Poking around the Venetian for a few days at CES is one of the better activities possible at the show. Tons of amazing audio products fill dozens of rooms over multiple floors.
If you’ve ever ridden the Tokyo subway during rush hour, stood in line to buy Nike Air Jordans, or been pepper-sprayed at a Walmart on Black Friday, you may have a sense of what CES is like. The only difference is that CES is a lot more crowded, dangerous, and painful.
Sound bars are a great solution to an age-old problem – how to add a decent-looking and decent-sounding system to enhance the clean, minimalistic look of your flat-screen TV. The problem is that they can sound pretty crappy – mainly thin and tinny unless you add a subwoofer. And there goes that nice, clean minimalistic look.
Turntables are alive and well, thank you very much. A-T has a well-deserved reputation for making solid turntables, and keeps hope alive with the introduction of a new model. The AT-LP1240-USB is aimed at both the DJ and home markets.
While it’s always a party at CES, this year was something special for Audio-Technica. They’re here celebrating “50 Years of Passionate Listening” with five limited edition headphones and phono cartridges debuting here.
When we first alerted readers to Harman’s Aha, we expected to hear a lot more about this streaming platform. As expected, Aha added fuel to its fires at CES.
Surely there’s never been such a vast display of headphones in the history of the universe as at CES 2012. From super-high-end models to bottom-feeder stuff, there was something for every budget and every taste.
It may not have involved OLED, but one of the biggest consumer electronics announcements of the month — Gibson Guitar Corporation's acquisition of a majority stake in Onkyo USA and a large chunk of Onkyo Corporation proper, with the establishment of a Hong Kong-based R&D-oriented joint venture — happened last week rather than at CES proper, but today the CEOs of Gibson and Onkyo, Henry Juszkiewicz and Munenori Otsuki took some time to clarify the finer points of the partnership, which left many observers' scratching their heads. Rather than holding a press conference in one of the maze-like structures in which most of us have been spending our time this week, Juszkiewicz and Otsuki invited a few reporters to meet them on the Gibson bus, a fully blinged-out luxury liner styled in the tradition of Nashville's golden age.
CES 2012 was the coming-out party for Sony’s in-ear headphones. Nearly buried in the talk of cell phones, media managers, and 3DTV was the announcement Monday night of Sony’s first line of balanced-armature in-ear monitors (IEMs). This step up to a higher class of product shocked me for two reasons.
Also: The National, Key Wilde & Mr. Clarke, Audra McDonald, “Women of Brazil,” and more. Plus: notable historical items from the Rolling Stones, Primus, and Captain Beyond.
CES 2012: The TV Report
CES 2012: CES Unveiled 
CES Day One: LG Press Conference
CES 2012: Apt-X Bluetooth Update
