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Report from the 2001 CES (Consumer Electronics Show)

I just came back from the 2001 CES (Consumer Electronics Show), and it was a blast. All those nice toys helped to keep my mind off my poor health. In case you didn't know, the CES is an annual show for all things electronic (TVs, stereos, etc.) and is held early January in Las Vegas, the gambling capital of the world. The show was separated this year into these major 
areas: home theatre, car audio, high-end audio, general consumer electronics, and the infamous "adult" area.  This is a summary of what I saw.

Sony - Sony always has an impressive booth. This year was no exception. I guess the buzzword is "Digital Convergence", and no one else has the infrastructure nor the know-how to implement this kind of thing. They had this 20-odd GigaByte removable storage device for storing HD video. Wow!

High-end audio - Actually since three years ago, there has been an unofficial high-end show called "T.H.E. Show", which stands for The Home Entertainment Show. This association claims to cater more to the audio enthusiast, as recently the CEA (Consumer Electronics Association) seems to have ignored the needs of the high-end "starter" companies who are no Phillips nor Sony. Therefore, there were two shows for the high-end: CES and T.H.E. I went to the Audio Physic booth where I auditioned their new speaker (I think it was the "Spark") and a home theatre system using the new "Celsius II" loudspeaker with the "Luna" subwoofer. 

Needless to say, it sounded great! There was also an SACD booth showcasing many brands of SACD players. Naturally, I listened to them all: Sony, Phillips, Luxman, Accuphase, Pioneer, and Sharp. I liked them all. I also listened to the Tact Audio Millennium completely digital 1-bit PWM amplifier and RCS 2.0 DSP Room Correction Preamp. This is the third or fourth time I have heard this set-up and it puts a smile on my face every single time. The Dali speakers, that were also a part of the set-up, were excellent as well. Finally, I went to the XRCD booth where one of the best recording engineers in the industry, Mr. Akira Taguchi explained to me in painstaking detail what he did to make his recordings sound better. XRCD is  the "relentless optimisation of the CD mastering and manufacturing process."  Yes, it seems that there are indeed errors in this area which are often overlooked by recording engineers. I bought a sampler CD, and was immediately sold! 

Car Audio - If any of you know, I am also a car audio fanatic and a big fan of Alpine products. Alpine had a beautiful in-car CD player which featured a 24-bit Burr Brown DAC. What was more impressive was their PXA-H900 Multimedia Manager. This device is monumental in the way that one could control 31-band digital EQs, 68-band digital parametric EQs, and digital crossover via an RS-232 port (meaning most likely from a laptop). What a toy! 

Phew, that is a rough summary of what I was able to see in two days." 

Please take care everyone.
Yours sincerely,
Daisuke Koya 

AES Publication Award September 2000

AES president David Robinson (left), presenting the AES publication award to Professor Hawksford (right). 

Professor Malcolm Omar Hawksford who heads the Centre for Audio Research and Engineering within the Department of Electronic Systems Engineering, was a recent recipient of the publication award of the Audio Engineering Society (AES) for his paper entitled: "Digital Signal Processing Tools for Loudspeaker Evaluation and Discrete-Time Crossover Design".  

This award was made for the best contribution by an author of any age to volumes 45 and 46 of the AES Journal.  AES president David Robinson of Dolby Laboratories made the presentation at the Award's Ceremony of the AES 109th Convention in Los Angeles on 22 September 2000.  

The paper described analytical techniques derived from a research program into the development of digital and active loudspeaker systems and included the description of a new family of stochastic-interleave crossover filter alignments suitable for digital realisation.

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