CES 2007

The Sooloos display comes with a built-in CD slot for loading your music onto the server. The $4400 Control:One touch-screen display/controller is pretty slick. The CD ripper is in the base—unobtrusively located, might we add? Once the disc is ripped, all of All Media Guide's metadata is automatically entered, so you could, for example, locate any recording in your collection with Phil Lesh playing bass. Oh wait—maybe we should have used an example with somebody who changed bands more frequently.

As we were walking out of DLS' room, we passed Supro Cables' display. "Are those Deltron connectors?" I asked.

DEQX's PDC3 preamp/processor (price tdb) combines an analog preamplifier with a DAC and measurement-driven DSP. In a hotel room with zero treatment, Jon Iverson and I were enthralled by the three dimensional soundstaging of a pair of B&W 805s and a pair of B&W ASW 700s. Nope, it wasn't because the CD player was fabulous, either—it was solid, but not audiophile approved.

This is the first year that the high-end audio exhibits are clustered in the Venetian Hotel and Casino. Emphasis on the casino part - to get to the majority of hotel room exhibits, we must negotiate about a quarter mile of hallway and casino to get from the shuttle stop to the elevators. The rooms themselves are nicely appointed, but several exhibitors are already complaining about the acoustics and the challenge of finding ways to make the two level suites music friendly. And on a personal note, the press room is back the quarter mile through the casino near the shuttle stop. End of gripe.

Stephen Mejias and longtime Primedia CES assistant Cynthia get the awards ready to be handed out later in the day. We'll have complete pictures and story later.

With another act of blatant scoopage (I'm writing this as my colleagues are meeting for breakfast), I must let you know that, while ripping through the Venetian halls, late yesterday evening, making some final preparations before today's morning activities, I nearly fell on my face at the sound of such sublime elfin wonder coming from the Audes Room (suite 29-324, conveniently close to where Primedia's Home Tech Group resides, which is to say: I'll be back, again and again.)

As we reported">http://www.stereophile.com/news/032706ces">reported last March, the Consumer Electronics Association decided to move the "high-performance audio" and "high-performance home theater" exhibits of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) to Las Vegas' Venetian Hotel in 2007. Here, then, in a blatant attempt to scoop my show-reporting Stereophile colleagues, is my picture of the new CES venue. I actually took this picture last year, not in anticipation of the change in show venue, but simply because I’m a sucker for the ersatz-European ambience of Las Vegas hotel-casinos like the Venetian. And whatever the advantages/disadvantages of the Venetian for demonstrating audio equipment, you have to admit that it’s picturesque!