CES 2017 Show Report From The Trenches
Friends, music, and tons of great gear in Las Vegas. CES 2017
Show Report By Dwayne Carter

  We spent our final hours wandering the big, expensive rooms. We stumbled into Lamm Industries wonderful demo room. The amps looked very familiar. Hmmm...

The folks from Chord Audio Electronics were very kind, taking the time to describe all of their gear even though it was the end of the day. They blessed us with a very loud and visceral demo, for our troubles. I told them that our Editor and Chief would be contacting them for some demo gear... Oh Steven?!

We ran through Focal on our way out. They had a static display of the droid-like, Stella Utopia EM speakers. I was a little bummed that they were not being demo'd, be they were focusing on another line.

Our final room for the show was the huge "pods" from ELAC. Because it was the end of the show, they had the Concentro speakers rocking. I didn't want to stop them for pricing, but you can assume they cost more than most people's cars and seems €60,000 is the answer.

Overall, CES 2017 was a successful and (semi) relaxing trip for Yours Truly. Yes there are fewer and fewer high-end audio manufacturers/rooms, yet the quality of the sound was very high. Where else can you hang out with your friends, listen to (and view) equipment that you will never afford, argue the pros and cons of tubes versus solid-state amplifiers, and dine and drink until the wee hours of the morning. Then get up and do it all over again?! Nowhere but CES Las Vegas, baby!

I have already booked my room for next year. See you there.

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