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- Details
- Written by: Doug Schneider
- Category: Features
As far as we can tell, everyone, including us, really likes the Hilton Bonaventure hotel, which has been home to Salon Son & Image since 2010. It's a bit weirdly situated -- more or less like a luxury three-story hotel atop a nine-story building -- but it's beautiful in many ways. I recommend staying here, particularly if you're attending the show. On the other hand, most of us have a love-hate-hate relationship with the lobby restaurant/bar.
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- Written by: Jason Thorpe
- Category: Features
The wacky world of audio contains a huge number of fringe players. You've got the Lowther single-driver crowd who get their kicks from a remarkably quick midrange at the expense of the frequency extremes. There are the horn dudes who crave the jump factor of their 104dB-efficient speakers despite vocals that often sound like they're coming out of a megaphone.
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- Written by: Doug Schneider
- Category: Features
The reason I like loudspeakers so much is that they all sound so different -- never in my life have I found two speaker models, even from the same company, that sound exactly the same.
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- Written by: Jason Thorpe
- Category: Features
Analog is just wonderful in my books. It's arcane, elitist, and fussy. That might seem like a strange group of adjectives to use for praising an audio format, but it's a big part of the draw, man.
The arcane and elitist parts intrude on each other's turf. A great many kids don't even know what records are, so that keeps analog on the fringe, while the relatively high price of entry keeps out the riff-raff.
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- Written by: Doug Schneider
- Category: Features
It's extremely hard to put on a truly great demonstration, but, as strange as this sounds, it's just as hard to put on a really horrible presentation that will have someone scurrying for the door in 30 seconds flat. Usually I have much more tolerance for crap displays and I'll stick around for a few minutes, if only to be polite. In Montreal this year, there were three rooms where I just couldn't stand it any longer and I headed for the door quickly because they were just way too loud for anyone's good.
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- Written by: Administrator
- Category: Photos
Companies featured in gallery below: Dynaudio, Luxman, Monitor Audio, Oracle, ProAc, Raysonic, T+A, Voxativ, Joseph Audio
All prices in Canadian dollars unless otherwise indicated
- Details
- Written by: Doug Schneider
- Category: Features
Don't ask me why, but I wasn't expecting much from Joseph Audio's new Perspective loudspeaker when I first went into their room. Frankly, I can't put my finger on why I felt that way. I'll cut to the chase, though, and tell you that it blew me away. The Perspective is a two-and-a-half-way design that will sell for $11,800 per pair when it becomes available in June. The Perspective's parts quality is extremely high and the technology borrows from the company's flagship Pearl2 design.
- Details
- Written by: Doug Schneider
- Category: Features
The North American press can rightfully be accused of missing the boat when it comes to Vivid Audio, a company that does its design work in Britain and its manufacturing in South Africa. That includes us. Vivid released their B1 loudspeaker in 2004, yet we only reviewed it in 2010, and some other magazines are just getting around to writing about it. The B1 is still current in their line-up, and they have no plans to change it.
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- Written by: Doug Schneider
- Category: Features
When it comes to tradeshow displays, Canada's Totem Acoustic is clearly ahead of its competition, and has been for several years. Whether the company shows their wares in a massive booth on the floor at an event such as CEDIA, or in a large room like at Salon Son & Image 2011, the displays are bright, lively, and thoroughly memorable. Totem Acoustic is also one of the few companies to use people in their ads, which, in our opinion, gives their marketing material better visual appeal and a more personal touch. It's odd that more companies haven't caught on, because it's obviously working well. Saying this year's display is eye-catching is an understatement. Awesome better describes it, and you couldn't help but be drawn into their room.
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- Written by: Doug Schneider
- Category: Features
Our goal with this year's Salon Son & Image coverage is to produce the largest show report ever done at this event, and we also want to get it online quicker than anyone. Fifteen years ago when we first started covering this show, no one else was doing online coverage. Times change, though, and we now have competitors trying to catch up to our on-the-spot coverage. The result is that we have to be better than ever. In order to meet this year's goals, it means getting to Montreal early and starting off our coverage with a BANG! That bang, though, was just supposed to be a figure of speech; it wasn't supposed to involve my car.
- Details
- Written by: Doug Schneider
- Category: The Best of CES and THE Show 2011
If you were at CES and saw a shiny, non-descript integrated amplifier with a sexy remote and simply passed it by because you thought it was too pretty to be a serious audio product, you probably missed one of the most exciting product debuts in Las Vegas this year.
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- Written by: Jason Thorpe
- Category: The Worst of CES and THE Show 2011
I flew into Nevada on a crisp, cloudless night. The air was dry here in the desert. That dry air endows landscapes with a lucid quality that's almost hallucinatory. I'd look out a hotel-room window and there in front of me would be a rugged, austere, almost lunar landscape that was totally at odds with the madcap ring-ring-ring casino frenzy.
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- Written by: Jason Thorpe
- Category: The Best of CES and THE Show 2011
While strolling through one extremely high-end exhibit after another, you can easily lose touch with reality. $125,000-per-pair speakers? I'll take them. $30,000 amp? Four please -- I'll biamp.
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- Written by: Doug Schneider
- Category: The Worst of CES and THE Show 2011
One hundred and ninety-nine thousand dollars isn't quite enough to buy a detached home in my city any longer, but it is enough to buy a decent condo or a townhouse, and it's way more than enough to buy one of the most amazing sports cars you can imagine and be envied by almost every guy in the city. It’s also enough to buy one of the worst loudspeakers I’ve heard in years: the Venture Xtreme, priced at exactly what I just said for a pair.
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- Written by: Roger Kanno
- Category: The Worst of CES and THE Show 2011
Mirage's original M1 loudspeaker was released in about 1987 and is considered by many to be a legend. Back then, the Mirage brand was owned by Canada's Audio Products International (API), and the M1 looked like the Monolith from 2001. All that's changed.
- Details
- Written by: Roger Kanno
- Category: The Best of CES and THE Show 2011
Polk Audio has significantly redesigned their top-of-the-line LSi series of loudspeakers and dubbed them LSiM. Even with all of the new upgrades, the price of a pair of bookshelf speakers starts at only $1500 and goes up to $4000 for a pair of their largest floorstanders.
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- Written by: Roger Kanno
- Category: Features
You would think that someone would have figured out a way to future-proof surround processors and receivers. Most surround-sound components become obsolete as soon as a new type of audio or video processing is introduced, requiring the consumer to upgrade by purchasing a new unit if they want to remain at the leading edge of technology.
- Details
- Written by: Administrator
- Category: Photos
Companies featured in gallery below: Simaudio Moon, Differential Technology, Copland, Audience, Clearaudio, Musical Fidelity, GutWire, Peachtree Audio, Roksan, Audio Technica, Sennheiser, Sonus Faber, Sony, Totem Acoustic
- Details
- Written by: Doug Schneider
- Category: The Worst of CES and THE Show 2011
For $15,000, consumers should expect to get a pair of loudspeakers that are extremely well built, beautiful looking, and incredible sounding. All told, a speaker that costs this much should be amazing and, perhaps, even approach the state of the art. Case in point: Vivid Audio's B1, which won our 2010 Pioneering Design Achievement award.
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- Written by: Jason Thorpe
- Category: The Best of CES and THE Show 2011
Vegas is a place where almost nothing is free and few things are cheap. The exception to this rule is Wi-Fi, at least at the Venetian.
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