Re: Audio Shows
Posted: Fri Jan 06, 2017 12:33 am
VPI Avenger Plus και Viva με Genesis @ CES 2017
As for the CTA, or whatever the CEA now calls itself, it treats the high-end audio sector like some pervy old uncle. To tell you that there were only 115 rooms for specialty audio is to reveal the worst of it -- the lowest attendance I can recall. It’s a self-fulfilling curse: if you followed CES publicity, it was almost a music/sound/hi-fi/audio-free zone. Aside from headphones and Bluetooth speakers, of course.
To put this into context, not only is the high-end audio section of CES -- the world’s largest consumer electronics trade show -- smaller than the Munich High End show, but it had less to offer than the recent high-end show in Warsaw. For fuck’s sake! A Polish hi-fi show aimed at the public had more to see than CES! I am actually at a loss to come up with an analogy, so preposterous, so dire is the reduced presence of hi-fi at the most important event in the USA.
As for number four? Alas, CES 2017 confirmed my worst fears. High-end audio is so truly, utterly screwed that the show had an atmosphere not unlike a typewriter factory the day after Microsoft launched Word. Sorry, gang, but we are in the dying days of audio as defined by high-quality separates, decent loudspeakers, and anything else that we regard as the means to reproduce music to our satisfaction.