Audioholics CEDIA 2015 Coverage Page

[gene]

Hi guys;

Tony Leota, Cliff Heyne and yours truly are in Dallas, Texas covering the CEDIA 2015 show. We've been throwing up images and videos from our phones on facebook so please check our Facebook Page incase you missed the coverage.

This will also be the spot where we post editorial coverage here as well. Please give us your feedback and ask questions here.

 

[TheWarrior]

Pssst... stick around for Formula One ins Austin next week!!!!!

But this is a great appetizer course!

 

[gene]

Here is our CEDIA Day 1 Demo Report

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

How TALL is the SV-831 + SV-1212 ?

The SX-T2 is already about 61" tall.

Do they have a name for the combo yet, like SV-T2 (like SX-T2) ?

 

[TheWarrior]

Do they have a name for the combo yet, like SV-T2 (like SX-T2) ?

Why didn't you make the drive down? Gotta wonder about these excessively-smiley-faced sales people...

 

[Cos]

Please stop by the GoldenEar Demo room. I am really curious on their new subwoofers SuperSub XXL. I was extremely impressed by their Atmos Demo locally I went to in Chicago.

Thank you in advance

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

Why didn't you make the drive down?

I'm a homebody.

I love staying home and enjoying my system immensely.

 

[TheWarrior]

I'm a homebody.

I love staying home and enjoying my system immensely.

Well, until I've reached your age of enlightenment, I will continue to use this forum to seek out new things to hear! Since I'll be stuck with my TDI til the end of time, please make all necessary preparations. I expect to experience a full RBH demo at your new house!

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

Well, until I've reached your age of enlightenment, I will continue to use this forum to seek out new things to hear! Since I'll be stuck with my TDI til the end of time, please make all necessary preparations. I expect to experience a full RBH demo at your new house!

I plan to have plenty of RBH systems in my new house for demo: free-standing, in-ceiling, in-wall, outdoor.

 

[Cos]

Where is part II?

I found out some info on the GE setup from www.soundandvision.com

http://www.soundandvision.com/content/goldenear-hits-ceiling#AWs18OY1RUrS0cOy.97

all speakers were in the ceiling, with the supersub XXL. Doesn't sound like an ideal setup.

 

[gene]

I stopped by and heard the Goldenear room. Sandy wanted to demonstrate that you could do a full Atmos system with all in-ceiling speakers. The demo was pretty good despite there was no real separation of the height layer from the regular channel beds since they were all placed in the same plane. The sub was impressive but turned up about 6-8dB too loud for my taste. Again, they wanted to show off how much power that XXL sub is and in that regard they certainly succeeded. I will put up the video and coverage later this week.

 

[gene]

Check out the new Acurus ACT-4 DTS:X Pre/Pro

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

I remember the days when Acurus was about high quality + economy, not $8,500 pre-pros.

Does this thing have Audyssey XT32 or any Room Correction? Is it fully balanced?

I wonder if they will also come out with an Aragon pre-pro.

 

[gene]

It is a bit spendy for sure. No room EQ but manual PEQ which is fine by me. Audio paths are NOT differential Aragon version will come depending on success of this unit. The touch screen interface is awesome!

 

[Cos]

I stopped by and heard the Goldenear room. Sandy wanted to demonstrate that you could do a full Atmos system with all in-ceiling speakers. The demo was pretty good despite there was no real separation of the height layer from the regular channel beds since they were all placed in the same plane. The sub was impressive but turned up about 6-8dB too loud for my taste. Again, they wanted to show off how much power that XXL sub is and in that regard they certainly succeeded. I will put up the video and coverage later this week.

I am going to order the GE XXL Sub for my basement build, I know 3 Subs is not ideal, but I have the two built in my T1s and if this one works as well as when I heard it in the demo room, I think I will be very happy.

 

[DrJohnRead]

A home system based on 32 channels... Really?

And then a calibration system that can make them disappear.

Stop the wiring boys, I'm on standby mode now.

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

A home system based on 32 channels... Really?

And then a calibration system that can make them disappear.

Stop the wiring boys, I'm on standby mode now.

32CH Pre-pro for commercial is normal, but for home use would be risible.



Well at least you can buy the Harman Crown XLS1000 amps for only $179 each, so 32Ch would only be $2864 delivered.

 

[DrJohnRead]

A home system based on 32 channels... Really?

And then a calibration system that can make them disappear.

Stop the wiring boys, I'm on standby mode now.

Here it is from Gene...

Harman (JBL Synthesis)
In their usual fashion, Harman put on a state of the art home theater demo at CEDIA this year. Not only did they announce their partnership with Trinnov to come out with a new 32 Channel SDP-75 AV Processor that supports Dolby Atmos, DTS:X and Auro 3D but they actually had enough speakers to support ALL of the channels. JBL utilized their SDA amplifiers for all of the speakers and they had over 10 kwatts of power just for the subs alone! The speakers were the venerable M2 Master Reference towers for the front LCR's, and CBT-50 side surrounds eleven SCS-8 coaxial speakers on the ceiling. For the low end, JBL employed eight 15" subwoofers (2 loaded in each corner) with Sound Field Management (SFM) to smooth out the bass response.

The new SDP-75 pre/pro actually doesn't utilize Trinnov room correction. Instead, Harman incorporated their own proprietary SFM system that automatically optimizes delay, level and EQ for ALL of the subs. The result is tight, consistently even bass for EVERY seat. Walking around the room and hearing very similar bass was quite amazing and this was done with NO low frequency passive bass trapping! In addition, the surround envelopment was seamless and again consistent for all seats thanks in part to their CBT driver topology of their surround speakers and also having LOTS of speakers throughout the room to provide broad even coverage with no hot spotting.

We started out with an Auro 3D demo of orchestral music which sounded spacious but didn't give the best representation of Auro 3D's capabilities in our opinion. Next up we saw a few clips Atmos clips including the glass breaking scene from Divergent which was a bit uncomfortably loud but lifelike in dynamics. What stole the show for us was the DTS:X demo clip of a tecno instrumental video calledCymantics by Nigel Stanford which used soundwaves to bend water and manipulate shapes on materials they interacted with. We felt fully immersed in the experience and the room seemed to just disappear along with our sense of reality. If you can get your hands on a copy of this demo, get it!

This was an amazingly well done room. There was minimal usage of passive room treatments, the side wall reflections were preserved, yet everything sounded natural and balanced. Not a single speaker or subwoofer was visible. Instead they used an acoustically transparent screen to tuck everything in neatly. The whole demo was about 20 minutes long but the time just flew by which speakers volumes for how much we enjoyed the experience. "

Thanks Gene, this is a magic moment for home theatre.

Acudeftechguy your message seems out of sync with this report.

 

[gtpsuper24]

"GoldenEar claims the driver-to-room coupling is distributed more smoothly as the different driver locations couple to different room standing wave patterns, and work well with the room modes."

Nobody is going to call BS marketing talk on that statement? What an 80hrz signal is about 14ft? So how is separating the drivers by 15-16" going to address that?

Total non-sense and why I stay away from Sandy's speakers and GoldenEar. May sound good but the BS marketing talk drives me nuts.

 

[gene]

"GoldenEar claims the driver-to-room coupling is distributed more smoothly as the different driver locations couple to different room standing wave patterns, and work well with the room modes."

Nobody is going to call BS marketing talk on that statement? What an 80hrz signal is about 14ft? So how is separating the drivers by 15-16" going to address that?

Total non-sense and why I stay away from Sandy's speakers and GoldenEar. May sound good but the BS marketing talk drives me nuts.

Yea I hear you but I will tell you this. A really big sub like the ones in my Status 8T's with 3 drivers in the front and two large ports firing at the rear do seem to load into the room differently than the old subs of my T2's which had all front firing drivers and ports. It won't resolve room mode problems but it does load into the room differently. I think the GoldenEar claim is a bit stretched as you pointed out however.