CES 2008

Definitive's Mythos SSA50: Is single-speaker the future of home audio?

(Credit: Definitive Technology)

You won't find a more institutionally conservative category in the consumer electronics space than home audio. More than any other industry segment, audio is one where technological advances tend to be lamented rather than celebrated, viewed with suspicion rather than embraced. And that's understandable: Subpar speakers are now passed off as good enough and used to listen to digital music, which is often highly compressed compared with CD or (even better) LP equivalents. And the music itself is coming from a dying recording industry, struggling to stay alive in the digital age, and often relegated to background music--fewer and fewer people are actually listening to the music anymore.

That's not to say that there weren't some home-audio highlights at this year's show. As predicted, single-speaker audio is taking off: Boutique manufacturers such as Polk Audio and Definitive Technology are turning their considerable expertise to single-speaker, as are mainstream names like Philips and Samsung. It's not totally new, of course--plenty of options already exist--but the clear desire for consumers to have a décor-friendly audio component to match their flat-screen TVs is undeniable.

One of the attractions of single-speaker units is the desire to cut down on the speakers, and the resulting speaker wire snaking throughout the room. The other alternative is going wireless altogether. It seemed like wireless speaker technologies were everywhere in 2007, with Neosonik's being the most impressive. The company's been offering peeks at its wireless speaker technology for the past couple of years, but it's now pledging to begin delivering actual product before the end of 2008. The company hopes to license its technology to other manufacturers under the Airpower moniker--but with so many nascent competing standards, it'll be quite a while before we see a Bluetooth-like standard in this arena.

Another carry-over from previous years was the complete dominance of the iPod. It's getting nearly impossible to find a home-audio product without an iPod dock. But unlike the bulky outboard docks of years past, manufacturers are integrating the dock directly into the main chassis of their products: all of Panasonic's 2008 home-theater-in-a-box systems have a nifty fold-down iPod dock built directly into the main head unit (as do JVC's P-Series TVs). Speaking of integration: Panasonic followed Samsung's lead by delivering an HTIB with a built-in Blu-ray player. And given that format's recent tailwind versus the increasingly struggling HD DVD, that's a trend that will only accelerate.

Needless to say, the iPod isn't the only way to listen to digital music. There are online services such as Rhapsody and Pandora, plus thousands of free Internet radio stations--not to mention the gigabytes of songs sitting on your computer's hard drive. And that's why Logitech's new Squeezebox Duet is so appealing. The Wi-Fi-enabled system lets you access all of those musical options from an iPod-like remote that fits in the palm of your hand. But unlike Apple's ubiquitous music box, you hear the resulting music through the big speakers of your home stereo (to which the networked Squeezebox base station is attached). It's not a new concept--see the Sonos Digital Music System or past iterations of Philips Streamium products--but the lower price ($400 versus $1,000 for the two-room Sonos) and consumer-friendly Logitech name gives the Duet the potential to expand the audio-streaming market to a much wider audience. Can't part with your iPod? Check out the Creative Xdock HD, which puts your iPod videos on your TV's big screen in addition to streaming the music to other rooms in the house.

Of course, that's all the mainstream stuff. For the real nitty-gritty of the CES home-audio experience, you need to go beyond the main CES show floor and hit the Venetian. The high-end guys are camped out in the upstairs suites, as well as the Sands Expo Center in the bowels of the hotel (right next to the porn show, in fact). There you'll find some of the more exotic, expensive, elaborate, and downright amazing audio products. It's too bad the audiophiles are exiled to the Sands--because spending just a few minutes with them will inevitably give you an insight into true music appreciation. Inevitably, these are passionate folks who truly love their work, and want to share an experience--not just sell you a product. And that's something that CES could use a lot more of.

Anthony Gallo Acoustics (AGA) is displaying its all-new Reference 5LS line source loudspeaker at CES '08. The towering speaker stands 78-inches tall, boasts twelve aluminum 4-inch woofers, seven cylindrical tweeters, and eight 4-inch carbon-fiber midrange drivers, each housed it its own 5-inch spherical enclosure. The brushed stainless steel design is a knockout. I have heard the 5LS and think it'll likely become an audiophile classic (I have a review coming in a future issue of Home Entertainment magazine). The 5LS projects a gigantic, life-size sound. Yes friends, size still matters.

This loudspeaker is the culmination of more than 25 years of loudspeaker design research by Anthony Gallo. The 5LS offers options for bi- or tri-wiring, as well as bi- or tri-amping. The combined surface area of the twelve 4-inch rear-firing woofers nearly equal the surface area of a 15-inch subwoofer, while offering the speed and transparency a large single driver cannot match. AGA offers an optional Reference SA amplifier to drive the woofers. The amp allows the speaker to be positioned for optimal imaging and soundstaging without compromising bass performance.

The Ion Audio LP2CD turntable allows you to record your old records directly to blank CDs.

(Credit: Donald Bell/CNET Networks)

Ion Audio had a slew of new USB turntables on display at CES this year. Of all the new models, the turntable I'm the most interested to get my hands on is the LP2CD, a direct-to-CDR vinyl archiving solution.

The LP2CD includes an all-metal platter, an LCD display, a USB connection, a switchable line/phono audio output, and a front-loading CD player and recorder. At $449, the LP2CD turntable doesn't come cheap. There's something to be said, however, for paying a little extra to take a computer out of the vinyl archiving equation (although the LP2CD can be used with a computer as well).

The Ion Audio LP2PC should be available within the first quarter of this year.

The Chagall

(Credit: Loiminchay Audio)

While the mid-fi brands scramble to load on the latest techno gizmos and race to the bottom with ever cheaper prices and quality, high-end audio brands shoot for the moon. Take Loiminchay Audio, manufacturers of limited-edition speakers for well-heeled audiophiles are introducing their wares at CES in Las Vegas today.

The Loiminchay Audio speakers are artisan-crafted from sensually shaped layers of solid Birch MultiPly. The interior space of each speaker is machined out, the driver holes opened, and substantial bracing added, resulting in a tremendously non-resonant driver support structure. The speaker is then finished with sixteen coats of lacquer--Loiminchay's three models are named after great painters--Degas and Chagall and Kandinsky. The speakers are designed in New York by Loiminchay's owner Patrick Chu, and built in China.

The Chagall's cabinet mounts an 8-inch woofer in a 1-inch thick concrete board wrapped with high-quality leather to produce a remarkably rigid, non-resonant driver platform. The woofer's bass extends down to 28Hz, and the speaker's treble reaches up to a remarkable 50kHz with its optional diamond tweeter (yes real diamonds, chosen because diamonds are harder and therefore immune to the flexing of more common plastic and metal tweeter dome materials).

The Chagall is available on order in beautiful MultiClear lacquer finish at $35,000/pr, and in a piano lacquer finish for $40,000/pr. The Chagall equipped with the Diamond Tweeter is $48,500 in clear, and $53,500 in piano lacquer finish.

Damn, it looks like it means business

(Credit: Burmester Audiosysteme)

Today in Las Vegas, Burmester Audiosysteme, Germany's legendary manufacturer of ultra high-performance electronics and speakers, is exhibiting its 069 Reference Line CD Player. This amazing machine draws oohs and aahs even before it makes a sound, it's that gorgeous.

The 069 CD Player is a cutting-edge digital playback system, created for well heeled connoisseurs of music and German industrial design. Its audiophile credentials come in the form of its proprietary belt drive motor system that spins the CDs (instead of the off-the-shelf direct-drive mechanisms other manufacturers use).

The 069 CD Player's spiked feet may be set directly on the its proprietary aluminum base (supplied as standard with the unit), and it uses special carbon-fiber spring pucks to isolate the sensitive electronics from external interference. The player also boasts newly developed and 96 and 192-kHz oscillators with minimal phase noise and high thermal stability. Burmester's 069 Reference Line CD Player is available with a silver housing with a chrome front panel at a suggested price of, whoa, $49,995!

Just plug the speakers into an outlet and you're set to go.

(Credit: CNET)

Almost everyone who's into home theater loves surround sound, but even the staunchest audiophiles have to admit that the inevitable result--a room full of criss-crossing speaker cables--sours the deal. Just about every manufacturer is on a quest to kill the wires, but the solutions so far have had drawbacks--single speaker surround-sound systems just doesn't sound as good as a full 5.1 system; wireless rear speakers usually still have wires, exhibit an audible hiss or compression artifacts, and/or often use the interference-prone 2.4GHz wireless spectrum. Neosonik's solution avoids most of these pitfalls by using an AV controller (to which you plug in your sources) that wirelessly distributes the audio to all of the speakers, each of which contains a built-in amplifier and a wireless receiver. The wireless speakers need to be plugged into a power outlet, but the whole system looks a whole lot nicer than a standard wired installations.

Watch the Neosonik Wireless Home Theater video on CNET TV.

The Neosonik AV controller.

(Credit: CNET)

We couldn't get a clean shot of the back panel, but rest assured that there are six HDMI inputs.

(Credit: CNET)

Neosonik transmits its data in the 5Ghz spectrum, but does not use the same technology as traditional Wi-Fi. The proprietary wireless audio transmission technology is called as Airpower AV, which is tweaked to improve reliability and latency (Neosonik claims a very impressive 6 nanoseconds delay). In the future, Neosonik intends to license the Airpower technology to other manufacturers, with the idea that any Airpower-equipped device could be seamlessly integrated into your existed Airpower system.

Yes, even the sub can go wireless.

(Credit: CNET)

We stopped by Neosonik's suite for a demo and were not disappointed. While the two wireless stereo systems that were set up worked perfectly, we were most impressed by the full 5.1 home theater setup. All five speakers plus a subwoofer were connected wirelessly and they synced up perfectly--we didn't hear a single hiccup even when the room started to fill up with journalists. The idea of having your living room filled with speakers is never going to appeal to everyone, but eliminating the need to run speaker cable really make a difference in term of aesthetics.

On the video side, the system is capable of transmitting HD video, although not quite as cleanly as with audio. While the Neosonik system has enough bandwidth to transmit uncompressed audio, HD video is transcoded to h.264 in the receiver, presumably to lessen the bandwidth demands. Our quick demo of Corpse Bride on Blu-ray in 1080i didn't reveal any glaring flaws in term of video quality, but we can't imagine it will preserve all the detail of Blu-ray and HD DVD discs that videophiles have come to love.

The Neosonik technology is impressive--especially on the audio side--but our major skepticism is whether it will actually come out in 2008. We've written about Neosonik at CES in 2007 (and before in 2006), but we've yet to see the product actually hit the market. (Likewise, a similar wireless implementation from Avega Systems remains a no show in the consumer marketplace a full two years after its CES day in the sun.) Neosonik claims it is "taking reservations from retailers" for summer delivery--which at least sounds like a serious step in the right direction--but we'll believe it when we see it.

Day one sightings at CES 2008

(Credit: Sarah Tew/CNET Networks)

The gadgets at the International Consumer Electronics Show certainly take center stage, but the huge tech show attracts its fair share of human celebrities as well. Check out the people and the performances that caught our attention in our CES day of photos.

Polk Audio's SurroundBar 360

(Credit: Polk Audio)

Polk Audio has officially unveiled its first single-speaker all-in-one home theater system, the SurroundBar 360. The system is comprised of just two components--a single elongated speaker (44 inches wide) designed to sit beneath your flat-panel TV, and a DVD player/amplifier head unit that houses the electronics. While the SurroundBar concept isn't new for Polk (the speaker-only 2005 version was designed to be paired with an AV receiver), the latest iteration utilizes a new active (powered) design that's said to maximize the speaker's eight drivers. In addition to the disc player and AM/FM radio, the head unit offers all of the standard DVD player outputs (including HDMI). Input capabilities fall short of HD switching, but the 360's analog composite and S-Video inputs will be upconverted via the HDMI output. A USB input is also available for digital photo playback and music players.

Watch the Polk Audio Surround Bar 360 video on CNET TV.

We had the opportunity to hear an early version of the SurroundBar 360 put through its paces by company founder Matthew Polk himself. ... Read more

The non-tech media's been full of articles deploring the inferior sound of the MP3 era. Apparently Pioneer agrees. At CES, the company is demonstrating technology it calls Advanced Sound Retrieval, or ASR, which promises to restore some of the signal lost when audio is compressed into a "lossy" format like MP3 or compressed WMA or AAC.

Technically, it's much tricker to restore signal than it is to cut it--that's one of the first rules of audio recording, which is why you want to get the broadest dynamic and frequency range possible, then pare it down, rather than trying to fill it in later with effects and EQ. What Pioneer appears to be doing is looking at the signal from moment to moment, making an educated guess about signals with frequencies above 15kHz that have been cut, and reinserting those signals.

Pioneer ASR

(Credit: Matt Rosoff)

I didn't get to test it at real world volume, in a real car, with music I know and love, so it's hard for me to be objective. But at the booth, when I listened to an MP3 file of Rage Against the Machine with ASR on and off, I definitely noticed a lot more high end with the ASR on. But it didn't sound louder--it's not like the Loudness button you used to see on some stereos (which was basically a compressor...that's another post). And it wasn't as if somebody simply turned up the EQ on the high end. So, it does seem as if Pioneer's doing some pretty sophisticated work here, and it probably will make your compressed audio files sound better--not CD-quality, but better.

ASR is featured in 12 new automotive single-CD players from the company. According to the people at the booth, it's also included in the company's Premier line of products.

As a sidenote, a huge thanks to the person who programmed "Scratch" by Morphine into one of the Gigabeats at Toshiba's booth. Most demo music at CES is brash and trebly, so it was a pleasure to hear all this low-mid--bari sax, upright bass, and a baritone singer. It also happens to a personal favorite: it's one of the only cover songs an old band of mine used to do. It was a great way to take a five-minute break on the floor. And I still think the Gigabeat was a beautiful-sounding MP3 player that got caught in the PlaysForSure crossfire--in fact, that's probably why I enjoy listening to my first-generation Zune so much, as it's basically just a rejiggered Gigabeat.