of only half the
frame information on the screen at any one time. This is an artifact of
the NTSC interlacing process. In order to accommodate the 60 Hz power
standard of in the US, the NTSC format consists of 30 frames per second,
which are split into two "fields" or half-frames that each
contain one half of the screen information and are displayed once every 60th
of a second. To simplify things, let's say the even scan lines are
displayed in field1, then the odd scan lines are displayed in field 2. As
each field is displayed, the previous field is still on the screen. This
means that the fields on the screen are effectively out of sync half the
time – you may have field 2 of one frame displayed with field 1 of the
next frame. Our eyes don’t normally notice this, but as screens become
larger, the lack of resolution and the sync problem becomes more apparent.
Sony then showed the same DVD clip from the progressive output of the
DVD player and the stair-stepping and jagged edges disappeared. There are
two parts to this process. A line doubler stores each field in memory and
reassembles two fields into one complete frame, which it then displays all
at once (rather than half a frame at a time). This effectively doubles the
resolution of the image and it means that fields will never be out of
sync. Plus the 3:2 pull-down process (which is a feature of any good
progressive DVD player) corrects for the fact that film is captured at 24
frames per second yet NTSC video stores this at 30 frames per second. The
duplicate field information is removed from the signal so that the
progressive player effectively outputs the exact same 24 frames to the
video monitor as they came in from the original film source. The
conclusion? Interlaced video - BAD, progressive video - GOOD.
But Sony’s Home Theater demo was otherwise less than impressive. They
had a major glitch in playback of some high-def source material they had
of a live concert. This only goes to show ya that HDTV – particularly
HDTV recorders – still ain’t quite there yet.
In Sony’s video room, they had some fine-looking plasma and rear
projection HDTV displays, but the much-hyped new LCD projector seemed to
be having some trouble as it was only powered up on the first day of the
show. When it was on, it provided a very sharp and detailed picture on
approximately a seven foot screen. It wasn’t quite as detailed or
artifact free as a good CRT projector, but it was not far off, and it’s
priced at a fairly reasonably $7999.Also, I was disappointed that there
were no true HDTV CRT monitors to be found. There is some good news for
tube-lovers though. After some false hope last year (with the cancellation
of two HDTV direct view monitors in 2000), Sony is finally releasing a
replacement for their KW-34HD1 High Definition 34" direct view CRT
monitor. Unresolved issues related to the security standards as well as
connection standards for HDTV have apparently caused the delays in the
set’s introduction. Although these issues are still not 100% ironed out,
Sony promises that this fall will see the introduction of a brand new
34” widescreen 16:9 direct view set with a built in HDTV tuner and
i-link connections (a.k.a. firewire, a.k.a. IEEE1394).The suggested list
price? A measly $4,000.This may seem expensive for a 34" TV, but then
again, it’s less than half the price of its predecessor, so stop yer
whining!
A $20,000 Bargain Basement System
OK, you know things are getting weird or inflation is running wild when a
$20,000 home theater is considered a "bargain." But at this show,
where many of the systems ranged in price from $100K to $500K and in some
cases the cables alone cost more than my car, it is easy to see how we could
become a bit jaded. The bargain system in question could be found in the 6th
Avenue Electronics room. While I personally have had a bad experience
with this dealer (years ago), the staff on hand was friendly and
accommodating, and the demo system was well put together, offering good bang
for the buck.
The system consisted of about $6,800 worth of Paradigm speakers
(the Reference Studio system), Anthem pre/pro and amps, a Sharp
LCD projector and the ubiquitous Stewart projection screen (most of
the better home theater displays at the show included Stewart screens). The
clip was the meteor strike from the movie Dinosaur. The sound was
punchy and unrestrained and the Sharp projector threw a nice big, bright
and… well… SHARP picture upon the Stewart screen. As attached as I am to
the picture quality of a good direct view monitor, there is something to be
said for the sheer impact of a larger projection image. Considering how some
of the much more expensive systems at the show looked and sounded, I would
say that this "little" $20K system actually was a good bargain and
I’m sure many folks would be absolutely thrilled to own a system like
this.
Aluminum, Aluminum Everywhere... and not a Toaster in
Sight
At the end of the hallway, with a line that seemed to go on
forever was a room that housed a very special system. With a
price tag of over $500,000, the system was comprised of only four
brands – a
Sony CRT projector, a
Faroudja video
processor, a
Stewart screen, and absolutely everything
else, from source to speakers made by a little company called
Krell.
Audiophiles know Krell as a maker of powerhouse amplifiers and
ultra high end preamps as well as some of the most outrageous (and
outrageously priced) digital source components. Now they have
added a DVD player to their arsenal (video circuitry by Faroudja)
as well as a full line of home theater speakers.
Krell's LAT-1 with Master Reference Subwoofer
and Krell Power Amplifier
Jim from Krell proudly described the design and features of the
new additions to the Krell family. You see this was the world
premier of the Krell "Lossless Acoustic Transducer"
LAT-1 speakers. Featuring an all aluminum enclosure (curved
to minimize diffraction), a one inch tweeter flanked by two 5.25"
midranges in a D’Appolito array, and the custom-designed 8"
woofers, the LAT-1s were unlike anything I had seen before. Four
of the LAT-1s were joined by a Krell center channel speaker as
well as two, count ‘em TWO Master Reference Subwoofers. At 425
pounds each, with 15" drivers capable of 3" excursion,
housed in a solid aluminum enclosures, these puppies could move
some serious air! The new Krell speakers come in your choice of
colors as long as your choice is silver or black.
On the video side, Faroudja was showing off their DVP-5000 processor,
which is a modular piece that is customized for a customer’s specific
display. Robert from Faroudja Labs boasted about their extensive (and well
earned) patents in the video realm and emphasized that they just do video.
They do not do anything else. They do not do audio… They do not make
toasters…They just do video. And they do it well. The DVP-5000 in this
system was set to MAX WARP – it took a 1080i (interlaced) High Definition
source and line-doubled that to a whopping 1080P (progressive) – the
ultimate in High Definition Television! The only video display they could
find that could accommodate this kind of bandwidth is a CRT projector – in
this case the Sony G-90, which sports three hefty 9” guns. After Robert
finished his spiel, he stepped back, flipped on the HDTV player, and the
audience held its collective breath…
Alright… who snuck a film projector in here?!
Only one word describes the picture that I saw in that room – WOW! This
was more than film-like. This was a window on reality. The High Def clip
they showed was The Egg’s Journey from Dinosaur. The camera
follows a prehistoric bird carrying a dino egg back to the nest to feed her
chicks. The bird flies over a breathtaking vista made up of vivid
landscapes, waterfalls and cliffs. I tried to see scan lines. I looked hard
for digital nasties in the details of the flora and the textures of the
rocks and cliffs. I squinted trying to spot trails behind fast moving
images, but they were nowhere to be found. This was, by far, the most fluid
– the most analog – looking digital video signal at the show.
The all Krell audio was also quite impressive, but the video was almost too
good – it was distracting. I had to remember to pay attention to the
sound. The
Dinosaur HDTV segment was stereo only, but they also
featured multi-channel mixes using standard DVD segments. One clip was from
Fight
Club. This clip included a good blend of music, spoken voice and
effects, plus a mid-air collision thrown in for good measure. The Krell
system definitely had the impact that people expect from a high-end home
theater system. The Master Reference subs produced bone-rattling lows
without a hint of strain. The integration between mains, center and
surrounds was completely seamless and coherent. Dialog sounded natural and
the music and effects were clear and punchy. Definitely a good sounding
system but the sound just didn’t blow me away as much as the picture did.
I would want to audition the Krell system with high quality music sources
before making a final judgment on them.
All in all, the first floor of the show included some really fun and
really impressive sights and sounds but there were more surprises in store
on the upper floors. All this and more will be covered in our next
segment… so stay tuned and don't forget to… Enjoy the Music…
Click here to
continue to Part II
Click here to see
a
complete listing of show exhibitors.
Click here to see our
1999 show coverage.
High-Performance Audio Reviews
