During my time at the 2018 CES, I came across several new cable introductions of note and a few more speakers that I had not included in my previous show reports. Here’s the last of my new-product coverage. All prices in USD.
Brand new product introductions for audiophile-type electronics at this year’s CES were relatively few and far between, but scouring the halls of the high-end exhibits at the Venetian and visiting some other manufacturers at off-site locations, I was able to find a few more significant product debuts. All prices in USD.
I found lots of interesting new headphones at CES 2018, including not only mass-market models but many of particular interest to audiophiles. I’ve covered several models previously in my “CES 2018: Unveiled” and “CES 2018: Headphones, Part 1” articles. Here are the rest of my favorites, with all prices in USD.
Considering that the high-end audio exhibits at CES 2018 were almost entirely confined to the 29th floor of Las Vegas’s Venetian hotel, I didn’t expect to find enough new turntables to fill an article. But to my surprise, I probably could have filled a couple of posts with new turntables from the show. Here are my favorites, with all prices in USD.
In between handing out the SoundStage! Network 2017 Products of the Year award trophies on the first couple of days at this year’s CES, I was able to find some interesting value-oriented product introductions from several of the usual electronics manufacturers that I’m familiar with -- and one from a company that really surprised me. All prices in USD.
Much of the talk at the 2018 CES centered on wireless speakers. But there wasn’t much discussion of the speakers themselves; it was more around the voice-command systems, such as Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant, that many of the latest models use. Of course, I saw plenty of new wireless speakers using only Bluetooth, but most of the ones getting attention had Wi-Fi as well as some variety of voice-command.
As expected at this year’s CES, the high-end audio exhibitors were primarily restricted to one floor of the Venetian hotel -- and the exhibitors that were there didn’t even fill the entire floor (companies from other industries were located in some of the suites). But I was still able to find some interesting speakers on my first day at the show, including a couple that were offsite at the Hard Rock Hotel, where Harman (the parent company of JBL and Revel, among other brands) was exhibiting in addition to having a suite at the Venetian. All prices in USD.
The annual CES in Las Vegas is probably the best place in the world to experience a wide variety of headphones. Shows like CanJam probably have more high-end models, but the offerings at CES typically run from under $20 to well over $2000.
CES Unveiled is the first major event of the CES show, which runs through Friday of this week in Las Vegas. The 2018 Unveiled took place Sunday night, packing a predicted 1500 journalists and 100 tech companies together into a large ballroom at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center. While a few large companies show up, it’s mostly small companies who might be missed in the maelstrom of CES’s main show floors.
Magico’s founder, Alon Wolf, isn’t the kind of person to say things just to appease you; he’ll tell you what he thinks with absolutely no softness in his delivery. It’s hard, just like the metal used in the cabinets of his speakers. For example, he’s told me that my Canon camera is crap, my recommendation of the 2013 movie Gravity is a “stain on my résumé,” and that my high praise for a well-regarded two-way standmounted speaker that many other writers also like is an embarrassment. Don’t talk to him if you’re easily offended.
The attendees at the ALMA International Symposium and Expo (AISE) 2018, held this week in Las Vegas, are mostly audio product design and testing professionals. Having heard and tested almost everything, they’re more skeptical of new technologies than attendees at an ordinary audio show might be. So when a friend of mine who’s a veteran of the audio measurement industry insisted I go hear a new speaker technology being demoed at a suite in the South Point Hotel, which hosted AISE, I figured I’d better go. I’m really glad I did.
When I saw a seminar titled “What’s New in Headphone Technology” on the schedule for ALMA International Symposium and Expo (AISE) 2018 -- an audio convention aimed at engineers and product developers that precedes the January CES in Las Vegas -- I naturally thought I’d be hearing about such topics as advanced digital sound processing and new methods of noise canceling. But there wasn’t a word about electronics. The presentation, by Mike Klasco, president of consulting firm Menlo Scientific, dealt entirely with new materials that could improve headphone performance.
The Association of Loudspeaker Manufacturing and Acoustics (ALMA) hosts its annual convention, the ALMA International Symposium and Expo (AISE) every year in the days leading up to CES, held each January in Las Vegas. AISE 2018 kicked off today at the South Point Hotel with a full slate of seminars targeted at audio product engineering and measurement professionals. During the first day alone, I found myself involved in more fascinating discussions about audio than I’d normally experience in a year’s worth of audio shows.
There’s no shortage of high-end loudspeaker companies whose products few people can afford. Five- and six-figure speakers from these companies line the halls of almost every hi-fi show I go to, with an occasional seven-figure model showing up from time to time. That’s all well and good, but when I see these loudspeakers I can’t help but ask, how many actually get sold? After all, that’s a lot of money for just loudspeakers.
It was only a matter of time before some of the technologies behind YG Acoustics’ two-tower Sonja XV (extreme version) flagship speaker system ($265,900 USD/pr.) trickled down to one of the company’s lower-priced model lines. That’s exactly what has happened with the new Sonja 2.2 speaker ($76,800/pr.), which YG introduced to the press in early December at Bill Parish’s GTT Audio & Video, located in Long Valley, New Jersey. I was fortunate to be treated to my own private listening session during what has become an annual pilgrimage to GTT in order to hear YG’s newest speaker design.
It’s November 19, 10:30 p.m., and I’m in my hotel room writing this article, knowing that the same thing that happened last year just happened again -- we weren’t able to cover all of Audio Video Show (AVS) the way we wanted to. I wish we could’ve done so much more . . .
Companies featured in gallery below: Symphony, Gold Note, Trenner & Friedl, Fezz Audio, Aurelia, Amare Musica, Fram Audio, Tri-Art Audio, Buchardt, Luxman, Ubiq Audio, Muarak, Eryk S Concept, Audio Hungary
Poland isn’t exactly a nexus of the headphone biz, perhaps because neighboring Germany plays such an outsized role in that industry. Yet Warsaw’s Audio Video Show 2017 did reveal a couple of Poland-based companies striving to make their mark in headphones or headphone amps, as well as a couple of big-name products we haven’t yet had a chance to report on. Here are the new headphones, earphones, and headphone amps we saw, with prices listed in euros (€), US dollars ($), or Polish zlotys (zł).
Companies featured in gallery below: Boenicke Audio, Sigma Acoustics, Gauder Akustik, Döhmann, Thrax Audio, Holophony, Closer Acoustics, Shape of Sound, Yayuma Audio, Monolith Audio, Genuin Audio
Companies featured in gallery below: Metaxas and Sins, Sonus Faber, Audio Research, Blumenhofer Acoustics, Mytek, Zeta Zero, SoulSonic, Natural Sound, Esa Loudspeakers, Furutech, MySound, Dynaudio, Pivetta
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