CES Day 2 - Speaker designers and industry gurus

Day two at CES 2007 was just as busy as the first, maybe even more so. As most know, the high-end home audio was moved from Alexis Park to the Venetian Hotel and Sands Expo this year, as well as all of the suites on the 29th, 30th, 34th, and 35th floors. Being in the Venetian has it's good and bad points. While it's definitely a more "up-scale" environment compared to Alexis Park, being in a suite on the 29th floor leaves no way to step outside for some fresh air when you need a break like at Alexis Park. Also, an example of poor logistics, or maybe an oversight, is with the thousands of people visiting the Venetian there are only a handful of elevators to get up to the suites/demo rooms, and wait times during peak traffic can be as long as 10 minutes. Hopefully these, and other regulations which are highly restrictive for exhibitors, are ironed out by CES 2008.

Day two also brought me in contact with some noteworthy folks. Jann Evers from Tymphany (formerly Danish Sound Technology, manufacturers of Logic, Vifa, Peerless, and Scan Speak brand of drivers) stopped by our room and we discussed the restructuring and direction of their product line, and the technology behind a new tweeter in development which sounds very exciting. According to Mr. Evers, "It will be a chamber-less tweeter with an extremely low Fs that is flat out to 40kHz". Some other info is that it will have an aluminum 104mm faceplate and textile dome, but I'll admit there was a bit of a language barrier so don't take all of this info to heart. More info will be available at www.Tymphany.com as development is completed.

Dr. Wolfgang Klippel stopped by as well to discuss his new transducer diagnostics and control system. Let me just say that what didn't go over my head sounded and looked super slick! Get over to www.Klippel.de and check out his laser scanning system that can scan a speakers cone and display driver-to-driver discrepancies or production variations as small as 20 microns. Dude, I should have sat next to him in calculus class!

I also had nice chats with Scott Placke from Parts Express, Gene Pitts, editor and publisher of long time industry 'zine The Audiophile Voice, and Perry Barker and Yasutake Hirota from FerroTec. These guys can tell you anything you ever wanted to know about ferrofluid, including it's use in the Mir Space Station. I did manage to grab Vance Dickason for a quick talk and photo op, and so starts the pictures...



How does that saying go, the camera adds 200 Lbs? Screw CES! When is the next cardio-vascular doctors convention? Geezus...these Vegas buffets will be the death of me! Alas, I digress...there is the man himself, Vance Dickason. Author of the world renowned book on loudspeaker design, The Loudspeaker Design Cookbook, currently in it's 7th edition. For those who don't know, Vance is a technical journalist, a loudspeaker design consultant, and a manufacturers rep for Bravox/MTI. More info can be found at www.LDCdiy.com.