This will be short and not-so-sweet. There were a few cheap things there which seemed very interesting. the expensive stuff... not so much. There was a $395,000 pair of speakers which were huge, sounded huge, and sounded absolutely nothing like live music. I could pay for about 800 house concerts with that amount of coin. PS Audio also stood out for remarkably poor sound given the price and pretension. Speakers that ought to have sounded good were let down by poor room setup, ****** source material, and excessive bass. Sometimes crazy high volume as well (my ears were ringing after 5 minutes in the Kii room). If exhibitors paid half as much attention to the room setup as they did to ostentatiously displaying expensive power cords, they might have had a chance at good sound. One guy told me, "Yeah, I hate doing this (the power cords and "audiophile" outlets), but the people coming in expect it. When I didn't use them, they noticed and complained."
The most entertaining part was the lecture and demo by the guy running High Fidelity Cables, who had a van de Graaff generator as a visual aid and "explained" how electricity and magnetism work. I wondered a lot about whether he was that pig-ignorant or whether he knew he was scamming. I finally decided, "Both." In a world where the general public thinks that IFSL and Bill Nye are science educators, I guess I shouldn't have been surprised at how people were lapping it up. The AudioQuest guy was also holding forth to an adoring group, and he didn't even pretend to be anything other than a slick and shady used car salesman type.
One room featured an "audiophile" Ethernet switch. I asked, "What does it do differently than an ordinary switch?" "We use audiophile components." "Yes, but what does it DO differently?" Much confusion, much discussion among several people in Chinese, then the answer, "It removes noise from the Internet." "Oh, so it blocks the Everyday Feminism website?" Many confused and blank looks. I admit, that was rather cruel.
I also admit that I'm not a headphone guy, so maybe there was something great there. The few that I listened to sounded like, well, just another pair of headphones.
The most entertaining part was the lecture and demo by the guy running High Fidelity Cables, who had a van de Graaff generator as a visual aid and "explained" how electricity and magnetism work. I wondered a lot about whether he was that pig-ignorant or whether he knew he was scamming. I finally decided, "Both." In a world where the general public thinks that IFSL and Bill Nye are science educators, I guess I shouldn't have been surprised at how people were lapping it up. The AudioQuest guy was also holding forth to an adoring group, and he didn't even pretend to be anything other than a slick and shady used car salesman type.
One room featured an "audiophile" Ethernet switch. I asked, "What does it do differently than an ordinary switch?" "We use audiophile components." "Yes, but what does it DO differently?" Much confusion, much discussion among several people in Chinese, then the answer, "It removes noise from the Internet." "Oh, so it blocks the Everyday Feminism website?" Many confused and blank looks. I admit, that was rather cruel.
I also admit that I'm not a headphone guy, so maybe there was something great there. The few that I listened to sounded like, well, just another pair of headphones.