It sounds like I didn't really miss all that much. Reports that've been posted on Engadget and other blogs make it sound like CES 2010 was a lot like the previous years. There're a couple of things I've noticed over the years. The two biggest technologies that get the lion's share of attention are displays and smartphones. Every year they try to have something that's suppose to represent the next great thing. A couple years ago it was large, thin displays. Last year it was large, thin and faster 120 Hz processing speed. Now it's even thinner and even faster 240 Hz processing and now with 3D! So the new big thing is 3D TV. Even if I owned a big 3D capable 60" flat screen TV, I don't think it would be all that great. I think 3D has to be on the really big screens to be appreciated. If I want to see a 3D movie, I'll go to our local Imax. I just cant get excited about sitting in our family room wearing 3D goggles. Just thinking about it gives me a bit of a headache. I'm not even going to comment on smartphones because I'm just not really into them. I also missed a handful of companies showing off tablet PCs that they hope will be competitive with Apple's upcoming iSlate or whatever it's going to be called.
There were a few announcements or presentations that piqued my interest. During Steve Ballmer's keynote, he stated several times that the PC was the most advanced entertainment device (or something along those lines). Years ago, even back in the late 80's and into the 90's, they always talked about the convergence of technology. Especially the convergence of TVs and PCs. There were other things, like movies and hi-fi, but I think those were the 2 biggies. Anyhow it didn't happen the way Microsoft, Intel, HP, etc. thought it would. Or it didn't happen as quickly as they wanted. So in the past few CES trade shows, they hardly mentioned the PC. Instead it was all about the extenders and stand-alone gaming consoles, like the Xbox 360 or PS3. The PC was too complicated, noisy, big, etc. And people just didn't seem to understand that you weren't limited to a 17" CRT monitor. The tone seemed different this year. He genuinely seemed excited about all sorts of PCs - laptops, notebooks/netbooks and very small form factor HTPCs running Windows 7, Media Center and potential functionality with Mediaroom 2.0.
So since the success of our future products depends on the success of HTPCs, I guess there are reasons to be optimistic. Mediaroom 2.0 will allow major content providers, like AT&T's U-Verse, use HTPCs running Win7 and Media Center to tune into their programming instead of a dedicated set-top box. Initial reports are a little confusing and talk more about using Mediaroom 2.0 with the Xbox 360, but Ballmer made some reference during his keynote about it working with PCs as well. There were also a few announcements about a new CableCard tuner from Silicon Dust. I own one of their HDHomeRuns, so I'm a big fan. This is a dual tuner that connects to your home network. Any PC on your home network can tune into programming from cable providers or over-the-air digital broadcasts. The only big problem was you could only get cable stations that were unencrypted or clear-QAM. This limited you to mainly the basic tier, which includes your local programming (including local HD stations) and some crap channels. All the upper tier programming, stations on expanded basic or above, like ESPN, Comedy Central, Bravo, Discovery, etc. are all encrypted and couldn't be viewed and recorded using the HDHomeRun and your HTPCs. This is going to change when Silicon Dust ships their new CableCard dual tuner and we will be able to view and record encrypted programming from the cable companies. The cool thing about these HDHomeRuns is that your HTPC doesn't need an empty PCI-E slot for a tuner. The really small and silent PCs, like Dell's Zino HD, don't even have the space for internal tuners. So the CableCard ready HDHomeRun will be a great match.
So, it looks like some of the news out of CES 2010 is encouraging for us HTPC'ers.
Showing posts with label trade shows/conventions/conferences. Show all posts
Showing posts with label trade shows/conventions/conferences. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Friday, January 08, 2010
Skipping CES 2010
This is the second year in a row that I decided not to attend the International CES tradeshow in Las Vegas. I just don't think tradeshows are that useful anymore. It used to be a good way to learn about new advances in our industry and meet with potential partners and suppliers, but that's not the case for us. Also, I've never invested in a booth at CES to demonstrate our technology because we simply cannot afford it, so I don't know how beneficial that would be. As far as getting new information about technological advances in our industry, there is so much noise at CES, that it is hard to learn anything except the big announcements coming from the major manufacturers. Especially those that happen to present a keynote address, which you can't attend unless you happen to be lucky enough to get an invite or are a member of the press. As for networking, it hasn't really been as useful as I'd like. Some of the companies that I'd like to meet with don't have a booth at CES and those that do usually get a private suite in the Hilton and will only meet by appointment. Naturally, their appointments are all booked up with existing partners or potential partners that have the potential to become large accounts. They don't seem to be very interested in meeting with a startup that can't commit to purchasing 1,000 units a month. On the odd chance that we do get to meet with a company of interest, we usually talk with a marketing representative who can't provide us with any useful information.
As a gadget junky, it was kind of fun to attend CES and walk through the exhibits and see first hand all the gadgets. I especially enjoyed touring the high performance audio & home theater exhibits at the Venetian Towers. So maybe I'll go back some day. I still register every year just in case I decide to go.
Anyhow, with the Internet, I can read most of the big announcements and learn about the new gadgets from my office and/or home. On Wednesday night I even watched Steve Ballmer's keynote address streaming live to my HTPC. In the next couple posts I'll talk about a few of the big announcements and speculate on their potential impact on our business.
As a gadget junky, it was kind of fun to attend CES and walk through the exhibits and see first hand all the gadgets. I especially enjoyed touring the high performance audio & home theater exhibits at the Venetian Towers. So maybe I'll go back some day. I still register every year just in case I decide to go.
Anyhow, with the Internet, I can read most of the big announcements and learn about the new gadgets from my office and/or home. On Wednesday night I even watched Steve Ballmer's keynote address streaming live to my HTPC. In the next couple posts I'll talk about a few of the big announcements and speculate on their potential impact on our business.
Friday, January 09, 2009
Windows 7 Beta and MP3 Files
Here's what Microsoft has written in the Windows 7 Beta Release Notes regarding MP3 files:
"When MP3 files are added (either manually or automatically) to either the Windows Media Player or the Windows Media Center library, or if the file metadata is edited, several seconds of content may be permanently removed from the start of the file. This issue occurs when files contain thumbnails or other metadata of significant size before importing or editing them.
To avoid this, ensure that all MP3 files that may be accessed by a computer running Windows 7 (including those on removable media or network shares) are set to read-only. To do this, in Windows Explorer, find the files, right-click them, click the General tab, and then select the Read-only check box. Then back up all of the MP3 files prior to using Windows Media Player or Windows Media Center.
If some of your files have already been affected, you may be able to recover the data by using the Previous Versions feature. To do this, right-click the file name, click Properties, click the Previous Versions tab, and in the File Versions pane select the most recent previous version."
So going through this procedure to select all MP3 files to make them Read-only could be a major hassle for someone with a mix of MP3s, WMAs, FLACs and AAC files. In my case, I have everything organized by artist, albums and tracks. All tracks in an album use the same filetype, but not all albums were encoded with MP3s. Unless you've got your folders organized by filetype it might take a long time to go through a music collection to modify their properties and backup everything.
Since the warning also applies to MP3 files that are stored on network shares, I think I'll hold off for awhile before installing the Windows 7 Beta. While listening to Microsoft's CES keynote, if I recall correctly, it sounded like Steve Ballmer said they were going to open up the beta for the public today (Friday). If you decide to install the Windows 7 Beta, I'd love to hear back from you if you figured out a good way to protect your MP3 files with minimal hassles.
"When MP3 files are added (either manually or automatically) to either the Windows Media Player or the Windows Media Center library, or if the file metadata is edited, several seconds of content may be permanently removed from the start of the file. This issue occurs when files contain thumbnails or other metadata of significant size before importing or editing them.
To avoid this, ensure that all MP3 files that may be accessed by a computer running Windows 7 (including those on removable media or network shares) are set to read-only. To do this, in Windows Explorer, find the files, right-click them, click the General tab, and then select the Read-only check box. Then back up all of the MP3 files prior to using Windows Media Player or Windows Media Center.
If some of your files have already been affected, you may be able to recover the data by using the Previous Versions feature. To do this, right-click the file name, click Properties, click the Previous Versions tab, and in the File Versions pane select the most recent previous version."
So going through this procedure to select all MP3 files to make them Read-only could be a major hassle for someone with a mix of MP3s, WMAs, FLACs and AAC files. In my case, I have everything organized by artist, albums and tracks. All tracks in an album use the same filetype, but not all albums were encoded with MP3s. Unless you've got your folders organized by filetype it might take a long time to go through a music collection to modify their properties and backup everything.
Since the warning also applies to MP3 files that are stored on network shares, I think I'll hold off for awhile before installing the Windows 7 Beta. While listening to Microsoft's CES keynote, if I recall correctly, it sounded like Steve Ballmer said they were going to open up the beta for the public today (Friday). If you decide to install the Windows 7 Beta, I'd love to hear back from you if you figured out a good way to protect your MP3 files with minimal hassles.
Wednesday, January 07, 2009
Pioneer subsidiary TAD demos HD Audio at CES '09
Sheffield Labs recording legends Bill Schnee and Doug Sax will be demonstrating 24bit/192KHz audio recorded on Blu-ray discs at CES '09 this week. These recordings are suppose to appeal to audiophiles that want better quality audio than CDs or MP3s (duh!!). I'm not sure what they mean by "giving consumers an unprecedented opportunity to experience digital music that rivals 2-channel analog sound," but I'm guessing they are referring to vinyl and/or reel-to-reel tape, which technically, CD already achieves. Yah, yah, I know vinyl has a better frequency response if you can ignore the noise floor, but you need pretty high end turn tables, cartridges, etc. to achieve this.
I'm not sure if this will be an improvement over DVD-A and SACD, but since those disc formats failed, it's worth trying again. It looks like they will be using a music-only format which utilizes Blu-ray disc technology.
Since I don't have any plans to purchase a Blu-ray player, this doesn't really appeal to me. Personally, I prefer just downloading the high res audio from an online music store and storing them on our media server. All my physical discs are stored away in a closet.
Eventually, I plan to purchase a Blu-ray drive for my HTPC and then I'd like to give these a listen. I'd still want to rip the tracks to the server and use my music library software for playing from my PCs.
For more info, click on this article's title and it will take you to the press release.
BTW, I decided not to go to CES this year. Lots of reasons... the economy, tired of big trade shows, better ways to spend the money, etc., etc.
I'm not sure if this will be an improvement over DVD-A and SACD, but since those disc formats failed, it's worth trying again. It looks like they will be using a music-only format which utilizes Blu-ray disc technology.
Since I don't have any plans to purchase a Blu-ray player, this doesn't really appeal to me. Personally, I prefer just downloading the high res audio from an online music store and storing them on our media server. All my physical discs are stored away in a closet.
Eventually, I plan to purchase a Blu-ray drive for my HTPC and then I'd like to give these a listen. I'd still want to rip the tracks to the server and use my music library software for playing from my PCs.
For more info, click on this article's title and it will take you to the press release.
BTW, I decided not to go to CES this year. Lots of reasons... the economy, tired of big trade shows, better ways to spend the money, etc., etc.
Sunday, January 13, 2008
CES - Day 3
I spent a little more time viewing HTPC solutions during my third and final day. I started at the Central Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center where there are a few really large booths for the big electronics and computer companies. Sony was there showing their Blu-ray technology and acting a bit smug about Warner's recent announcement that they will exclusively support Blu-ray from now on. The Sony guys were careful not to say anything about what this means for them, but it was pretty obvious that they think the format war is coming to an end and they will be declared the winner. They mentioned that the HD-DVD camp was scrambling to figure out what to do next. Like I said in a previous post, since an HTPC owner can purchase a dual format (Blu-ray & HD DVD) drive, it doesn't really matter what format a movie is on. However, I'm a little concerned because it sounds like people have more problems trying to play Blu-ray discs and less with HD DVD with their dual format LG drives. Microsoft doesn't seem too happy about these recent events, but they are also saying this doesn't really effect them that much. Microsoft certainly would have benefited if HD DVD came out as the winner, because they developed and license the interactive layer (HDi) for HD DVD. A Microsoft guy said they will still move forward with HDi and offer it with downloadable content. A lot of people, including Microsoft seem to be saying that the real winner in a few years will be downloadable and streaming content and that optical disc media will be unnecessary. I've got mixed feeling about this because HTPCs are the perfect device to use with downloadable content and our business currently depends in large part on the success of HTPCs, but the bandwidth is pretty limited (at least in the U.S.) and it currently isn't real practical to download content with quality comparable to HD DVD or Blu-ray (1080p video and lossless multichannel 24bit/96KHz audio). If they downrez and lossy compress the video and audio to 720p and 16bit/48KHz quality and people are content with this, just like they've accepted compressed audio formats like MP3 and iTune's AAC, then we've taken another step back in quality. Hopefully, since people seem to be very excited with the latest 1080p display technology, they will demand content that takes full advantage of its resolution. Once they experience high quality video from their new 1080p displays, they might just invest in an audio system with quality to match, like the products were are developing.
Speaking of new display devices, I stopped by the booths of Sharp and Samsung. While standing and gawking at the big Sharp LCD displays, I had a conversation with a technology guru from Disney. He recommeded that I should take a look at Samsung's OLED displays because he is confident that within 5 years it will be the dominant display technology. He thinks it will be cheaper to manufacture, provide higher quality and be the most green technology, which is very important for all products from now on. He might be right, but I was still pretty impressed with the panels Sharp was demonstrating in their booth. The LCD technology has evolved over the past year. Last year the big deal was 1080p. Now everyone does 1080p. Another big thing last year was panel size and that hasn't changed
much over the last This year it seems to be 120 Hz or higher refresh rates. The other thing is style. Many of the manufactures are showing off their ultrathin panels and the high quality finish of the frames. Sharp was showing off their 108" (or was it 120") monster. The photo on the right is one of their ultrathin 120 Hz displays (sorry about the quality of the pic, I prefer to turn off the flash, but since it's relatively dark in the exhibit hall, I have to keep the aperture open for up to 1/4 sec. and sometime they come out blurry).
Samsung had a huge booth at CES this year. They seem to be into everything. A guy at their camcorder area said they (Samsung) wanted to reach the same level of success in camcorders as they have with LCD televisions. Speaking of camcorders, Canon was demonstrating their compact HD camcorders they plan to release this Spring. Wow! Being the owner of a 3 CCD DV camcorder, I never would have
expected such great colors from a single sensor camcorder when compared to my Sony TRV900 DV camcorder. On top of that, you get great HD resolution, a very convenient, portable size and instead of using tape, you can use SD flash memory. I'd tell you the name and model, but I seem to have lost the brochure. Oh well, back to Samsung and their display screens. Samsung was also showing off their big 120 Hz 
displays. And of course they had the stylish ultrathin technology as well. They even had a big ultra high resolution (3840 x 2160) screen which they claim is 4 times the resolution of conventional LCD. I don't quite follow their math if they are comparing it to 1080p because it comes out to twice the resolution (maybe since it is 2 dimensions, we are getting 4x the number of pixels). Either way, it is pretty impressive looking. Finally, I
made my way over to the OLED displays. Samsung was demonstrating their 31" OLED. After looking at this, I hope the Disney guy is right and we get to buy inexpensive 60" OLED displays in the near future. These things are beautiful. The colors seem to be really great without looking over saturated like some LCDs. And the contrast ratio, 1 million to one, that's as good as your eyes can see. These really are great looking. Oh, and they're thin as well.
I also wanted to check out the Nextgen Home Experience, but the lines were too long and I had places to go and people to meet.
Then I went over to the South Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center to talk to a few more companies. BridgeCo is a manufacturer of FireWire and USB interfaces for audio and video. The guys manning their booth (or meeting room) weren't very helpful. I explained what I was doing and they responded that they didn't support multichannel surround playback with either technology. They said their solutions are really geared to pro-audio and this isn't going to change in the future. ArcSoft also had a meeting space in the South Hall. They are the developers of another Blu-ray/HD DVD software player that many people on AVS Forum have been raving about. They currently have a trial version of their Japanese version and are planning to release the English version in the very near future. It may have already been released. They gave me their Product Licensing Guide with a DVD full of evaluation versions of all of ArcSofts applications, including TotalMedia Theatre, which is the player everyone is excited about. They also gave me the business card of the VP of Sales and Marketing and told me to contact him to get a full version sent to us.
While walking around the South Hall, there were a couple of TechZones I wanted to check out that sounded interesting. One was the Sustainable Technologies area that was said to "explore the pioneering technologies that benefit the environment, sustain the global economy and improve daily life in developing countries." I wanted to see if they had more ideas of how we could improve in this area in addition to what we already have with highly efficient Class-D technology. Unfortunately, they weren't located where they were shown on the program map. There were a bunch of lounge chairs, which are shown on the map, but nobody was there except a few people grabbing a bite to eat. Nearby there was the Advanced Display Technology TechZone. I didn't find it very interesting because it was mostly displays for mobile devices.
Walking between sections of the Las Vegas Convention Center, I ran into a jazz performance sponsored by MusicGiants. These are the folks that offer high resolution downloads from their
online music store. Their booth was suppose to be at the Sands Convention Center, but as it turns out they were really located here. I was planning to stop by and talk to them, so I was glad I didn't search for them at the Sands. I told them about my business and how potential users of my product would probably appreciate their higher resolution audio. The guy I spoke with recommended I contact Elliot Mazer, who is a pretty well known audio producer/engineer who is trying to encourage high-end audio manufacturers to develop technology that will be compatible with their downloads.
Next, I headed over to the Sands Convention Center to visit the booths of MusicIP and SiliconDust. MusicIP has a software application that can generate playlists from your music library by analyzing a song and finding others that are a close match. They just came out with a plug-in for iTunes and are working on one for Windows Media Player. It's pretty cool technology, but not as flexible as what I can already do with J.River's Media Center. SiliconDust are the folks who provide the HDHomeRun. They said they are working on adding functionality to support satellite dish and encrypted cable (cablecard) in future products.
For the remainder of this day, I spent time back at the Venetian to listen to more high performance audio. I'm not particularly impressed by a lot of the expensive stuff on display in many of the suites. Many of them just seem to be ultra expensive monstrosities. This is where I think the "emperor has no clothes" tale is really true. I don't like to bash other products, but I pretty much share the viewpoint of Gene DellaSala who wrote this report for Audioholics. I too was impressed with Dali's on-wall speakers. I didn't think you could get such great sound out of these type of speakers.
Okay, that's about all I have to report on CES 2008. The fourth day was basically a travel day, so nothing to talk about there. All in all it was a pretty good show. I had the opportunity to talk with several potential partners that specialize in industrial design or manufacturing. I got several recommendations for high quality manufacturers in Asia, which is very important at this stage.
Speaking of new display devices, I stopped by the booths of Sharp and Samsung. While standing and gawking at the big Sharp LCD displays, I had a conversation with a technology guru from Disney. He recommeded that I should take a look at Samsung's OLED displays because he is confident that within 5 years it will be the dominant display technology. He thinks it will be cheaper to manufacture, provide higher quality and be the most green technology, which is very important for all products from now on. He might be right, but I was still pretty impressed with the panels Sharp was demonstrating in their booth. The LCD technology has evolved over the past year. Last year the big deal was 1080p. Now everyone does 1080p. Another big thing last year was panel size and that hasn't changed
much over the last This year it seems to be 120 Hz or higher refresh rates. The other thing is style. Many of the manufactures are showing off their ultrathin panels and the high quality finish of the frames. Sharp was showing off their 108" (or was it 120") monster. The photo on the right is one of their ultrathin 120 Hz displays (sorry about the quality of the pic, I prefer to turn off the flash, but since it's relatively dark in the exhibit hall, I have to keep the aperture open for up to 1/4 sec. and sometime they come out blurry).
Samsung had a huge booth at CES this year. They seem to be into everything. A guy at their camcorder area said they (Samsung) wanted to reach the same level of success in camcorders as they have with LCD televisions. Speaking of camcorders, Canon was demonstrating their compact HD camcorders they plan to release this Spring. Wow! Being the owner of a 3 CCD DV camcorder, I never would have
expected such great colors from a single sensor camcorder when compared to my Sony TRV900 DV camcorder. On top of that, you get great HD resolution, a very convenient, portable size and instead of using tape, you can use SD flash memory. I'd tell you the name and model, but I seem to have lost the brochure. Oh well, back to Samsung and their display screens. Samsung was also showing off their big 120 Hz 
displays. And of course they had the stylish ultrathin technology as well. They even had a big ultra high resolution (3840 x 2160) screen which they claim is 4 times the resolution of conventional LCD. I don't quite follow their math if they are comparing it to 1080p because it comes out to twice the resolution (maybe since it is 2 dimensions, we are getting 4x the number of pixels). Either way, it is pretty impressive looking. Finally, I
made my way over to the OLED displays. Samsung was demonstrating their 31" OLED. After looking at this, I hope the Disney guy is right and we get to buy inexpensive 60" OLED displays in the near future. These things are beautiful. The colors seem to be really great without looking over saturated like some LCDs. And the contrast ratio, 1 million to one, that's as good as your eyes can see. These really are great looking. Oh, and they're thin as well.I also wanted to check out the Nextgen Home Experience, but the lines were too long and I had places to go and people to meet.
Then I went over to the South Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center to talk to a few more companies. BridgeCo is a manufacturer of FireWire and USB interfaces for audio and video. The guys manning their booth (or meeting room) weren't very helpful. I explained what I was doing and they responded that they didn't support multichannel surround playback with either technology. They said their solutions are really geared to pro-audio and this isn't going to change in the future. ArcSoft also had a meeting space in the South Hall. They are the developers of another Blu-ray/HD DVD software player that many people on AVS Forum have been raving about. They currently have a trial version of their Japanese version and are planning to release the English version in the very near future. It may have already been released. They gave me their Product Licensing Guide with a DVD full of evaluation versions of all of ArcSofts applications, including TotalMedia Theatre, which is the player everyone is excited about. They also gave me the business card of the VP of Sales and Marketing and told me to contact him to get a full version sent to us.
While walking around the South Hall, there were a couple of TechZones I wanted to check out that sounded interesting. One was the Sustainable Technologies area that was said to "explore the pioneering technologies that benefit the environment, sustain the global economy and improve daily life in developing countries." I wanted to see if they had more ideas of how we could improve in this area in addition to what we already have with highly efficient Class-D technology. Unfortunately, they weren't located where they were shown on the program map. There were a bunch of lounge chairs, which are shown on the map, but nobody was there except a few people grabbing a bite to eat. Nearby there was the Advanced Display Technology TechZone. I didn't find it very interesting because it was mostly displays for mobile devices.
Walking between sections of the Las Vegas Convention Center, I ran into a jazz performance sponsored by MusicGiants. These are the folks that offer high resolution downloads from their
online music store. Their booth was suppose to be at the Sands Convention Center, but as it turns out they were really located here. I was planning to stop by and talk to them, so I was glad I didn't search for them at the Sands. I told them about my business and how potential users of my product would probably appreciate their higher resolution audio. The guy I spoke with recommended I contact Elliot Mazer, who is a pretty well known audio producer/engineer who is trying to encourage high-end audio manufacturers to develop technology that will be compatible with their downloads.Next, I headed over to the Sands Convention Center to visit the booths of MusicIP and SiliconDust. MusicIP has a software application that can generate playlists from your music library by analyzing a song and finding others that are a close match. They just came out with a plug-in for iTunes and are working on one for Windows Media Player. It's pretty cool technology, but not as flexible as what I can already do with J.River's Media Center. SiliconDust are the folks who provide the HDHomeRun. They said they are working on adding functionality to support satellite dish and encrypted cable (cablecard) in future products.
For the remainder of this day, I spent time back at the Venetian to listen to more high performance audio. I'm not particularly impressed by a lot of the expensive stuff on display in many of the suites. Many of them just seem to be ultra expensive monstrosities. This is where I think the "emperor has no clothes" tale is really true. I don't like to bash other products, but I pretty much share the viewpoint of Gene DellaSala who wrote this report for Audioholics. I too was impressed with Dali's on-wall speakers. I didn't think you could get such great sound out of these type of speakers.
Okay, that's about all I have to report on CES 2008. The fourth day was basically a travel day, so nothing to talk about there. All in all it was a pretty good show. I had the opportunity to talk with several potential partners that specialize in industrial design or manufacturing. I got several recommendations for high quality manufacturers in Asia, which is very important at this stage.
Friday, January 11, 2008
CES 2008 - Day 2
On Tuesday I walked up to the Sahara Hotel to buy a monorail pass and travel to the Las Vegas Convention Center. I visited the Microsoft booth and talked to some of the people involved with Media Center and some others with Windows Home Server. I'd really like it if Windows Home Server were part of my TechNet subscription, so I tried to find someone that could forward my request. I also wanted to find out why there isn't better integration between Vista Media Center and Windows Home Server. It sounds like better integration between the two is definitely in the plans. Microsoft's eHome Program Manager told me that adoption on Vista Media Center has been very good and based on EPG (electronic program guides) downloads, the data supports this assertion. I gave him my card and he is going to send me this data if he can.I also visited the DTS booth. They were demonstrating their Surround Sensation technology that creates a virtual surround from only 2 channels. I listened to the headphone demonstration, which played the same clips from the original 2 channel mix and the enhanced virtual surround version. I think it did a pretty good job, at least it seemed better than the surround headphone technology that Lake Technology licensed to Dolby a few years ago. I still wasn't very impressed with DTS's demonstration because the levels were so much different between the stereo and surround samples. It's pretty hard to determine which is better when the volume level is so different. Of course the Surround Sensation sample was much louder than the stereo sample, so it seemed to be much better.
After talking to DTS's Director of Product Management about licensing, I walked toward the next exhibitor on my list, Dolby Labs. My left show felt very loose, so I look down to see if my laces untied. I noticed the laces were still tied, so I lifted my foot to get a better look. The sole of
the shoe was separating from the upper part. It was falling apart with every step. I realized that I couldn't continue walking around with my shoe coming apart, so I headed to the exit to get a cab to drive me back to my hotel so I could get the only other pair of shoes I had with me, my Nike running shoes. I must have looked like thump-drag because I had to drag my foot on the ground so the shoe would hold together. That didn't really help. The shoe came completely apart just before I reached the elevator to go up to my room. The pic on the right is what they looked like just before I threw them in the trash. Anyhow, that wasted a good chunk of my day.From there I went to the Venetian to check out the "high performance audio". More and more of these vendors are realizing that computers are pretty good at storing and playing music. Many of them had their equipment connected to PCs. Some of them were just using a S/PDIF connection to their high end processors or preamps. Others had USB connections. Most were limited to 2 channel stereo sound. The only ones playing surround were playing off of stand alone players. If you want to see some pretty pictures of some of the equipment at the high performance audio exhibits, check out Steve Guttenberg's blog.
For those of you that are frustrated with audio playback of HD DVD or Blu-ray discs using Cyberlink's PowerDVD, I wish I had some good news. I stopped by Cyberlinks suite at the Hilton to see if I could speak with them to learn what we need to do with our products to support high resolution playback (with no downsampling, etc.) and the whole protected path. Since I didn't schedule an appointment, they wouldn't speak with me. I tried setting up a later appointment, but they weren't interested. I was also interested in speaking with representatives from TC Electronics. They sell the DICE chips, which are suppose to be pretty good IEEE1394 (FireWire) chips. When I went to the TC Electronics booth I learned that it was a different company. There was another booth for a company called Dice Electronics (you never know, maybe they are changing their name to match their flagship product). Both of these companies were selling something related to automobile electronics.
I did spend some time speaking with representative for HDMI, USB and IEEE1394 technologies. The USB folks had a section of the exhibit floor with several companies displaying their solutions. None of them were dealing with USB audio. I did get a chance to meet with the Chapter leader for the USB3 spec. He mentioned that they've received several requests for allowing clocking from the host system over USB3. That's currently a big problem with USB1.1 and USB2 because you have to reclock everything if you use USB. Anyhow, he said they are considering adding this to the USB3 spec. I also met with the people that are promoting IEEE1394 at the HANA Alliance. Obviously, they think we should stick with FireWire and they made a pretty good case. They also seemed to endorse the DICE technology as our best solution.
CES 2008 - Day 1
My flight arrived in Las Vegas at around 2:30 PM. Then it took at least 30 minutes to get my luggage. I also had to wait another 45 minutes for the shuttle bus to show up. By the time I got to my hotel room at the luxurious Circus Circus Hotel and Resort, it was about 5:30 PM. There wasn't enough time left in the day to visit any exhibits, so I just stayed in the hotel. Las Vegas traffic really sucks, especially when they have a big event like CES. So after I got unpacked, I called home to let my wife and kids know I arrived safely. Then I went downstairs to eat dinner and watch "The Ohio State" Buckeyes lose to LSU in the National Championship football game. Oh well, another let down for the Big Ten. How can Ohio State lose 2 years in a row?
CES 2008 Overview
I attended the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas again this year. As usual it was big, crowded and flashy. The main reason I went to the show was to network with people that might be able to help us with our development. Since CES isn't really a developers conference, there was limited opportunities to meet with some of the people or companies that can really help us. Many of these companies only send their sales and business development people, so you usually don't get to speak with the engineers. However, sometimes the business development people can be fairly helpful. Some of the chip manufacturers were there, but many of them don't have exhibition booths and instead only meet with people by appointment in their meeting suites. Unfortunately, some of them don't really want to take the time to talk with small companies like ours. I also enjoy seeing the latest and greatest electronics, so I try to save some time for browsing the big companies booths. There weren't any significant announcements, so it didn't seem to be all that exciting.I decided to attend CES Monday through Thursday. This actually worked out to only two productive days, because I arrived late Monday afternoon and had to leave early on Thursday. Prior to leaving Madison, on Sunday night I watched Bill Gate's opening Keynote address streaming live over the Internet. This was suppose to be his last keynote since he is stepping down from his full time position with Microsoft to work full time on the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. I thought he might include some big announcement, but there really wasn't a lot to really get me excited. They showed a pretty funny video clip of Bill contacting a handful of celebrities and asking them for help or advice on what he can do after retirement. BTW, the image quality of his address was much better than this link's archived video. You'd think Microsoft would want to promote the highest quality video to help promote online streaming or even provide a high quality video for download.
I think it was a good thing that I didn't fly in earlier just to see his last keynote live. I was able to save a little money. Besides, it's nearly impossible to get a seat in the hall. I think it must help to have some good connections to get tickets to these sorts of things. Since it was his last keynote it might have been cool to be there...
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
CES 2007 Review - Day Four 1/11/07
For the final day of CES, I decided to go back to the Las Vegas Convention Center and Hilton Hotel. There were a few important companies I wanted to visit and the CES guide showed they were exhibiting in booths at the Hilton. As it turned out, they didn't have exhibitor booths, but instead were actually in hotel suites. I figured that anyone listed in the CES book as an exhibitor meant they were willing to me with anyone with an exhibitor's badge. Unfortunately, that wasn't necessarily the case. Most of these companies were conducting meetings that were set up in advance. I probably should have used the online CES planner to make official appointments. Oh well, at least I now know what to do before attending next year's CES.
One of these companies was Intel Capital. It would be wonderful if Amplio Audio were able to get funding from this venture capitalist. After looking at the information on their Website, it looks like they would be an excellent match for a company like ours. Obviously, this is probably the kind of company that requires an appointment, but I thought what-the-heck, I'll just stop by and to introduce myself and maybe get some basic information about submitting a proposal when we are in a position to formally apply for venture funding. Most venture groups won't provide the first round of financing for a startup, but may invest once you're further along. Unfortunately when I stopped by, I was told the gentleman who was "in charge" had stepped out for a short while. His assistant told me they were only meeting with people with appointments and they didn't have any literature to hand out. Then another fairly nervous looking gentleman who had an appointment arrived and I was quickly asked to leave. So I politely said good bye and walked out the door. No harm done, they don't know who I was and it's not like I was rude or anything. BTW, I really don't like rejection (not that I was rejected).
The next company on my list was Asahi Kasei Microsystems (AKM Semiconductor). They manufacture DACs, ADCs, opamps, etc. - basically a lot of high quality audio chips. I was pleased to see Richard Kulavik, their US Manager of Marketing and Applications, there amongst the company representatives from Japan. I've had several phone and email conversations with Richard and he has been one of the most helpful representatives in the industry. It was nice to finally meet face to face. We spoke for a short while about how our product development was progressing and I asked him about a novel approach he suggested for a volume control solution. I couldn't (and really didn't need to) stay too long because their next appointment was going to arrive in a few minutes.
Another company who I've had some communication with for some time and had a suite in the Hilton was the ICEpower subsidiary of Bang & Olufsen. Even though they were also meeting people by appointment, they were happy to invite me into their suite and meet with me. The ICEpower amplifier modules are used in quite a few highly regarded products for both proaudio and consumer electronics. The Jeff Roland Design Group, who had a booth at the Venetian, is an example of a company that uses ICEpower technology in their products. ICEpower offers raw amplifier modules at a variety of power ratings and they also offer a more integrated solution that combines their amp module with a switching power supply. Their Technical Marketing Coordinator, Uffe Nisbeth, was very friendly and gave me a complete presentation of their product offerings. I had been under the impression that you had to commit to fairly large quantities before you could work with ICEpower and was happy to learn that this is not the case. We will be placing an order for several product samples in the next few weeks.
My visit to the Hilton wasn't a complete waste of time after all. Since the Las Vegas Convention Center was next door, I decided to spend the rest of the afternoon just casually browsing the exhibits. There wasn't much time left because on this last day of the show, the booths shut down an hour earlier than previous days. I think many of the exhibitors were anxious to get home, so some of them were packing up well in advance of the official closing time.
I had a chance to spend some time in the Dolby booth. They were showing off TrueHD, their multichannel, lossless audio technology for the new high-def discs Blu-ray and HD-DVD. I had a conversation with a Dolby executive about how high resolution audio formats like DVD-Audio and SACD have failed to become popular with a large number of consumers and if he thought that might change with TrueHD and the new disc formats. He didn't seem to be too optimistic, maybe that was because it had been a long week for him and he was tired. Anyhow, he said that it really depended on the music industry - the recording companies and labels, and they don't seem to have a clue. DTS also had a nice exhibit nearby and was promoting their lossless codec, DTS-HD, which will also play on Blu-ray and HD-DVD discs. The current confusion between Blu-ray and HD-DVD isn't really helping much either. I don't know if we'll start to see a lot of music (other than movie soundtracks) on either of these disc formats. I won't buy a stand-alone player, but plan to purchase a Blu-ray or HD-DVD drive for our HTPC in the future. Both of these codecs will work on either disc format. What we need is an affordable drive that can play and burn both Blu-ray and HD-DVD discs (and of course every flavor of DVD and CD) and it won't really matter whether they choose to encode to TrueHD or DTS-HD because either will work. Maybe then we will finally get a lot of high resolution music. With all the confusion slowing things down, maybe music downloads from companies like MusicGiants will become popular because they offer a solution that doesn't depend on any expensive hardware that could easily become obsolete. Rumor has it they will be offering multichannel 24-bit 96/192Khz audio tracks in the future. I'm disappointed that I missed their booth over at the Sands. I didn't think of them when I was putting together my itinerary before the show so I didn't even know they were at CES until it was too late.
So, that was my experience at CES 2007. After the exhibits closed, I had to wait around until later in the evening to catch a midnight flight back home. I was hoping to get some sleep on the plane, but couldn't get comfortable. I was probably a little wired from the past few day's activities. I had a nearly 5 hour lay over in Milwaukee until my final flight back home to Madison. All-in-all the red-eye out of Vegas turned out to be a very long trip. I don't recommend it.
I hope you enjoyed my CES 2007 reports. I plan to attend again next year and hopefully I'll be able to post these reports while I'm still at the show - instead of a week later.
One of these companies was Intel Capital. It would be wonderful if Amplio Audio were able to get funding from this venture capitalist. After looking at the information on their Website, it looks like they would be an excellent match for a company like ours. Obviously, this is probably the kind of company that requires an appointment, but I thought what-the-heck, I'll just stop by and to introduce myself and maybe get some basic information about submitting a proposal when we are in a position to formally apply for venture funding. Most venture groups won't provide the first round of financing for a startup, but may invest once you're further along. Unfortunately when I stopped by, I was told the gentleman who was "in charge" had stepped out for a short while. His assistant told me they were only meeting with people with appointments and they didn't have any literature to hand out. Then another fairly nervous looking gentleman who had an appointment arrived and I was quickly asked to leave. So I politely said good bye and walked out the door. No harm done, they don't know who I was and it's not like I was rude or anything. BTW, I really don't like rejection (not that I was rejected).
The next company on my list was Asahi Kasei Microsystems (AKM Semiconductor). They manufacture DACs, ADCs, opamps, etc. - basically a lot of high quality audio chips. I was pleased to see Richard Kulavik, their US Manager of Marketing and Applications, there amongst the company representatives from Japan. I've had several phone and email conversations with Richard and he has been one of the most helpful representatives in the industry. It was nice to finally meet face to face. We spoke for a short while about how our product development was progressing and I asked him about a novel approach he suggested for a volume control solution. I couldn't (and really didn't need to) stay too long because their next appointment was going to arrive in a few minutes.
Another company who I've had some communication with for some time and had a suite in the Hilton was the ICEpower subsidiary of Bang & Olufsen. Even though they were also meeting people by appointment, they were happy to invite me into their suite and meet with me. The ICEpower amplifier modules are used in quite a few highly regarded products for both proaudio and consumer electronics. The Jeff Roland Design Group, who had a booth at the Venetian, is an example of a company that uses ICEpower technology in their products. ICEpower offers raw amplifier modules at a variety of power ratings and they also offer a more integrated solution that combines their amp module with a switching power supply. Their Technical Marketing Coordinator, Uffe Nisbeth, was very friendly and gave me a complete presentation of their product offerings. I had been under the impression that you had to commit to fairly large quantities before you could work with ICEpower and was happy to learn that this is not the case. We will be placing an order for several product samples in the next few weeks.
My visit to the Hilton wasn't a complete waste of time after all. Since the Las Vegas Convention Center was next door, I decided to spend the rest of the afternoon just casually browsing the exhibits. There wasn't much time left because on this last day of the show, the booths shut down an hour earlier than previous days. I think many of the exhibitors were anxious to get home, so some of them were packing up well in advance of the official closing time.
I had a chance to spend some time in the Dolby booth. They were showing off TrueHD, their multichannel, lossless audio technology for the new high-def discs Blu-ray and HD-DVD. I had a conversation with a Dolby executive about how high resolution audio formats like DVD-Audio and SACD have failed to become popular with a large number of consumers and if he thought that might change with TrueHD and the new disc formats. He didn't seem to be too optimistic, maybe that was because it had been a long week for him and he was tired. Anyhow, he said that it really depended on the music industry - the recording companies and labels, and they don't seem to have a clue. DTS also had a nice exhibit nearby and was promoting their lossless codec, DTS-HD, which will also play on Blu-ray and HD-DVD discs. The current confusion between Blu-ray and HD-DVD isn't really helping much either. I don't know if we'll start to see a lot of music (other than movie soundtracks) on either of these disc formats. I won't buy a stand-alone player, but plan to purchase a Blu-ray or HD-DVD drive for our HTPC in the future. Both of these codecs will work on either disc format. What we need is an affordable drive that can play and burn both Blu-ray and HD-DVD discs (and of course every flavor of DVD and CD) and it won't really matter whether they choose to encode to TrueHD or DTS-HD because either will work. Maybe then we will finally get a lot of high resolution music. With all the confusion slowing things down, maybe music downloads from companies like MusicGiants will become popular because they offer a solution that doesn't depend on any expensive hardware that could easily become obsolete. Rumor has it they will be offering multichannel 24-bit 96/192Khz audio tracks in the future. I'm disappointed that I missed their booth over at the Sands. I didn't think of them when I was putting together my itinerary before the show so I didn't even know they were at CES until it was too late.
So, that was my experience at CES 2007. After the exhibits closed, I had to wait around until later in the evening to catch a midnight flight back home. I was hoping to get some sleep on the plane, but couldn't get comfortable. I was probably a little wired from the past few day's activities. I had a nearly 5 hour lay over in Milwaukee until my final flight back home to Madison. All-in-all the red-eye out of Vegas turned out to be a very long trip. I don't recommend it.
I hope you enjoyed my CES 2007 reports. I plan to attend again next year and hopefully I'll be able to post these reports while I'm still at the show - instead of a week later.
Sunday, January 14, 2007
CES 2007 Review - Day Three 1/10/07
On the third day of CES, I planned to focus almost exclusively on audio products. All of the exhibits for CES were basically at 2 main locations - the Las Vegas Convention Center/Hilton and the Sands Expo and Convention Center/Venetian (plus T.H.E. Show at the St. Tropez Hotel). The high end audio was on display in the Venetian Towers, so I decided to spend the full day at the Sands Expo/Venetian location.
I started out in the morning at the Sands Expo. I wanted to check out the MIT Media Lab, because they always have something interesting going on, but as it turned out, they really only had a meeting room. They weren't demonstrating anything at all and the room was empty when I visited. I also wanted to check out the Apple booth, and amazingly enough, couldn't find it. The booth layout and numbering was pretty screwy making it pretty difficult to find what you were looking for. Anyhow, Apple is never a big presence at CES because of MacWorld only a week later, where they make all of their big announcements.
I decided to stop by the Silicon Dust booth just to say hello and congratulate them on a great product. They created the HDHomeRun, which is a dual HD tuner that you connect to your home network. I purchased one of these about a month ago and have been pretty impressed. Here's how it works - After hooking it up to my network router (via Ethernet cable), I connected one of the tuner's inputs to the coax cable from my cable TV service and the other to a coax that runs up to an antenna in my attic. Then I installed the driver software on several of the PCs connected to our home network. I also installed SageTV on these machines. Now I can watch cable (QAM) or over-the-air (OTA/8VSB) TV on all of these machines, without having to install a bunch of TV tuner cards in each machine. It works great. I really enjoy watching HD programming on my 24" 1920x1200 HTPC screen (someday I'll invest in something like a 47" LCD monitor, but with any startup, money is tight). I wish I could view more HD programming because I'm limited to the HD/SD channels offered locally OTA by the major networks or the same programming that is coming over cable unencrypted.
There were a couple of companies at the Sands Expo that were audio related software developers. The first company, Garritan Soundware, developed a program called the Garritan Personal Orchestra (GPO). It is music production software for making orchestral music and includes a complete orchestral sample library, player and VST host. Instead of using electronically synthesized sounds with a sequencer, the GPO uses sounds that were sampled from actual instruments. It sounds amazing. With most synthesizers the sounds just don't quite sound real, especially the articulation from note to note on wind or horn instruments. However, with GPO you can control these transitions with your keyboard's controllers to make the instruments sound really natural. It's a very cool program for musicians or wanna-be musicians like myself.
The other software company I visited was MusicIP. They have what I think could potentially be a very cool product. In the future, I'll probably want to write a post dedicated to this, so I won't go into too much detail at this time. MusicIP is a program that creates intelligent playlists from your music library. Most players (Windows Media Player, iTunes) have smart playlist functionality, but not as sophisticated as something like MusicIP. I am very curious to see how it compares to my current player of choice - J.River's Media Center. With JRMC11, it will analyze my audio tracks and calculate the average beats-per-minute (BPM) and sound level intensity. Its media library also stores basic metadata info like Artist, Album, Genre, etc. and the date a track was added to the library, the last time it was played and the number of times the track was played. So, I can have it automatically generate a playlist of mellow jazz that I haven't listened to for a month and will play for 2 hours by specifying BPM is less than 100, intensity is less than 2, genre is Jazz and/or Vocal, the last time any of these tracks was played was over 1 month, the sort is Random and the time limit is 2 hours. It would be great if MusicIP exceeded JRMC's music library capabilities. I'm looking forward to testing it out.
I then moved over to the Venetian Towers where most of the high-end audio was located. Just like at T.H.E. Show, the hotel suites were converted to listening rooms. Even though the Venetian has very nice rooms, they weren't necessarily the best match for some of these systems both in terms of size and acoustics. There were a lot of exhibits, so I didn't have the chance to spend a lot of time in some of the room, but I did try to spend a little time in everyone. The manufacturers I'm writing about in this post have products that relate in some way to what we are trying to do at Amplio Audio. I've also written about a few that I think use interesting technology and looked a little unusual.
I visited the Bel Canto room to listen to their latest DACs because they use one of the leading contendors for
our choice of DAC - the TI/Burr Brown PCM1792. The e.One Dac3 is a great sounding, well designed product. It's not cheap, but it isn't priced as ridiculously high as many DACs at this show, and I doubt there was much, if any, difference in sound quality.
I spent some time in the Channel Islands Audio room and spoke with Dusty Vawter, who I assume is the owner. They have great sounding products and also use components very similar to those we plan to use. Their DAC uses the PCM1794 and their highly regarded mono amps (see photo to the left) use Hypex Class-D amp modules that were custom designed for CIAUDIO with separate power supplies for the input and output sections.
I visited the booth of British semiconductor manufacturer Zetex Semiconductors, who were showing their Class-Z direct digital feedback amplifier. They were also at last year's show, but the product was still in development. Unlike the Hypex technology (and most Class-D amps), these are fully digital. They take PCM data from an I2S input and convert it to PWM, which is amplified. Their specs are pretty impressive - dynamic range of 120 dB, and distortion and noise less than 0.004% from 1W to 250W into 8Ω. Another manufacture, Theta Digital, uses them in their multichannel digital amps and is very happy with the performance. This is something we plan to look at very closely in the near future. They sounded pretty good, but I'm not convinced that they are an improvement over the state-of-the-art Class-D amps we've been working with lately. If they do outperform the Class-D amps, it would also mean we wouldn't have to include the DACs and analog circuitry. This would simplify our design and possible lower our costs (I haven't seen any pricing on the Zetex parts). However, it would also mean that we'd have to take more time to develop our product.
I'm very interested in digital room correction and digital crossover technology, so I spent some time with several vendors to learn a little more about their approach. It was interesting to learn that DEQX, an Australian company that focuses on room and loudspeaker correction preamp/processors, was demonstrating an NHT Xd system (which was one of the first to incorporate the DEQX processor), except they substituted the standard amps with Hypex UcD400. They said they favored the UcD400's performance over the amps that were normally included with the Xd system. The system sounded great, but I must confess, I didn't get to A/B the setup with room/speaker correction turned on and off. DEQX believes the weak link in the audio chain is the loudspeaker and its interaction with the room. They also believe a good preamp or amplifier is very transparent, meaning they don't introduce errors and distortion of their own. The loudspeakers are the biggest challenge because they are a mechanical device and no single driver can produce the entire audio spectrum ideally. Because of this, they say, "the speakers introduce far more errors and distortion than the totality of the audio chain that precedes them." So with the DEQX processor, they try to bring the loudspeaker distortion and errors down to levels approaching the electronics. Their system is designed to reduce errors and distortion caused by the loudspeaker itself, as well as room acoustic problems.
I was also fortunate to sit in on an excellent presentation in the Tact Audio room. They offer a full line of digital amps and processors. They are also very focused on specialized room correction technology. During their presentation, the room correction was toggled on and off so you could experience the difference. Even sitting off to the side I could hear the bass tighten up and the highs became clearer with room correction on. The improvement in the lower frequencies was very noticeable.
There was also a speaker manufacturer with a unique design, from Kubotek called the HANIWA Cybernetic Audio System. This system integrates large horn speakers with a DSP unit that provides digital crossovers with frequency, phase shift, impulse response and step response analysis. I thought they sounded excellent and I'm not a big fan of gigantic horn speakers. As you can see by this picture on the left, they may not pass the wife-acceptance-factor (WAF) test. They gave me an excellent brochure that includes a little blurb on how the speaker cabinets are built.
The first photo to the right shows how MDF or laminated plywood, which is cut into 1 - 2" sheets is stacked and glued together.
The second photo to the left shows how the laminated block is pressed together for 3 days to firmly fix the lamination.
The third picture on the right shows how their CNC machine is used to precisely mill out the cabinet.
Another interesting speaker design was the very tall prototype from the German manufacturer Meletzky Berlin Loudspeaker (MBL). Their omni directional speakers are made up of a bunch of stacked spherical (actually they are more like oblong spheres) drivers, which they call "Radialstrahlers". The Radialstrahlers are made up of carbon-fiber
petals, which they call "lamellas". Anyhow, it is pretty unique stuff. I think they mentioned the retail price will be something like $150,000 for a pair. I'm not sure if they are worth it. That amount of cash can buy a lot of plane tickets to the best live performances on the planet. I have to admit, they sounded pretty impressive. I kind of expected them to have weird imaging because of the 360° omni directional output, but
surprising they don't. The soundstage did seem pretty open and "live" and at the same time 3 dimensional and accurate. The instruments and vocals all sounded like they were in the right position. They also sound pretty good with a variety of material - jazz, vocal, rock, blues, classical, etc. Most of the other exhibitors were playing Norah Jones or Diana Krall, and I think female vocals sound pretty good on just about any system. So it was nice to listen to something else for a change. As you can see from these pictures, they may not pass the WAF test, unless you have a house with Victorian furniture or some other dramatic style.
For those of you who like the looks of big iron (or aluminum), check out these monster amps from Ypsilon Electronics. Most of the home theater PC enthusiasts I've talked with have gone out of their way to build the PCs so they look more like consumer audio equipment. This is the first time I've seen an audio manufacturer build an audio device that looks like a big tower standing PC. Choice is good. Do you think these would pass the WAF test?
In conclusion, there were quite a few high-end (expensive) systems that didn't really impress me and there were some reasonable priced stuff that I thought sounded really good. So the saying "you get what you pay for" doesn't always apply. There were some products that used expensive components and wild design that just didn't sound as good as some of the less expensive products with more basic designs. I also can appreciate the fact that some of these very expensive components also sounded amazing. My next post will cover my final day.
I started out in the morning at the Sands Expo. I wanted to check out the MIT Media Lab, because they always have something interesting going on, but as it turned out, they really only had a meeting room. They weren't demonstrating anything at all and the room was empty when I visited. I also wanted to check out the Apple booth, and amazingly enough, couldn't find it. The booth layout and numbering was pretty screwy making it pretty difficult to find what you were looking for. Anyhow, Apple is never a big presence at CES because of MacWorld only a week later, where they make all of their big announcements.
I decided to stop by the Silicon Dust booth just to say hello and congratulate them on a great product. They created the HDHomeRun, which is a dual HD tuner that you connect to your home network. I purchased one of these about a month ago and have been pretty impressed. Here's how it works - After hooking it up to my network router (via Ethernet cable), I connected one of the tuner's inputs to the coax cable from my cable TV service and the other to a coax that runs up to an antenna in my attic. Then I installed the driver software on several of the PCs connected to our home network. I also installed SageTV on these machines. Now I can watch cable (QAM) or over-the-air (OTA/8VSB) TV on all of these machines, without having to install a bunch of TV tuner cards in each machine. It works great. I really enjoy watching HD programming on my 24" 1920x1200 HTPC screen (someday I'll invest in something like a 47" LCD monitor, but with any startup, money is tight). I wish I could view more HD programming because I'm limited to the HD/SD channels offered locally OTA by the major networks or the same programming that is coming over cable unencrypted.
There were a couple of companies at the Sands Expo that were audio related software developers. The first company, Garritan Soundware, developed a program called the Garritan Personal Orchestra (GPO). It is music production software for making orchestral music and includes a complete orchestral sample library, player and VST host. Instead of using electronically synthesized sounds with a sequencer, the GPO uses sounds that were sampled from actual instruments. It sounds amazing. With most synthesizers the sounds just don't quite sound real, especially the articulation from note to note on wind or horn instruments. However, with GPO you can control these transitions with your keyboard's controllers to make the instruments sound really natural. It's a very cool program for musicians or wanna-be musicians like myself.
The other software company I visited was MusicIP. They have what I think could potentially be a very cool product. In the future, I'll probably want to write a post dedicated to this, so I won't go into too much detail at this time. MusicIP is a program that creates intelligent playlists from your music library. Most players (Windows Media Player, iTunes) have smart playlist functionality, but not as sophisticated as something like MusicIP. I am very curious to see how it compares to my current player of choice - J.River's Media Center. With JRMC11, it will analyze my audio tracks and calculate the average beats-per-minute (BPM) and sound level intensity. Its media library also stores basic metadata info like Artist, Album, Genre, etc. and the date a track was added to the library, the last time it was played and the number of times the track was played. So, I can have it automatically generate a playlist of mellow jazz that I haven't listened to for a month and will play for 2 hours by specifying BPM is less than 100, intensity is less than 2, genre is Jazz and/or Vocal, the last time any of these tracks was played was over 1 month, the sort is Random and the time limit is 2 hours. It would be great if MusicIP exceeded JRMC's music library capabilities. I'm looking forward to testing it out.
I then moved over to the Venetian Towers where most of the high-end audio was located. Just like at T.H.E. Show, the hotel suites were converted to listening rooms. Even though the Venetian has very nice rooms, they weren't necessarily the best match for some of these systems both in terms of size and acoustics. There were a lot of exhibits, so I didn't have the chance to spend a lot of time in some of the room, but I did try to spend a little time in everyone. The manufacturers I'm writing about in this post have products that relate in some way to what we are trying to do at Amplio Audio. I've also written about a few that I think use interesting technology and looked a little unusual.
I visited the Bel Canto room to listen to their latest DACs because they use one of the leading contendors for
our choice of DAC - the TI/Burr Brown PCM1792. The e.One Dac3 is a great sounding, well designed product. It's not cheap, but it isn't priced as ridiculously high as many DACs at this show, and I doubt there was much, if any, difference in sound quality.
I spent some time in the Channel Islands Audio room and spoke with Dusty Vawter, who I assume is the owner. They have great sounding products and also use components very similar to those we plan to use. Their DAC uses the PCM1794 and their highly regarded mono amps (see photo to the left) use Hypex Class-D amp modules that were custom designed for CIAUDIO with separate power supplies for the input and output sections.I visited the booth of British semiconductor manufacturer Zetex Semiconductors, who were showing their Class-Z direct digital feedback amplifier. They were also at last year's show, but the product was still in development. Unlike the Hypex technology (and most Class-D amps), these are fully digital. They take PCM data from an I2S input and convert it to PWM, which is amplified. Their specs are pretty impressive - dynamic range of 120 dB, and distortion and noise less than 0.004% from 1W to 250W into 8Ω. Another manufacture, Theta Digital, uses them in their multichannel digital amps and is very happy with the performance. This is something we plan to look at very closely in the near future. They sounded pretty good, but I'm not convinced that they are an improvement over the state-of-the-art Class-D amps we've been working with lately. If they do outperform the Class-D amps, it would also mean we wouldn't have to include the DACs and analog circuitry. This would simplify our design and possible lower our costs (I haven't seen any pricing on the Zetex parts). However, it would also mean that we'd have to take more time to develop our product.
I'm very interested in digital room correction and digital crossover technology, so I spent some time with several vendors to learn a little more about their approach. It was interesting to learn that DEQX, an Australian company that focuses on room and loudspeaker correction preamp/processors, was demonstrating an NHT Xd system (which was one of the first to incorporate the DEQX processor), except they substituted the standard amps with Hypex UcD400. They said they favored the UcD400's performance over the amps that were normally included with the Xd system. The system sounded great, but I must confess, I didn't get to A/B the setup with room/speaker correction turned on and off. DEQX believes the weak link in the audio chain is the loudspeaker and its interaction with the room. They also believe a good preamp or amplifier is very transparent, meaning they don't introduce errors and distortion of their own. The loudspeakers are the biggest challenge because they are a mechanical device and no single driver can produce the entire audio spectrum ideally. Because of this, they say, "the speakers introduce far more errors and distortion than the totality of the audio chain that precedes them." So with the DEQX processor, they try to bring the loudspeaker distortion and errors down to levels approaching the electronics. Their system is designed to reduce errors and distortion caused by the loudspeaker itself, as well as room acoustic problems.
I was also fortunate to sit in on an excellent presentation in the Tact Audio room. They offer a full line of digital amps and processors. They are also very focused on specialized room correction technology. During their presentation, the room correction was toggled on and off so you could experience the difference. Even sitting off to the side I could hear the bass tighten up and the highs became clearer with room correction on. The improvement in the lower frequencies was very noticeable.
There was also a speaker manufacturer with a unique design, from Kubotek called the HANIWA Cybernetic Audio System. This system integrates large horn speakers with a DSP unit that provides digital crossovers with frequency, phase shift, impulse response and step response analysis. I thought they sounded excellent and I'm not a big fan of gigantic horn speakers. As you can see by this picture on the left, they may not pass the wife-acceptance-factor (WAF) test. They gave me an excellent brochure that includes a little blurb on how the speaker cabinets are built.
The first photo to the right shows how MDF or laminated plywood, which is cut into 1 - 2" sheets is stacked and glued together.
The second photo to the left shows how the laminated block is pressed together for 3 days to firmly fix the lamination.
The third picture on the right shows how their CNC machine is used to precisely mill out the cabinet.Another interesting speaker design was the very tall prototype from the German manufacturer Meletzky Berlin Loudspeaker (MBL). Their omni directional speakers are made up of a bunch of stacked spherical (actually they are more like oblong spheres) drivers, which they call "Radialstrahlers". The Radialstrahlers are made up of carbon-fiber
petals, which they call "lamellas". Anyhow, it is pretty unique stuff. I think they mentioned the retail price will be something like $150,000 for a pair. I'm not sure if they are worth it. That amount of cash can buy a lot of plane tickets to the best live performances on the planet. I have to admit, they sounded pretty impressive. I kind of expected them to have weird imaging because of the 360° omni directional output, but
surprising they don't. The soundstage did seem pretty open and "live" and at the same time 3 dimensional and accurate. The instruments and vocals all sounded like they were in the right position. They also sound pretty good with a variety of material - jazz, vocal, rock, blues, classical, etc. Most of the other exhibitors were playing Norah Jones or Diana Krall, and I think female vocals sound pretty good on just about any system. So it was nice to listen to something else for a change. As you can see from these pictures, they may not pass the WAF test, unless you have a house with Victorian furniture or some other dramatic style.
For those of you who like the looks of big iron (or aluminum), check out these monster amps from Ypsilon Electronics. Most of the home theater PC enthusiasts I've talked with have gone out of their way to build the PCs so they look more like consumer audio equipment. This is the first time I've seen an audio manufacturer build an audio device that looks like a big tower standing PC. Choice is good. Do you think these would pass the WAF test?In conclusion, there were quite a few high-end (expensive) systems that didn't really impress me and there were some reasonable priced stuff that I thought sounded really good. So the saying "you get what you pay for" doesn't always apply. There were some products that used expensive components and wild design that just didn't sound as good as some of the less expensive products with more basic designs. I also can appreciate the fact that some of these very expensive components also sounded amazing. My next post will cover my final day.
Saturday, January 13, 2007
CES 2007 Review - Day Two 1/9/07
Tuesday was a pretty busy day for me at CES. I started it off with a breakfast meeting with Jim Kinne of Digimeister Design. I was held up waiting in line for the monorail, so I was about 15 to 20 minutes late, but since Jim was also held up in traffic, he had only been waiting for me for a few minutes. I was planning to sit in on Michael Dell's 9:00 AM keynote address that morning, but meeting with Jim was much more useful. Besides, I can always stream Michael's keynote off the Dell's webserver.
After breakfast, I headed over to the Las Vegas Convention Center where all the big companies were strutting their stuff. I stopped by the Microsoft booth to ask a few questions about Vista Media Center. I'm having some problems with video playback and was hoping someone could help me out or at least point me to the best support resource. I also took a look at demos of the latest Office 2007 while I was there. The new UI for Office is pretty cool. I'm looking forward to installing it on my office machine once I finally upgrade it to Vista. Of course Microsoft had a huge booth and the big emphasis was on the upcoming consumer roll out for Vista. They also had a big section within their mega-booth for showing off their Zune. One of the many Microsoft stages was promoting Crossfader, a Microsoft created online community for digital artists. During the Crossfader promotion, I briefly met Arif Gursel who is a Program Manager for Microsoft's Devices and Media Team. We didn't get much of a chance to talk, but he seemed pretty interested in what Amplio Audio is doing. I'll try to touch bases with him in the near future.
There was a guy from Hewlett Packard working at the Microsoft booth demonstrating Microsoft's Home Server software running on HP's MediaSmart Server (see picture to the left). This kind of reminds me of a more user friendly Unraid system. The user doesn't have to worry about setting up a raid array and doesn't have to purchase a set of matching hard disk drives. However, with the Unraid system, every drive execpt the parity drive is providing full storage capacity. For example, with Unraid, if I have 3 x 500 GB drives, I end up with ~ 1 TB of storage space. With the Microsoft Home Server solution, I would get 750 GB of storage space from 3 x 500 GB drives because it is basically mirroring your disks. The Microsoft Home Server sounds a lot easier to set up and manage, so the loss in storage capacity might be a reasonable trade-off. I guess to be fair, I should also mention one other advantage of the Unraid system is price. I would suspect the price of a DIY unraid system to be quite a bit lower than a Microsoft Home Server setup with the same capacity.
I also swung by the Sony booth to say hello to my former co-workers from Sonic Foundry
(who's media software division was purchased by Sony a few years ago). Unfortunately, most of them weren't hanging around the booth at that time. I think they were out enjoying CES. I can't blame them - I don't envy anyone who has to work a booth at one of these big shows. Anyhow, I did get to say hi to Gary Rebholz who is now the Training Manager for Sony Media Software, who I haven't seen since I worked at Sonic Foundry. Sony's booth was also pretty large and while I was visiting, there was a live performance featuring Sara Bareilles (see photo to the right).
I also spent some time watching some of the other spectacular exhibits. Panasonic had a bunch of high def plasma screens set up as the backdrop for their stage. This photo to the left shows the performers appearing simultaneously on stage and on the plasma screens to show off the impressive high resolution or realism of their plasma screens. They were trying to imply that you couldn't tell the difference between the live performers and the ones appearing on their plasma screens, but obviously even with the great colors and high contrast, high resolution of these displays, there's a big difference between the actual 3 dimensions of the live performers and the flat 2D displays.
Quite a few companies were showing their latest and greatest LCD HD screens. The ones that were getting the most oohs and aahs were the large screens from LG and Sharp. The LG screen shown in this picture on the left, measures 102" diagonally. If you walked right up to this LG screen, you could see a vertical seam running right down the middle. You had to get very close and stand slightly off to the side to see this. From a typically viewing 
distance of >10', I don't think you could possibly see it. Sharp's 108" Aquos LCD screen (see photo to the right) was the largest LCD TV I saw at the show and as you can see from their display, they claim it is the largest in the world. This screen was amazing looking and I did not find any seams with close inspection. They also had a bunch of really nice smaller screens like 42", 46", 52" and 65" that looked great. And, it looks like the prices are coming down.
By this time my legs and feet were getting a little sore from standing and walking, but I did get a chance to stop by the booths of Lian Li, Silverstone, Cooler Master and Thermaltake to see the latest and greatest chassis designs for HTPCs and servers. Lian Li might even be a possible source for amplifier chassis because they said they are interested in any potential OEM/ODM project.
After a day full of stomping around the big exhibit hall, a little rest and relaxation was very appealing. The week before CES I received an invitation to a bloggers reception being held later Tuesday afternoon at the Atomic Testing Museum, so I navigated my way over there by shuttle and bus. I met several people, most of which I'd consider professional bloggers. By professional blogger, I mean someone who receives revenue by running advertisements on their blog or through some subscription program. A few of the pro bloggers I met were Doug Felteau, Chief Gizmateer of Gizmos for Geeks, Steve Brobeck, founder of the Blog Business Summit, who mentioned that he has a book that teaches you how to drive more traffic to your blog, Drew Crouch of Ask Dave Taylor!, and Al Carlton of coolest-gadgets.com. and . There were a few bloggers like myself, who don't try to generate revenue from their blog, but instead use it as a communication tool to talk about their company or products, like Loren Feldman of 1938 Media, and Nick and Dave Gray of Flight Display Systems. Their company sells and installs high end audio/video systems in private jets. Actually, it looks like Nick might be using his blog to meet chicks :).
The last event of the day for me was the 6th annual AVS Forum CES 2007 Party. I made it over to the Sahara Hotel's Golden Ballroom, where the party was held, just in time to get a little bite to eat before they hauled all the food away. I hung out for a little while to listen to the funk and soul, then headed back to my luxurious motel.
After breakfast, I headed over to the Las Vegas Convention Center where all the big companies were strutting their stuff. I stopped by the Microsoft booth to ask a few questions about Vista Media Center. I'm having some problems with video playback and was hoping someone could help me out or at least point me to the best support resource. I also took a look at demos of the latest Office 2007 while I was there. The new UI for Office is pretty cool. I'm looking forward to installing it on my office machine once I finally upgrade it to Vista. Of course Microsoft had a huge booth and the big emphasis was on the upcoming consumer roll out for Vista. They also had a big section within their mega-booth for showing off their Zune. One of the many Microsoft stages was promoting Crossfader, a Microsoft created online community for digital artists. During the Crossfader promotion, I briefly met Arif Gursel who is a Program Manager for Microsoft's Devices and Media Team. We didn't get much of a chance to talk, but he seemed pretty interested in what Amplio Audio is doing. I'll try to touch bases with him in the near future.
There was a guy from Hewlett Packard working at the Microsoft booth demonstrating Microsoft's Home Server software running on HP's MediaSmart Server (see picture to the left). This kind of reminds me of a more user friendly Unraid system. The user doesn't have to worry about setting up a raid array and doesn't have to purchase a set of matching hard disk drives. However, with the Unraid system, every drive execpt the parity drive is providing full storage capacity. For example, with Unraid, if I have 3 x 500 GB drives, I end up with ~ 1 TB of storage space. With the Microsoft Home Server solution, I would get 750 GB of storage space from 3 x 500 GB drives because it is basically mirroring your disks. The Microsoft Home Server sounds a lot easier to set up and manage, so the loss in storage capacity might be a reasonable trade-off. I guess to be fair, I should also mention one other advantage of the Unraid system is price. I would suspect the price of a DIY unraid system to be quite a bit lower than a Microsoft Home Server setup with the same capacity.I also swung by the Sony booth to say hello to my former co-workers from Sonic Foundry
(who's media software division was purchased by Sony a few years ago). Unfortunately, most of them weren't hanging around the booth at that time. I think they were out enjoying CES. I can't blame them - I don't envy anyone who has to work a booth at one of these big shows. Anyhow, I did get to say hi to Gary Rebholz who is now the Training Manager for Sony Media Software, who I haven't seen since I worked at Sonic Foundry. Sony's booth was also pretty large and while I was visiting, there was a live performance featuring Sara Bareilles (see photo to the right).
I also spent some time watching some of the other spectacular exhibits. Panasonic had a bunch of high def plasma screens set up as the backdrop for their stage. This photo to the left shows the performers appearing simultaneously on stage and on the plasma screens to show off the impressive high resolution or realism of their plasma screens. They were trying to imply that you couldn't tell the difference between the live performers and the ones appearing on their plasma screens, but obviously even with the great colors and high contrast, high resolution of these displays, there's a big difference between the actual 3 dimensions of the live performers and the flat 2D displays.
Quite a few companies were showing their latest and greatest LCD HD screens. The ones that were getting the most oohs and aahs were the large screens from LG and Sharp. The LG screen shown in this picture on the left, measures 102" diagonally. If you walked right up to this LG screen, you could see a vertical seam running right down the middle. You had to get very close and stand slightly off to the side to see this. From a typically viewing 
distance of >10', I don't think you could possibly see it. Sharp's 108" Aquos LCD screen (see photo to the right) was the largest LCD TV I saw at the show and as you can see from their display, they claim it is the largest in the world. This screen was amazing looking and I did not find any seams with close inspection. They also had a bunch of really nice smaller screens like 42", 46", 52" and 65" that looked great. And, it looks like the prices are coming down.By this time my legs and feet were getting a little sore from standing and walking, but I did get a chance to stop by the booths of Lian Li, Silverstone, Cooler Master and Thermaltake to see the latest and greatest chassis designs for HTPCs and servers. Lian Li might even be a possible source for amplifier chassis because they said they are interested in any potential OEM/ODM project.
After a day full of stomping around the big exhibit hall, a little rest and relaxation was very appealing. The week before CES I received an invitation to a bloggers reception being held later Tuesday afternoon at the Atomic Testing Museum, so I navigated my way over there by shuttle and bus. I met several people, most of which I'd consider professional bloggers. By professional blogger, I mean someone who receives revenue by running advertisements on their blog or through some subscription program. A few of the pro bloggers I met were Doug Felteau, Chief Gizmateer of Gizmos for Geeks, Steve Brobeck, founder of the Blog Business Summit, who mentioned that he has a book that teaches you how to drive more traffic to your blog, Drew Crouch of Ask Dave Taylor!, and Al Carlton of coolest-gadgets.com. and . There were a few bloggers like myself, who don't try to generate revenue from their blog, but instead use it as a communication tool to talk about their company or products, like Loren Feldman of 1938 Media, and Nick and Dave Gray of Flight Display Systems. Their company sells and installs high end audio/video systems in private jets. Actually, it looks like Nick might be using his blog to meet chicks :).
The last event of the day for me was the 6th annual AVS Forum CES 2007 Party. I made it over to the Sahara Hotel's Golden Ballroom, where the party was held, just in time to get a little bite to eat before they hauled all the food away. I hung out for a little while to listen to the funk and soul, then headed back to my luxurious motel.
CES 2007 Keynotes
The only keynote I was able to sit in on was the Monday afternoon keynote by Disney's CEO, Robert Ager. Like I said in my earlier post, it was a nice 1 hour Disney promo. Disney sure has a lot of content and they just can't wait to get it to you... sort of.
I missed Bill Gate's keynote Sunday evening, since I didn't arrive until Monday morning. Even though I really enjoy demonstrations of home automation with audio and video gadgetry, I don't think the keynote was as interesting as this lunch meeting he had with several bloggers earlier that day at CES. At about 15 minutes into this conversation, Bill comments that they will push downloadable content as much as they can (HD-DVD is great, but eventually online will be more important), but there are digital rights issues slowing things down. He mentions that this is not as much of a problem with their Xbox consoles because of their closed architecture. Then Ryan Block, Managing Editor of Engadget commented that in the future, the living room (meaning the Xbox) will be a more important platform for Microsoft than the PC. Bill disagreed and said "no, Media Center is way richer." He goes on to say that Media Center (meaning HTPCs running Window's Media Center) is the superset device and represents a gigantic market because of the openness and variety of PCs. He also mentioned that PC gaming will be where you'll see the cutting edge high end gaming happening, partly because of all the advanced graphics technology being developed by ATI and NVIDIA.
I missed Bill Gate's keynote Sunday evening, since I didn't arrive until Monday morning. Even though I really enjoy demonstrations of home automation with audio and video gadgetry, I don't think the keynote was as interesting as this lunch meeting he had with several bloggers earlier that day at CES. At about 15 minutes into this conversation, Bill comments that they will push downloadable content as much as they can (HD-DVD is great, but eventually online will be more important), but there are digital rights issues slowing things down. He mentions that this is not as much of a problem with their Xbox consoles because of their closed architecture. Then Ryan Block, Managing Editor of Engadget commented that in the future, the living room (meaning the Xbox) will be a more important platform for Microsoft than the PC. Bill disagreed and said "no, Media Center is way richer." He goes on to say that Media Center (meaning HTPCs running Window's Media Center) is the superset device and represents a gigantic market because of the openness and variety of PCs. He also mentioned that PC gaming will be where you'll see the cutting edge high end gaming happening, partly because of all the advanced graphics technology being developed by ATI and NVIDIA.
Friday, January 12, 2007
CES 2007 Review - Day One 1/8/07
My flight left Madison at 6:00 AM, so it was an early start. I had to take a puddle jumper to Milwaukee and then I flew to Las Vegas, where my arrival was sometime around 8:50 AM with the time change. I took an airport shuttle to my motel and learned that check-in wasn't until 3:00 PM and was told they didn't have any rooms available at that time. This was a problem because I really needed to drop off my suitcase/bag before heading out and visiting the exhibits. I really didn't feel like carrying my heavy bag all day. Most hotels would let you store your bags with them in some safe place, but not the Wild Wild West. The lady at the reception desk didn't recommend storing my bag with them because, she said, "there's all sorts of people walking back there, and you never know what they might grab." This hotel is not exactly what I expected. It made the Howard Johnson's that I stayed in last year look pretty good. And, I really didn't want to stay in the HoJo's again. There were some pretty nasty bugs crawling around in the bathroom. By then it was nearly noon Madison time, so I decided to grab lunch at their Gambler's Grill. After lunch I gave it another shot at the reception desk and was able to get into a room. Thank goodness I could finally get rid of my bag.
A few days before leaving for the show, I put together an itinerary for my 4 day visit. This included all the different exhibits that I wanted to check out. First up was T.H.E. Show, where I wanted to meet with Adire Audio, April Music, Benchmark and Empirical Audio.
Adire Audio used to be a distributor for Hypex Class-D amplifier modules and their website used to include some useful power supply circuit diagrams. I don't think they deal with the amp modules anymore because they are focusing all of their efforts on their speaker drivers, which they sell to high-end speaker builders. At their booth, I met and spoke with the owner of a speaker manufacturer named Tympanik (unfortunately, I didn't write down his name). It was nice talking with him and sharing similar experiences with our audio related startup businesses. He's a little further along because they have a product ready to ship, but he's also been at it for about 3 years.
At April Music's booth I met with Simon Lee. I also met him at last year's CES and have been talking on and off with them about an engineering/manufacturing partnership. They are located in South Korea, so obviously they have much closer connections to Asian manufacturing centers. They've also produced some pretty nice products including their Stello DA220 DAC, which has received a few great reviews. Their latest product is called the Aura note (see photo at left), which they refer to as the "CD/AMP Completer" because and it combines a preamp, amp, CD transport, DACs and tuner. All you need is a good pair of matching speakers and you are good to go. It also includes a USB connection so it can be used to play audio from your PC. It's limited to 2 channel stereo and the built in decoder only supports MP3, WMA and OGG up to 192 Kbps. The built-in encoder will only let you record MP3s at 128 Kbps.
I didn't get a chance to speak with anyone from Benchmark. They were sharing a booth with a distributor named Studio Electric and no one actually from Benchmark was around. I did get a chance to speak with Steve Nugent of Empirical Audio. Steve's a really nice guy and was willing to share some of his knowledge of DAC design (they offer upgrades or modifications to Benchmark's DAC1) and the importance of reducing jitter. While visiting their booth, I also met the woman who organized both T.H.E. Show and the Rocky Mountain Audio Fest. They introduced her as the latter and it wasn't until a little later that I learned about her involvement with the former. So, I probably put my foot in my mouth when I commented that the exhibitors were not getting nearly enough traffic to justify their expense because the change of venue for the CES high end audio was moved away from their location. Last year, they were right next to each other, so many people who visited the CES high end audio exhibits (next door at the Alexis Park Resort) were walking over to the St. Tropez Hotel, where T.H.E. Show was located. Anyhow, I've heard great things about the Rocky Mountain Audio Fest and will try to attend it next October in Denver.
I didn't cover as much ground as I planned the first day. Transportation from venue to venue is not as quick as I'd like. Traffic in Vegas during CES, to put it mildly, sucks. I spent a lot of time on the CES shuttle bus waiting in traffic. I finally made my way to the Palazzo Ballroom at the Venetian Hotel to listen to the keynote by Disney's Robert Ager. It was a nice 1 hour Disney promo. Of course he had some nice visuals and we got to see the stars of their TV show 'Lost', which I've never watched, but quite a few people in the audience thought that was pretty exciting. Stay tuned for day 2.
A few days before leaving for the show, I put together an itinerary for my 4 day visit. This included all the different exhibits that I wanted to check out. First up was T.H.E. Show, where I wanted to meet with Adire Audio, April Music, Benchmark and Empirical Audio.
Adire Audio used to be a distributor for Hypex Class-D amplifier modules and their website used to include some useful power supply circuit diagrams. I don't think they deal with the amp modules anymore because they are focusing all of their efforts on their speaker drivers, which they sell to high-end speaker builders. At their booth, I met and spoke with the owner of a speaker manufacturer named Tympanik (unfortunately, I didn't write down his name). It was nice talking with him and sharing similar experiences with our audio related startup businesses. He's a little further along because they have a product ready to ship, but he's also been at it for about 3 years.
At April Music's booth I met with Simon Lee. I also met him at last year's CES and have been talking on and off with them about an engineering/manufacturing partnership. They are located in South Korea, so obviously they have much closer connections to Asian manufacturing centers. They've also produced some pretty nice products including their Stello DA220 DAC, which has received a few great reviews. Their latest product is called the Aura note (see photo at left), which they refer to as the "CD/AMP Completer" because and it combines a preamp, amp, CD transport, DACs and tuner. All you need is a good pair of matching speakers and you are good to go. It also includes a USB connection so it can be used to play audio from your PC. It's limited to 2 channel stereo and the built in decoder only supports MP3, WMA and OGG up to 192 Kbps. The built-in encoder will only let you record MP3s at 128 Kbps.I didn't get a chance to speak with anyone from Benchmark. They were sharing a booth with a distributor named Studio Electric and no one actually from Benchmark was around. I did get a chance to speak with Steve Nugent of Empirical Audio. Steve's a really nice guy and was willing to share some of his knowledge of DAC design (they offer upgrades or modifications to Benchmark's DAC1) and the importance of reducing jitter. While visiting their booth, I also met the woman who organized both T.H.E. Show and the Rocky Mountain Audio Fest. They introduced her as the latter and it wasn't until a little later that I learned about her involvement with the former. So, I probably put my foot in my mouth when I commented that the exhibitors were not getting nearly enough traffic to justify their expense because the change of venue for the CES high end audio was moved away from their location. Last year, they were right next to each other, so many people who visited the CES high end audio exhibits (next door at the Alexis Park Resort) were walking over to the St. Tropez Hotel, where T.H.E. Show was located. Anyhow, I've heard great things about the Rocky Mountain Audio Fest and will try to attend it next October in Denver.
I didn't cover as much ground as I planned the first day. Transportation from venue to venue is not as quick as I'd like. Traffic in Vegas during CES, to put it mildly, sucks. I spent a lot of time on the CES shuttle bus waiting in traffic. I finally made my way to the Palazzo Ballroom at the Venetian Hotel to listen to the keynote by Disney's Robert Ager. It was a nice 1 hour Disney promo. Of course he had some nice visuals and we got to see the stars of their TV show 'Lost', which I've never watched, but quite a few people in the audience thought that was pretty exciting. Stay tuned for day 2.
Sunday, January 07, 2007
"T.H.E. Show"
Last year (my first CES experience), most of the high-end audio stuff was on display at the Alexis Park Resort Hotel. Nearby, there was another event called "T.H.E. Show" (short for The Home Entertainment Show) and was kind of like a sub-convention within CES. This year the High-performance Audio & Home Theater exhibits have been moved to The Venetian.
In honor of "T.H.E. Show" this weeks SongSpot selection is a song called Last Show With Joe by the Free Radicals from their CD Aerial Bombardment. For some reason this tune seemed to capture the right mood for me.
In honor of "T.H.E. Show" this weeks SongSpot selection is a song called Last Show With Joe by the Free Radicals from their CD Aerial Bombardment. For some reason this tune seemed to capture the right mood for me.
Friday, December 22, 2006
CES International 2007
I finally booked my flight and hotel this week for the CES show in Las Vegas, which runs from Jan. 8th to the 11th. I found another cheap rathole about a mile from the strip. I plan to spend a lot of time at "The Show" where all the high end audio products are showcased. I'll also try to spend some time at the HTPC related vendor's booths, like Microsoft (so I can voice a few of my complaints/concerns with Vista), NVidia, etc.
I'll take my digital camera so I can take pictures of anything interesting to share on my blog. Let me know if you are planning to attend and would like to meet with me to talk about my products or business plans. I'm going to try to attend the AVS Forum CES 2007 Party. Hopefully I can meet some of you there.
I'll take my digital camera so I can take pictures of anything interesting to share on my blog. Let me know if you are planning to attend and would like to meet with me to talk about my products or business plans. I'm going to try to attend the AVS Forum CES 2007 Party. Hopefully I can meet some of you there.
Thursday, November 02, 2006
CES 2007
Are you going to the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas this year?
I was planning to go, but I can't find a reasonably priced room somewhere near the strip. I attended CES 2006, but had to stay at the Howard Johnson's near the airport. It was cheap, but not necessarily the greatest accommodations. Given that we are a startup with no income, cheap is very good. Anyhow, even the HoJos is all booked up from January 7th to the 11th, 2007. I'd also like to find something a little closer, so I don't have to rent a car.
So, if you know of any alternatives, please let me know.
I was planning to go, but I can't find a reasonably priced room somewhere near the strip. I attended CES 2006, but had to stay at the Howard Johnson's near the airport. It was cheap, but not necessarily the greatest accommodations. Given that we are a startup with no income, cheap is very good. Anyhow, even the HoJos is all booked up from January 7th to the 11th, 2007. I'd also like to find something a little closer, so I don't have to rent a car.
So, if you know of any alternatives, please let me know.
Thursday, October 05, 2006
AES 121st Convention
I'm not at this years AES convention in San Francisco. Can't afford to go, but maybe next year. For those of you who may not be familiar with this convention, the AES (Audio Engineering Society) convention is usually a little more technical than something like the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) and is obviously focused on audio engineering and a lot of this is geared to pro-audio.
If anyone reading this blog is at the show or planning to attend in the next few days, feel free to contact us and share any interesting information. I'd really like to hear about these workshops:
SURROUND SOUND–NOW & IN FUTURE
HIGH RESOLUTION AUDIO — DISCS VS. DOWNLOADS
CONTENT PROTECTION AND AUDIO DISTRIBUTION: CAN THIS MARRIAGE BE SAVED?
WHY THE ROOM IMPULSE RESPONSE AFFECTS EVERYTHING WE HEAR: What Is It; Why Does It Matter, and How Do We Measure It?
HUMAN FACTORS IN THE DESIGN OF AUDIO PRODUCTS AND SYSTEMS
THE HOWS AND WHYS OF DELTA SIGMA PROCESSING
And, of course I would like to spend some time in the exhibit hall. If you are an exhibitor, please free to enter any comments below.
Since I can't attend this year's convention, I'll do the next best thing and try to read a bunch of blog entries covering the show. I've searched for 'AES blog' and only come up with these so far:
Professional A/V Industry Blog
Mix Online
Brian's Brain
Peter at WordPress
John Atwood (ClariSonus)
Anablog (note: I discovered this blog on 10/31/06)
If I come across any others I will add them to this list. 10/6/06 update - okay, Brian Dipert (click on Brian's Brain blog, which I just added to the list) is at the AES convention. Hopefully, he will post something about the convention in the next few days. Another update: just found a few more, I'll just add them to the list.
If anyone reading this blog is at the show or planning to attend in the next few days, feel free to contact us and share any interesting information. I'd really like to hear about these workshops:
SURROUND SOUND–NOW & IN FUTURE
HIGH RESOLUTION AUDIO — DISCS VS. DOWNLOADS
CONTENT PROTECTION AND AUDIO DISTRIBUTION: CAN THIS MARRIAGE BE SAVED?
WHY THE ROOM IMPULSE RESPONSE AFFECTS EVERYTHING WE HEAR: What Is It; Why Does It Matter, and How Do We Measure It?
HUMAN FACTORS IN THE DESIGN OF AUDIO PRODUCTS AND SYSTEMS
THE HOWS AND WHYS OF DELTA SIGMA PROCESSING
And, of course I would like to spend some time in the exhibit hall. If you are an exhibitor, please free to enter any comments below.
Since I can't attend this year's convention, I'll do the next best thing and try to read a bunch of blog entries covering the show. I've searched for 'AES blog' and only come up with these so far:
Professional A/V Industry Blog
Mix Online
Brian's Brain
Peter at WordPress
John Atwood (ClariSonus)
Anablog (note: I discovered this blog on 10/31/06)
If I come across any others I will add them to this list. 10/6/06 update - okay, Brian Dipert (click on Brian's Brain blog, which I just added to the list) is at the AES convention. Hopefully, he will post something about the convention in the next few days. Another update: just found a few more, I'll just add them to the list.
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