What’s on the AV cards for 2018?
It’s so easy to forget, but if we would take the clock back say 10 years and look at what home entertainment looked like back then, we’d be surprised at how fast things change. In 2007 you were starting to build a library of Blu-ray titles, thankful that HD had finally made its way to disc. 4K was a technology of the future. Streaming was a curiosity and Netflix was a hugely successful DVD mail-order company with a billion discs delivered. It’s CES in Las Vegas that has long been the platform for the launch of audio-visual novelties. Sure, not all products showcased made it into people’s homes (actually a fair amount didn’t), but isn’t it interesting to see what goes on in the heads of the AV powers that reign and what new AV products are to be expected for 2018.
CES 2017 was all about the rise of Alexa, so it was no surprise that Amazon’s digital assistant was again omnipresent at the show. What’s more, it is now starting to be incorporated in a range of audio-visual products like speakers, AV receivers and home theatre projectors. Will it mean that in a few years, we will no longer be using remote controls. My money is on ‘yes’.
CES is also the playground for new television technology and a fair bit of drooling happens in these halls.
As usual, LG and Samsung went head to head with impressive duelling technologies that again improved on prototypes shown last year: LG’s rollable OLED (literally a TV that rolls up like a poster) is now a full 65-inch 4K TV. Samsung, meanwhile, turned heads at its booth with an installation known as “The Wall,” a 146-inch display (!) utilizing modular MicroLED technology that it says will ship by year’s end. (Sorry, we hate to break it to you but no, you won’t be able to afford it). It’s the ‘modular’ bit that’s the talk of town: Samsung lets you build The Wall to your exact size and specifications. Both LG and Samsung showed giant 8K TVs, too. Of course, your local Harvey Norman won’t stock these anytime soon, but the impressive updates to each company’s consumer OLED and QLED TV lines, respectively, will show up in new models this year. And it’s that trickle-down effect that makes it all rather interesting.
2018 was also the year of the headphones.
Both Audeze and Beyerdynamic received a fair amount of attention for their Beyerdynamic Amiron wireless headphones and the Audeze iSine LX respectively.
The Amiron new wireless headphone are claimed to be among the best Bluetooth headphones available yet and knowing the previous headphones Beyerdynamic has produced, we wouldn’t be surprised at all. They will be available before winter hits the New Zealand shores, but no price is listed at this stage.
The Audeze brand is hugely popular with serious headphone afficianados thanks in part to its preference for planar magnetic drivers and eye-catching designs.
With the Audeze iSine LXs, the company is sticking to their same old planar magnetic tech but are bringing the high-end technology into the the price range of customers with fussy ears but more realitic wallets. In true Audeze custom, they should sound extremely clear and accurate. No wonder they received a fair amount of attention from the press.
Audio Technica announced no less than five (!) new pair of headphones to be realeased in 2018. Wireless? Check. Noise-cancelling? Check. Neckbuds? Also check. The question that remains is which ones out of these will become available in NZ?
Headphone master Sennheiser is venturing in foreign territories with the Sennheiser Ambeo 3D Soundbar. The soundbar is still in its concept stage but packs 13 speakers made up of five tweeters, six subwoofers and a pair of top-mounted speakers onto a relatively thin frame to deliver immersive audio. It does so by bouncing the sound off walls, and fine-tuning it for an optimal 3D listening experience, not that dissimilar to the Yamaha YAS-207 soundbar.
Which brings us into speaker territory.
The good people from ELAC are not known for their reputation to sit still. In the past subsequent years, they put the ELAC Debuts, the Uni-Fis and the Adantes out there. This year they were showing their new Alchemy Series that gives us a Pre-Amp DAC, a Stereo/Mono Amplifier (350 watt stereo or 600 watt mono) and a Phono Pre-amplifier. We met the engineer designing the ELAC Alchemy range earlier last year in Munich and he is just the coolest guy with a big love for New Zealand.
The other exciting new product range is their Argo Series of active speakers. The range will include a pair of Powered floorstanders (These speakers are a 3-way powered system featuring a 150 watt BASH AB amplifier for bass drivers, a 70 watt BASH AB amplifier for the mid-range, and a 30 watt AB amplifier for the tweeter) as well as Active Bookshelf Speakers that offer the same powered configuration as the Towers. We’ll have to dedicate a blog on the topic of the pro’s and cons of powered speakers at some stage, we are thinking. It is possible to add the ELAC Discovery Connect wireless transmitter to your system, and they become a wireless speaker that lets you enjoy streaming content without a cable in sight. First impression are pretty impressive, as we are getting used to from ELAC.
Of course, SVS had their new 4000 series subwoofers on display. But they also had a surprise up their sleeve: the company announced and showed both its new small Prime Wireless 2-channel system at an excellent price point and a wireless SoundBase.
The Prime Wireless speaker system is a 2-channel solution that features bi-amplified speakers with a total of 200 watts of power (50 watts per amp) and a built-in 24-bit/192kHz DAC. It has Bluetooth, optical-digital, USB audio, and 3.5mm stereo aux inputs. The system also provides a subwoofer output and automatically engages a crossover when one is connected.
The SoundBase is a compact integrated wireless DAC/amp. It offers 150 watts per channel of output and the same DAC plus inputs. Both new products support DTS Play-Fi, which we like a lot.
Good job, SVS!
Talking about good jobs: the Chord Qutest caused a bit of a stir. Chord stripped the very popular Hugo2 from its amplifier part. It leaves a standalone DAC for home Hifi systems proven technical and sonic performance. Pre-orders are already pouring in, which should tell you a lot.
We would like to dedicate a final word on Emotiva. They released a whole range of impressive big hitters, including their RMC-1, Differential Reference Cinema Processor. For who is interested in the technical details: It is packed with features, and offers a 16-channel, fully balanced, design with twin high-speed triple-core 64-bit Sharc digital processing engines. With this it also provides 32-bit/768k AD/DA conversion, and 4k UHD HDMI video management. The RMC-1 includes Dirac Live room correction, Dolby Atmos and DTS-X, and native multi-channel DSD support. Final pricing and availability to be released soon.
And with that the biggest consumer electronics show had drawn to an end again.
After scanning through tens and tens of reviews and releases, I was wondering whether it was just me thinking that apart from some of the above exciting announcements, CES 2018 was a bit of a non-event for AV this time around. It’s the place to be if you are into IoT (the internet of things), drones and other fancy gadgets, but AV felt quite thin.
And then I bumped into a Home Theatre Review article that was echoing my thoughts. The writer actually went as far as claiming that it would be his last visit to CES and that he would move on to the smaller specialist AV shows like Munich High End.
It sounds like CES is becoming the victim of its own success and suggestions are made to move the AV side of the biggest consumer electronics show away from the glitter and noise of Las Vegas.
If heavy rain, flash flooding and power cuts become the exciting news it sure reminds us that the most innovative technology in the world doesn’t function without the very basics.
Which leads us to a statement we have made a few times before: You can’t stop progress and part of it is pretty exciting. But you also don’t want to get carried away in the whole keeping up with the latest and greatest merry-go-round.
Sometimes we need a reminder that AV really is about the joy for music and the movie that takes you on a journey, rather than the flash remote control and that resetting the base line of what really matters is not always a bad idea.
Sources: Trusted Reviews, Home Theater Hifi, Cnet, Toms guide, Digital trends, Home Theater Reviews, AVS forum, Hifipig, Sound and Vision