For me, the response to this topic is simple and unequivocal. The most significant audio product to debut at CEDIA 2006 is Revel’s Ultima 2 family of loudspeakers, and in particular the flagship Salon 2 floorstander. (watch the video)

The Ultima Salon 2 exhibits extraordinarily low distortion, exceptional transparency, lively and lifelike dynamics, and full-range bass. In short, it’s one of those rare, breathtaking loudspeakers that can make recorded music sound ever so close to the real thing. I believe enthusiasts will be talking about this breakthrough design for a long, long time.

After several days walking the CEDIA show floor at the Denver Convention Center, my head is awash in briefings, booth visits, and manufacturer interviews. Selecting out a “most significant” product from the hundreds of thousands on display here becomes a real head-scratcher. But being the intrepid soul that I am, I’ll dive in.

I give my nod to the new Stagefront Home Theater line of speakers from Niles Audio. (watch the video) A veteran company in this business and one that has specialized in custom-install products, Niles is showing its recognition of the growth and importance of home theater by devoting its engineering savvy to a complete line that includes freestanders, in-walls and on-walls. This summer, Niles will follow up with home-theater electronics, once again reinforcing its commitment to home theater. Although the market is crowded, there’s always room for a company with the quality reputation of Niles Audio to come in and mix it up, which I’m sure they will.

Most Significant New Product and Greatest Price Breakthrough: The winner in both categories was Sony’s VPL-VW50 projector. With outrageous specifications (1920x1080 resolution, 15,000:1 contrast ratio, support for formats ranging from 1080p/60 to 24p) the SXRD projector should outperform almost everything in its niche up to more than three times its $4,999 list price.

At that price, the VPL-VW50 should completely re-order the projector market, and also help Sony recover some of its faded glory. The fact that other manufacturers announced projectors with inferior specifications at far higher prices bodes badly for them but extremely well for serious movie fans.

The other Most Significant Product wasn’t a single product, but a pair of products: the MDLP1 video projector and VP1000 video processor from McIntosh, one of the oldest, most revered, and most conservative brands in American audio. McIntosh’s tardy, official step into the home theater arena at CEDIA marks a sea change in consumer electronics. Traditional stand-alone hi-fi may not be dead, but home theater clearly rules today’s market.

Back to the top

MusicGiants. This upstart music-download company offers a high-performance alternative to low-resolution, compressed file formats. The company is already selling high-res stereo music downloads (for $1.29 per song) in the Windows Media Lossless format, and has ambitious plans to make getting high-res stereo and multichannel music onto music-server hard drives much simpler. As storage gets cheaper, I envision a day when we have access to high-res music on portable products and home music servers with no compromise in fidelity. I hope MusicGiants spells the end of MP3.

With the technology infrastructure in place for high-bandwidth music downloads, HD video content isn’t far behind.

Audyssey Laboratories’ MultEQ XT automated speaker setup/room equalization software. At last year’s CEDIA Expo, I heard the MultEQ system for the first time, but now it appears to be taking the industry by storm, appearing not only in high-performance loudspeaker systems from Phase Technology, but also in A/V receivers from Denon, Integra, NAD, and Onkyo.

The real genius of this system is that it takes measurements from multiple locations within the listening room, and then applies fuzzy logic techniques to calculate individual speaker EQ and time response adjustment curves that give best case results throughout the entire listening area—not just one central sweet spot

Even though Blu-ray tripped out the gate with its first player, (see Scott Wilkinson’s story from The Perfect Vision issue 70), and even though HD DVD was first out the gate with mostly high marks (but some mixed responses), I still believe this technology stands apart here at CEDIA and in the industry as a whole as the potential paradigm shifter of our day. Both HD DVD and Blu-ray were on display at numerous booths at CEDIA, and in each case where a player or display was going through the paces with one of these technologies, a crowd had its eyes glued to the demo.

The clear winner here isn’t one technology, but the skillful blending of several, as exemplified in Exceptional Innovation’s demonstration house across the street from the Colorado Convention Center. (watch the video) EI’s home of the future is completely interconnected and interactive, with kitchen appliances, lighting systems, computers and home entertainment gear that communicate with each other and the home’s residents.

The EI house was designed to dazzle, offering a bewildering degree of interactivity via touch-panels, remote controls, and computers. One wag dubbed it “the short attention span home” due to the riot of option abundance and information overload. The only operating system not included was voice activation, a science fiction-like possibility not mentioned by EI’s enthusiastic executives, but one that shouldn’t be too far in the future. The home did give rise to some speculation about its ultimate potential to override its owners’ wishes, like HAL in 2001: “Dave, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

Back to the top

Sunfire’s Cinema Ribbon Mini loudspeaker. When Sunfire’s press release promised tissue-box-sized loudspeaker that would deliver the sound of a full-sized, floorstanding planar ribbon speaker, I was skeptical to say the least. But once I heard the little Cinema Ribbon Mini’s hold forth in the Sunfire demo room, I felt that they come pretty darned close to meeting their lofty performance claims. No small speaker I’ve heard can deliver the clarity, definition, and sheer dynamic punch that the CRM’s can, which makes their $800 price seem more than reasonable.

The Yamaha YSP-1100 is the newest iteration of the company’s Digital Sound Projector. Designed to fit on the wall right below (or above) a flat panel, the sleek-looking speaker provides realistic L/R front, center, and L/R back speaker and subwoofer sound by utilizing Yamaha’s two woofers and 40 digital beam drivers. The MSRP will be a smidgen below $1700 and it’ll be less expensive on the street, but considering that it delivers realistic 5.1 surround sound that many will love, and avoids the clutter of a room full of separate speakers and cables, which many hate, this gets my nod as the bargain of the show.

(See his comment on the Most Significant New Product.)

Back to the top

The most important trend in the audio side of the A/V world is not one I am pleased to report; namely, the growing assumption that the U.S. market cares only about concealed, custom-installed sound systems—giving only secondary thought to actual sound quality. Below, let me quote three deliberately unnamed sources within the industry to illustrate my point.

The product marketing manager of a well-regarded U.S. speaker manufacturer said this: “Audio as we once knew it is dead; today, audio is little more than a fashion industry.”

The chief engineer of a major speaker manufacturer said this: “Any designer who tells you his in-wall or in-ceiling speakers sound ‘just as good’ as his freestanding speakers is either a liar or does not know how to optimize freestanding designs… But even so, concealed speakers are what people seem to want.”

The VP of Marketing for a major high-end European audio manufacturer said this: “As we look at the U.S. market, we naturally assume it’s mostly about custom installations. Of course, we hope the appeal of great sound will eventually carry more weight.”

Personally, I regard great sound as something essential—something that is truly its own reward. I can only hope more enthusiasts come to that same conclusion before CEDIA Expo 2007 comes around.   

A number of high-end speaker manufacturers, who we are accustomed to seeing in specialty show rooms, have bitten the bullet this year, and are now adding in-wall and in-ceiling speakers to their line. This is a significant move for many of these manufacturers, because as almost any design engineer will tell you, the enclosure is a key part of a speaker’s sound, and it’s nigh impossible to get the kind of cabinet and enclosure integrity in an in-wall or in-ceiling that you can get with freestanding speakers.

Although many engineers told us off record that they had to swallow a bit of pride to come on board with the demand for in-walls and in-ceilings through the new-home and retrofit custom-installation industry, the demand is there, and it doesn’t make economic sense to ignore it, they say.

So what are these engineers setting as their goals? To get the best sound possible for the enclosure they have to work with. We’ll obviously monitor how they do, but the move to in-wall, in-ceiling speaker lines is irreversible for the formerly freestanding-speaker purists and they now have the opportunity to invent better, more capable enclosures going forward.

The deeply interconnected, interactive house is also CEDIA Expo 2006’s Most Important Trend. It’s the domestic variant of a larger trend—the increasing integration of humans and technology. Many companies are pushing this envelope in one way or another, including startups like CEDIA sponsor Savant AV, whose name appeared everywhere throughout the Convention Center, but whose first products won’t arrive until sometime next year. Savant CEO Jim Carroll promises that Savant’s technology will be far easier to use and far more reliable than anything previous. Whether that promise if fulfilled by his company or some still unidentified competitor is an open question.

Back to the top