The Best of CEDIA Expo 2023
[Music] happy listening from our sponsor SVS acclaimed for punching well above their class experience thrilling and immersive sound from SVS speakers subwoofers and cables join the sound Revolution today visit SV sound.com now on with the [Music] show Welcome this is Brian Mitchell your host and founder of ecoustics.com today we'll be selecting the best of CEDIA Expo 2023 which was held last week September 7th through the 9th in Denver Colorado CEDIA Expo is an annual industry trade show covering home technology for the custom installation Market which includes home theater speaker systems Electronics TVs projectors and more if you're upgrading your home entertainment experience you've come to the right place and we were there in person our editor at large Chris Boylan was there at Denver how you doing Chris hey how's it going Brian and our senior correspondent Robert silver was also roaming the halls at CEDIA Expo how you doing Robert oh hello I'm doing fine finally recovered I think we both got ShowVid that's that mysterious illness that you get when you go to a trade show and you sit next to a bunch of people coughing and sneezing without any masks on so yeah um not the same as Covid totally different thing but starting to feel a little better couple days in so yeah ready to recap our visit all right well let's kick things off with yes most Innovative video display at CEDIA Expo Chris you want to start us off sure um I was actually kind of surprised to see that a company called Jupiter was there showing 21 by 9 direct view monitors um I saw this in the theory audio room and I barely even noticed it because the speaker sounded so damn good but then when I realized what I was looking at I just assumed it was like a really high quality projector it's not it's a it's a direct view LED LCD panel um they size them up to this one which is 105 in diagonally and then they go all the way up to 281 inches with microed technology so what I like about it is it's native um 21 by 9 which is basically right between 2:35 to 1 and 2:37 to 1 I guess that makes it 2:36 to 1 but it makes it the ideal shape for like the Blockbuster movies that we're seeing in in theaters and even a lot of the episodic TV shows we're seeing like the Mandalorian and a lot of the Disney and Star Wars shows which use that full wide screen can also be used for video conferencing stuff like that but I'm I'm happy to see somebody back in this business because I think it was Phillips and Vizio that used to make 21 by 9 TVs and they got out of the business entirely so it's kind of cool to see it happening again all right and I think Robert you had a pick for most Innovative video display Yes mine uh instead of going big on my Innovative display I went small and this is the 27 in 1080P display from LG that comes in a suitcase sells for $9.99 and it weighs about 30 pounds it uh it it runs on internal batteries but also can be plugged into AC and you can use it you can use it either in landscape mode or in portrait mode and what's really great is it's all kind I think that this is one of the most practical uh video displays I've ever seen in the sense that even though it's it's 30 pounds so it's not like portable portable fast but the thing is you can at home you can move it from room to room uh you can use it let's say in a school environment you can use it in a business presentation environment you can use it for tailgating which was like that's like the first thing that when I was there people people would come up to it and go tailgating and and and so RV camping uh it has a variety of uses and with the suitcase and everything you're protected from the you know transporting uh in the you know as far as the weather goes and all that and I was just really really impressed seeing this and getting some hands on with the touchscreen and also moving it around you know moving the dis from landscape to Portrait and I just think it's a really Innovative concept it's one of those things like gez why didn't I think of that yeah one of the cool things I thought about it sorry was that it's it's battery powered for up to three hours so if you happen to leave the car or you take it out the back porch or something else you can actually enjoy it for a while without having to plug it in um of course you can plug it in your car standard uh 120 volt um adapter um but yeah three hours on its own it's it's a hell of a lot bigger than an iPad yep you can watch it yeah good enough for watching a Blockbuster movie yep all right from small TVs we're going to go to some larger TVs so our pick for best overall TV at CEDIA I think Chris let me turn this over to you yeah so um it's not my first time seeing it but it's my my uh most recent time seeing it and it didn't disappoint it's the the new Sony QD OLED which uses a Samsung QD OLED panel but then Sony's proprietary video processing it's the um A95L comes in three sizes through 55 up to 77 inches is 55 65 77 and the 77 inch isn't ridiculously priced it's about $5,000 they had it on the wall there I mean incredible blacks incredible resolution great motion handling built-in Google TV there's really almost nothing it it doesn't do and with the new um enhancements to the QD OLED panel it's like something like 200% brighter than last year's models which was already great so um yeah seeing it there at the show um I was as impressed as last time I've seen it and I think in my opinion it it had pretty much the better the best picture quality of anything that I saw at the show and and I think this was a joint pick you and Robert both picked this one as your favorite TV yes I uh for the yes the same reasons as Chris but the other thing is that uh even though it's using a Samsung panel Sony doesn't get enough credit by a lot of people that their video processing really excels and they really do a good job so even though they're using the same panel as the Samsungs uh their their Clarity their res you know the the fine-tuning on the upscaling and everything they really Excel uh and uh and so uh that that would be my my the reason I would pick it as well and the thing I like about it over the Samsung is that it does have Dolby Vision um which we see a lot of content being delivered by the streaming services and on HD uh Ultra HD Blu-ray encoded with Dolby Vision Dynamic HDR the Samsung does not decode that it chose to go with uh HDR 10 plus instead um but there's really more more content out in Dolby vision and I I like knowing that the TV can handle that can handle the tone mapping that's built into the dynamic HDR of Dolby Viision and and I think this TV goes up to 77 inches but right there were also but there were also some extra large TVs at CEDIA and I think some of those caught your attention so we have a category for best extra large TV and what do we have there so the TVs did go extra extra large up to like 200 inches wide you know kind of ridiculously large but in terms of um kind of reasonably large and all comprised of one single panel my favorite there was was LG's 97 inch Wireless OLED um it uses the new um panel from LG that has the ALR uh lens treatment that allows it to focus light again I think they're saying about twice as bright as the previous models from previous years uh certainly look plain bright on the showroom floor um 97 inch OLED cool thing about it is there's nothing to connect to except the power cable uh in the past LG had something called a one connect box that still needed like a dongle to connect the box to the TV now they have a zero connect box which means the Box can go off somewhere else in the room um it communicates all the video and audio signals to the TV and that means you can put it like an equipment rack somewhere else in the room and then the only thing you need to have out in in public is this power cable uh it includes weissa connectivity so those little um speakers that look kind of pretty those little pyramid kind of speakers are they're they're wireless speakers that LG also makes that are connected to the TV wirelessly so in terms of quality um it's kind of a cost-no-object thing because I think it does sell for is it 30,000 $30,000 um there's a non-wireless yeah there's a non-wireless version in the I think it's the G3 series that uh sells for about 5,000 less but but if you want something that's going to be out in front of the room and people are going to see it both sides it's going to be kind of you know statement piece um I think it's a it's a great choice for that all right and I think Robert had his pick for best TV yeah uh my little Counterpoint here is that the only thing that didn't uh uh make me decide on the LG as my favorite big TV was the fact that the one connect box or zero connect box I'm sorry it has to be zero connect box has to be position line of sight to the TV has a range of 30 feet but you you can't put the Box in hide the Box inside of a cabinet so it that you know if you're bugged by having a a you know box sitting out there then that would be what not a big problem but customers do need to be aware that it's a line of sight communication so for my pick I decided to go with the 100 in ux uled TV from high sense and one reason was is I was going more for a value proposition at $10,000 for a 100 in TV it's the third of the price of the LG now it's not OLED so it doesn't have the you know quite the Black Level capabilities and some of the benefits of OLED but it's mini LED with 1,500 dimming zones and uh 1,600 um nits of light out output so uh it's pretty much I would say if you're looking more for well $10,000 is still a lot of money but you can still get a really good value I think with this TV and 100 inches there's I don't think there's any other 100 inch TV out there at this price level offering this type of performance and so now we have some picks for best projector at CEDIA Expo Chris you want to start us off yeah I um I hadn't heard about this model before but I certainly did at the show because uh this was in more than one of my favorite booths and home theater demos uh at the show including storm audio and the trend of audio demo that we're gonna get into some detail about um it is a Barco residential projector it uses three TI DLP chips so it's DL DLT DLP projector has 9,000 anti- Lumin and brightness which means it can light up even the largest screen um in fact the screens we saw down were like 200 in wide um both of them and it didn't seem to have any trouble putting up a light enough light output for those um it uh is unique in that it optimizes its output for a cinemascope display so 2.37 to1 um it uses the
0.9 in TL uh TI DLP chips and pixel shifting to create a 5k image so it's more than 4K because it's got that extra width um it can also handle uh 16 by9 and 1.3 to 3:1 2:1 all the different aspect ratios but it's been kind of built from the ground up optimized for cinemascope and I love that I'm a huge movie guy I love the fact that a lot of the directors are using 2:35 2:37 to 1 for episodic TV shows the Star Wars shows the Disney shows um I myself have a lens memory projector that Zooms in to fill the uh the space but with this solution you're getting the full 5K resolution on the screen in 2:37 to1 and and it shows amazing detail great color saturation it was paired with the Seymour screen in both cases and it just looked it looked awesome so um the only caveat of course is that it's $164,000 um so you know you might want to think about that before before getting too attached to it I would say and Robert did you have any thoughts on this projector did you see it quite a bit yes the the the one thing I really liked about this projector is that uh video projectors have a difficult time uh displaying HDR because they are not as bright as TV as uh the a high-end TV that can display lots of light output for HDR and at 9,000 lumens output there's there's enough light output to really do a good job on HDR and I think that really really bolsters the image quality in addition to resolution video proc the other video processing that's in in the projector and everything that the HDR you have a projector that can do HDR properly all right that was the projector category and now we're going to move on to something near and dear to me and that's the sound categories ah and there wasn't a lot of two channel sound at cdia but think you guys did come across something that was quite unique so I have not actually heard focal's Grand Utopia uh speaker um ever before and this was their grand Utopia em Evo everyone's using Evo these days storm audio's got an ISO ISP Evo processor LG's got their Evo panel Evo is the the buzz word I think of CEDIA 2023 so it's a um it's a four-way speaker as you can see it's beautiful uh to look at and beautiful to hear um what you see in the middle is actually uh if if those of you are not listening to the audio only version of this there is a picture of the amplifier used to drive these speakers and that's the name statement which is a preamp processor and amplifier also gorgeous you know perfectly at home just sitting in in the middle of your living room um and it should be I mean it's 300 grand for the name statement and 280,000 for the speakers so we're talking $580,000 for a stereo system um and uh I was surprised that they put it out in the middle of the floor didn't build it into a booth because it was a lot of sound to compete with but compete they did and honestly even when the FL floor was crowded you could hear these speakers coming through deep extended base excellent articulation Imaging Rock Solid um sounded even better later in the show and kind of a lot of the people filtered out so we could really kind of lean in and listen to what they were doing um and you know um if times turn tough then you can always uh trade the system for a house there you go right kind your he yes say yes I did in fact I I was W uh actually wandering from another booth and I just wandered over and I I saw the speakers and then I heard them and I go you know how are these so clear it was to to me now I'm going to be exaggerating a little bit here but it was like these speakers were so good that everything else in the hall seemed like no just noise you know in terms of other speakers that were on the floor uh these speakers just I think the fal people are gonna quote you on that yeah everything else was just noise Robert [Laughter] [Music] Sila no there I was just really impressed I mean I've heard fcal speakers before obviously but I haven't heard yeah something unique about just fantastic yeah yeah French being French is not is not what makes them unique but they started as a speaker driver manufacturer so they make all their own drivers um most even a lot of high-end speaker companies buy their drivers from third party manufacturers um Focal does not. They build all the drivers purpose
built for for the models that they deliver and and it shows. So over $500,000 for the Focal system as displayed in the photo $580,000. Yep and that doesn't include the streamer which is probably another five grand all right yeah chump change all right and we're gonna stick to the cost-no-object category and this was best sounding overall room at CEDIA Expo um this one's hard to believe honestly this one was very special um Trinnov Audio is well known in the CI Market home theater market for building um processors um like uh um the the one that some of you will see on screen if you have the visual version of this um but it is um what what they're doing this year is something brand new it's called wave forming and what they're doing is they're basically analyzing the base frequencies in a room um and identifying um how all of the speakers interact with each other and with the room itself so they can shape the wave of the base to provide really uniform base response everywhere in the room and people have promised this before I haven't really heard it I've heard this and they totally live up to that promise um they basically have an array of uh subwoofers in the front that transmit sound an array of subwoofers in the back of the room that absorb the Sound by you know canceling it out and this prevents the bass waves from bouncing back and forth and creating a very um uh it's very um unbalanced bass response and to demonstrate what they did was they played us a a very low bass sweep it went from 20 Hz to 100 Hz they played it without without the processing and it's like okay there's 20 Hz it's pretty loud and then dips at 30 and then it comes back up at 40 and 50 and then it dips at 60 basically it's it you know it's a very uneven response with exaggerated loud bass in some frequencies and a complete lack of Bass in others they turned on Wave forming and it was literally ruler flat from 20 Hz to 100 Hz the most uniform bass response I've ever heard wasn't just the bass uh the speaker company ascendo makes these point source drivers that they use for the for the whole 43 Channel system so was 43 including 24 subwoofers and they created just a wonderful sense of image specificity a very seamless kind of soundstage all over the room above you know behind sides Etc um but they also proved Trinnov proved you don't need 24 subwoofers to do that although that's ideal that's optimum you could do it with 5 (correction: 3) in the front 3 (correction: 2) in the back and they demonstrated that in one of the clips from John Wick four and it was amazing just this hit your gut solid bass really precise really loud really deep um and they could do that with just just five subwoofers I know just five subwoofers probably still beyond the reach of most people but um it's an expandable system that only gets better and deeper the more subwoofers you thrill at it Robert what you what did you think you heard the demo too that yes I would came would come to the same conclusion I mean I would be more than happy with just five subwoofers other words exactly yeah in other words I I mean no I mean obviously running the entire system was I what 43 channels in total it was just oh yeah it was 125,000 watts of power over 125,000 watts which is nuts you probably wouldn't have enough electricity to run it in a home yeah yeah but yes uh using 24 subwoofers I mean absolutely uh not only pristine deep bass but layered bass and texture and everything but even when they reduced it down to five subwoofers I was still more than satisfied with what I heard I mean it was like oh this is oh boy because I'm always kind of bugged with the unevenness in subwoofer response with standing wave issues and things like that yeah I as a reviewer it's so hard to to set set up a subwoofer you know yeah yeah I mean anytime I start to add two three subs into the mix it's just a very time consuming process to try to get even bass response but without with a single subwoofer it's really it's almost impossible to get good bass everywhere in the room I mean you get it in the sweet spot right and that's what you optimize for and the rest of the room be damned fortunately I always get in The Sweet Spot because I was get into the room before everybody else does to watch the movie hope my wife wife isn't watching this she's gonna steal my seat next time um but anyway yeah so very impressive um definitely delivered on the promise that every seat is the best seat in the house yes absolutely so do you guys have any idea when they paired it down to the five subwoofers like what that would what that system would cost I don't have the individual yeah so I don't think anyone did the math on how system cost all they were willing to say was well into seven figures so I means yeah it's over a million dollars I mean the projector alone they were using that Barco projector it's $164,000 but when you add in all the amplifiers 43 amps 43 speakers these massive subwoofers the Seymour excellent screen um yeah it was it was a it was really a statement kind of cost-no-object system if you pair it down to five subwoofers obviously yeah um you know eventually this is going to trickle down I think right now if you want to get this in your house you're probably going to be out of luck the hardware is all production but the software they're still doing final testing on so what they want to do Trinnov is they want to be a part of any project moving forward to make sure they can use this as a learning experience and a training experience for the dealers on how to set up a system like this um and because it's all software based and the hardware exports it they can make improvements to this expand it out to more speakers expand it out to more room sizes expand it out to more configurations over time it's going to take them a while to train all the people and really get some real world experience with how this interacts in normal yes you know listening runs this this this room was built in Italy um stuck in crates and then reassembled on the show floor in like three days um so they did all the measurements in calibration in Italy because it was quiet there they couldn't really do that on the showroom floor um you don't really have that luxury in someone's house but in someone's house you don't have you know 27,000 or 60,000 people milling about you know checking out all the demos all around you right so I think they have to do it that way just because it was only way to get a really quiet background to do all the tests they needed to do they use like 20 or 21 different points in the room to do the measurements to create the 3D bass wave map that they need to to process it so very impressive you know I think they've been working on it for six or seven years um I know the CEO um was there and he was he was very proud of what they had achieved and yeah for good reason all right we are going to move along here is it's not going to seem quite budget but we're gonna call this best budget home theater sound as our perspective yeah so um there's a speaker designer named Paul L. Hales
technically he goes by Paul he's worked for a number of different companies over the years designing amazing speakers um sometimes in the cost-no-object sometimes more of budget and what they showed uh the Theory Audio technology Booth um I think that's the name of the company Right Theory Audio Design Theory Audio Design thank you so Theory I'll just call him Theory for short um he was like this is not going to be your average demo um I'm gonna play music right and of course we're gonna blow stuff up at the end but I definitely want you guys to hear music through these speakers because it's gonna give you a sense of what they really sound like you know what a piano sounds like you want a good guitar and a bass and a drum sounds like let me play how these sound on these speakers so what he was showing us and they're just um to the left in the picture of his head for those who uh can see you know can follow along in the video um it's a 9-in speaker that goes in the ceiling or in the wall it's the ic6 it's actually a six or six and a half inch coaxial driver so the center compression driver in the middle and a and a woer around it um so kind of considered a point source driver um and they played these in sealing speakers just a pair of them in the wall in front of us and I turned to uh Carlo from Secrets of Home Theater and High Fidelity who was next to me at the demo and we just looked at each other like can you believe what we're hearing because it was just two little speakers in the wall sell for 675 bucks each okay this is why it's a budget solution that was you know keeping up with the the bigger speakers that we saw all over the show it didn't go below about 60 hertz and but that's still pretty solid that's like okay it's not the lowest octave and a half of what you can hear but it's a lot lower than a lot of these tiny little satellites go um and the cool thing the beauty about this is that this little 9in speaker in the in the wall in the ceiling can also go into a pendant attachment for like an extra 70 bucks and then they hang down from above is like art architectural speakers or they can go into a cabinet for all one um you know on wall placement they played every version of that same speaker in every case sounded the same no matter where they put it of course the The soundstage was a little different depending on where the sound was projecting from right but it was like an amazingly balanced sound and then when they brought in the subwoofer um which is a little thin in-wall speak in-wall subwoofer that they used in walls um they mounted that on the Rafters up in the ceiling and then that brought brought the frequency response down to like 24 Hz and then it was like it would compete with a pair of a pair of like audiophile mini monitors so for basically 1350 a pair plus the amplification plus the sub there was a killer sounding speaker gotta say yeah Robert what do you think you went you went to the demo a little after I did yeah I I think it's brilliant that they were they're able to design a driver that you know all that can accommodate all these different form factors you know in terms of like you say the pendant the in-wall what you know on-wall whatever and that it just uh it's just like uh when they're saying is that you know not only do they save a lot on the fact that they they just have to make what this one model of speaker instead of dozens models to to accommodate different or thousands or thousands of models like comp you want yeah you yeah you want to do a pendant yeah we'll stick this thing in a pendant. I could imagine that when somebody like for the installers as far as like hey I need a dozen of these impendence oh no problem we'll happen to you in a blah blah blah time frame or whatever deliver too yeah in other words it's like you could almost you could almost do Almost Do It On s you know it's like crazy yeah and adding the pendant only adds like what 70 bucks to the cost of the speaker 80 bucks whatever it's not very much um and these pendants look nice they look like anything you'd see in a you know in a a stylish kind of living room or media media room um and what I was a little bit surprised about was that even though they were hanging from the ceiling in the pendants The Soundstage was right in front of us it actually projected the sound down so we didn't feel like we'd have to look up imagine where the singer was or the instruments they were still down here kind of pretty close to ear level didn't sound like the sound was coming from above and I guess the sound is just kind of projected down using this point source driver in a way that you know a lot of pen speakers probably couldn't do as effectively so yeah kudos to uh to uh Paul Hales and and his ability to do that with such a small and fairly inexpensive speaker but I I do think with Theory system you have to buy everything through them the you have to buy the amplification it's not just the speaker yeah they're they're passive speakers they required their own amplifier controllers the ALCS amplifier oh um ALC is what it stands for it's basically a a it's an amplifier with digital controller and digital processing built in um and yeah the four Channel version of that uh the cheapest point you can get is about two grand um but a four channel amp of course can drive four speakers if you want four independent channels but can drive up to 16 of the theory speakers because the 16 the the speakers are so efficient um that even if you put them in series you can they still get to very high listening levels and the amps have a whole lot of um extra Headroom so they said that with a four-channel amp if you're putting in like a right you know a restaurant system or a system that's to fill a very very large room you could drive each channel can actually drive four speakers so you can have those throughout your ceiling and provide a really cool uniform sound throughout you know even the largest home with you know fairly nominal investment so right yeah you can't just mix and match them with other other companies amplification you do have to you have to keep it all together right well well everything we've talked about so far is pretty custom installation oriented but there are some new wireless Technologies on the horizon and we do have a category for that best wireless multi-channel audio the uh the concept is is to eliminate uh all the speaker wire so you don't have speaker wire running all over the place except you do have the compromise you do have to plug the speakers into AC power but yeah of course um the idea is being able to do home theater using let's say have a central Hub or a transmitter it transmits the audio wirelessly to all the speakers in the room and the the the there's the WEA has been the main system but now DTS and we all are familiar with DTS from DTS surround sound in n in 2021 they introduced a five channnel wireless system but this year at CEDIA they debuted or they uh show displayed a 12 channel system so now the things are getting a little bit more competitive uh because WiSA has had a long track record in developing this type of Technology but DTS is a name and they're they've leap frogged in technology to come up with their 12 channel systems so basically you have uh two possibly competing type systems that are both could both be very effective but it just depends on implementation and I'll let Chris talk a little bit about the implementation on DTS play-fi yeah yeah so I I think you're right they're they're similar in many respects um I think WiSA has the edge in sound quality because they support 24/96 and bit Precision so literally highres audio wirelessly to um to six channels oh eight channels I'm sorry Chan they yeah they do support Dolby Atmos 5.1.2 so five surround channels one sub for two high that's probably good enough for most people right so like you said with this leap frogging DTS just announced they can do 12 which technically would be 7.1.4 but they do support a second subwoofer output so they're calling it a 7.2.4 system and and what I think was impressed about with DTS is that they showed us on a TV that's about to come to production in Europe a Phillips TV um yes the user interface is already there it's in the TV instead of selecting TV speakers you select yes Philips Fidelio well technically it says uh you know DTS play-fi theater and then in there you say I have one speaker in the front one on the left one on the right uh two in the back and it does all the calibration all the setup right there in the TV for you that is key right now on the WiSA side because they don't have any TV manufacturers that are public yet about their multi-channel implementation to get WiSA to work you do need a separate dongle it's like a little HDMI dongle but size of a hockey puck that then takes the HDMI ARC output from the TV and then transmits it to all of the speakers wirelessly so they're still doing sound wirelessly WiSA likes to highlight the fact that they have really low latency which is important to synchronize the audio and the video on the screen synchronize the the the audio multiple rooms DTS latency isn't quite as as low it's not quite as fast but it seems it's good enough from what we saw in the demos to be able to provide a a TV like home theater solution yeah um and you know they they just seem a little bit further along in the Partnerships the Fidel the Fidelio speakers from Phillips that were used in the demo are available now on Amazon on Best Buy you can buy them they work with the new play-fi um immersive home theater is what they call it DTS play-fi immersive home theater so that's the only reason that I would give the edge to DTS right now because it does seem like they're announcing Partners were build it into the TV of course you can't get in us yet on the TV side it's only a European model but I'm expecting we're going to see some pretty big announcements from them at CES hopefully for some new TV brands that will build it in because for it to be easy I think it really does have to be built into the TV the user interface is in there like you can see the WiSA interface in the LG and Bol and TVs but it's not the multi channel one right now they're still just using the two channel WiSA solution so what WiSA needs to do and they know it is get their chips and their software into the TVs um they've got a fair number of speaker Partners so far right now really only a few can do the multi-channel but I think once the TVs have them and then speaker companies know they can sell a comp a compatible product that's going to make wireless home theater like really easy to set up and really cool then I think you're gonna get more of the speaker companies on board as well but it's kind of a wait and see game you know to see who gets the big Partnerships first and yes and I think my opinion is that uh I don't see DTS play-fi as a threat to WiSA or vice versa I I see them both as that now that you have two big players in the environment I think it's just going to broaden the access and you're going to get more consumers becoming aware of it and and more manufacturers going well you know this wireless home theater stuff might be really even for a high-end manufacturer might say you know this might be a good solution after all well I don't want to be a spoiler but we are gonna see know yeah the bang Olson is already doing weissa in the two channel mode they've got some TVs L's got some TVs they're doing two channel weissa um but again what Philips I mean sorry what DTS play F has going for him is that do have I think they're a little further along in that multi Channel um and like I said a lot of the speakers can be bought today um the Soundbars the front and rear speakers that have the upfiring drivers um it's just a question now of seeing us made not us made but TVs in the US market include DTS play 5 and the good thing is for speaker makers right they don't necessarily it's not an it doesn't have to be an either or right if let's say TCL and sound sense or somebody comes up with um with uh with DTS and then maybe LG expands to WiSA with multi Channel all speculation at this point but if the two different vendors are in different models speaker makers could include both it could I don't think there's any kind of exclusive relationship they need to make with one of the other you know you see receivers and speakers that have apple um AirPlay built in airpl too but they also have chromecast direct they also have you they decode all the individual surround s modes so you could have a speaker system 7.2.4 that has the badge for DTS play-fi and WiSA no reason that they couldn't and uh yeah they'd have to have the technology built in and there's a licensing fee involved with that but from what I understand the license costs are not that high you know these TV makers just have to you know acknowledge the fact that it's a big Market that they're better off using somebody else's technology rather than trying to do their own and they can create this kind of universal standard where you know homeowners consumers TV buyers apartment dwellers whoever can do wireless immersive surround sound without complicated setup or any speaker wires so I'm pretty exced excited but still it's like it's always right on the cusp so let's see what happens to CES see if we have some big announcements there right yeah moving on we're g to talk about some honorable mentions some sights and sounds of CEDIA that really caught our attention and um this is the Storm Audio Gramani Systems StormAudio Yeah it's a cool name um so I don't know if I call them H honorable mentions they they in in and of themselves were outstanding in sound quality and and visual quality um and uh but I mean it's it's hard to pick a best I mean I just think Trinnov demo was so different that it just stood out among you know among what was out there um as being very different right what's different about the Gramani System and storm audio is um they've changed basically the whole way the dealer sound to the home theater how you in how you route the sound within the home theater installation so instead of using analog cables which every everybody else uses between the pre processor and the amplifier um what the storm audio ISO Evo processor does is it's 100% digital 100% digital domain takes a digital audio signal coming from in this case the Kaleidescape server that's showing 4K you know Dolby Atmos content um right and processes that into like in this case it was a 23 Channel output I think they can support up to 32 in some of the processors 48 and some of the other processors um and it basically the only connection between that preamp uh or the only output the only audio output from the preamp is a single cat 6 ethernet cable that's cool because it simplifies the rack it eliminates a lot of the errors that people make when connecting all these different channels like uh oh I just did the test tone and my left channel is really the right Channel and my height channel is really the surround Channel and then you have to go back and figure out which amp is wrong as you is as those who see the video version of this will see there's basically um the output of the processor uh goes into a network switch this is an off-the-shelf $2 $300 network switch that then feeds each individual amplifier with the signal that it needs to reproduce that particular channel so they're active loudspeakers these um Gramani System speakers but the amps are all still located in the main equipment rack so simple installation everything is done digitally in a network no need for analog cables the only thing you're running into the room at that point is Speaker cables and that's easy installers know how to wire thin speaker cables through the wall they don't have to worry about networking you know networking cable power cables to the individual speakers um and the nice thing about this is because it's all IP it's all internet based the installer the custom integrator can debug a lot of things just by plugging into the system and and logging into their app to see what's happening oh I see that the front left uh speaker amp has blown and needs to be replaced okay we'll send send one of those to you instead of having to go onsite identify what cut screwed up what cut unplugged you know that's expensive um the the time involved in in providing service calls is is a pretty you know significant expense and you know maybe a year down the road they can charge the customer for that but when they're first doing the install and the follow-up visits usually they don't they kind of roll that all into one price right so the ability here for them to set up the system a lot faster with networking instead of analog cables and more reliably and then do that remote you know debugging and and configuration um is money because it saves time and and that's the whole big expense in the custom installer is how much time and how much man hours you have to put in to you know to get the system up and running and to get it um you know to maintain it over time so that that was that's pretty cool and this is the first CI Channel product that's come to Market with this aes67 multi Channel audio over IP Robert anything to add about this not really I I was gonna say is that the the proof is in the pudding I mean the uh the uh the result the listening result result was great uh I really appreciated that the way the the subwoofer obviously not not the same as the Troff but the the subwoofers uh provided a good uh texture as well as a lot of power and of course that's uh you know the other components in the system besides the networking but I thought that they they they did have a compelling demo and the network solution seems to be really viable do you guys remember the cost on this system nope I didn't um I don't think we got an estimate of that um again it used the $164,000 projector so if it's using the the Barco projector then it's it's probably in the if you have to ask category um right but because the installer and integrator are able to do the installation a little bit faster they could potentially pass some of that savings on to the customer in the installation cost which is a big a big part of the cost you know the equipment costs one thing but the installation is is usually a larger or a very significant Port of part portion of the expense right and some other things we saw at CDA is not just stuff for inside your home but outside your home Robert what can you tell us about the Samsung tariff well outdoor TV is becoming more or of a of a a part of the CI space you know the custom installation space and Samsung uh they're two two fairly new I mean outdoor TVs have been out for a while and there's Brands like sunbrite and several others have been doing it for a while but uh Samsung and has entered the market a couple years ago and I'll be talking about another new entry too as well but the idea is skyworth yes skyworth and Samsung were both on hand uh trying to uh Samsung's trying to get into the market and of course with their brand name they've apparently have been s successful so far skyworth is a brand new entry in the in in the outdoor TV space although they've been making TVs for a while but but they've been having skyworth has been having trouble in the US market so they decided to try to do go through the CI Channel and their TV is kind of the Samsung TV has every all the features of any other Samsung qled TV you know the smart features video processing the whole bit uh but it obviously uh a little bit more durable frame in casing and things for more weather for weatherproofing so you can use it outside and also for to accommodate for sunlight uh as well and you see the little sound oh there also is a s they're making a line of of Soundbars that can be used Outdoors as well to complement skyworth is doing a a direction on theirs uh theirs is ex their TV is extremely bright it has a 3,000 uh nits of light output which is very bright even for an outdoor TV so they're making an impact there but they also but it's not as bright as the sun the sun is like millions of nits so 3,000 is good yes right once we have like sun quality TVs then then we know we're talking yeah yes no kidding 3,000 is pretty impressive that's true any TV much more important [Music] out well sure and they also incorporate the Google TV operating system so you have like things like Google chromecast built in all the apps and they also uh accommodate Google assistant so you can voice control the TV as well so very important uh although you don't really need to ask what's the weather right now that at CS because you're already outside you don't have to ask it about the weather that's all I ever use Alexa for like Alexa what's the weather and she's like have you tried looking outside um yeah she's getting sick of me asking her that all the time while sticking to our outdoor theme uh one of the busiest booths at CEDIA Expo 2023 was Origin Acoustics although they're not although their name isn't in this Frame right now um Origin Acoustics had one of the busiest um demonstrations at CEDIA Robert was there what did you learn from origin Acoustics a couple things well obviously their focus is that they uh they partner with a lot of different companies to bring things into the CI space through their their distribution and dealer Network and for example uh the the slide yeah amazonic systems makes uh outdoor and Landscape speakers and so they're partnering with uh uh with the uh uh Origin Acoustics to bring their products through their dealer Network and that way uh Origin Acoustics can also in have input into design and Manufacturing as well also another surprise was that whim uh those of you that are into streaming and everything whim is a very popular inexpensive streaming platform they have products from 99 to like $199 to excellent streamers with things like features like Rune built-in and stuff like that and uh their origin Acoustics has is is taking their uh platform and incorporating it into the CI space with rack mounts rack mount streamer Solutions and compliment amplifiers to go with the whim streamers in that new in their new form factor to go into the CI space which broadens whims reach quite a bit but also adds some value to Origin Acoustics offerings as well because they can say hey we offer streaming solution right and I think a lot of us streamers these highend providers that that that just do a two channel solution you know that's a high-end excellent quality deck um right but but it doesn't really integrate as well into the CI environment I guess so I guess what Origins trying to do is take this vendor that's known well for their affordable highquality streaming PL platforms and then say hey provide that user interface people love in in the CI market and bring streaming all all you know everywhere through your home so I think it's a good partnership there um y yeah yeah and one of the another coolest things we saw at CEDIA was this massive subwoofer Tower by McIntosh yeah and the keyword was C right we only got to see it um it did look impressive there four 13inch drivers it weighs 458 pounds um uh as the side they did tell me that if I could carry it out I could keep it um and I tried but no it wasn't gonna happen um it's 2,000 Watts um it's it's enormous and you can tell it's McIntosh because it's got that trademark you know Vu meter blue screen at the bottom which you can turn off by the way you know if you don't really want to see these bouncing Vu meters at the bottom of your subwoofers while watching a movie you can just disable them um but it's a it's a $5,000 subwoofer and you probably want to have two you know one for each side to balance out the room um and a nice rug you know tie it all together um but um yeah but it's impressive looking we they didn't have it on active display they think they're focusing on their um what's called SciFi cifi uh which is Sonus faber's um big push into the uh the in wall speaker market um to try to um really you know get get a foothold in in the CI market so you know at at a cdia type show it's important for sonus Faber who's part of the same company as Macintosh Macintosh group um for them to show that they have great solutions for you know for custom stallers um the demo that they were doing sonas Faber was kind of unbelievably loud considering there were just a couple of inwall speakers being played with some subers in the middle um so I think they'll probably have good luck in that in that category but it would have been to hear this guy on display too it's just you know it's limited space limited time or maybe it's not ready yet maybe this is more of a hero prototype sample that's about to enter production it certainly looked production to me and all the connectors at you know thit and finish you'd expect from a fin a finished production product uh but we haven't been able to hear it yet you know what I bet it goes really deep and really loud I'm gonna make it I'm gonna make a prediction here it's gonna go really deep and really loud okay next right yeah all right from Big to small yeah very very small this was a standout yes product well it depends on how you define big and small uh uh small in terms of size big in terms of price but this is the um Bang & Olufsen Beolab 8 and it's a bookshelf uh speaker or stand Mount speaker I mean you can do both either one and the main thing is their design like uh when a lot of speaker makers are trying to hide their speakers in the High space you know that well you know put them in the wall and stuff like that Bang & Olufsen really designs their speakers and products to stand out to be like right you know the Fe the feature of the room you know right and they want to be seen very well designed I mean they look great right right and uh un yeah and the uh the um the bail lab these guys might be small but they're what what $5,500 a pair for the for the uh bookshelf and if you want to do stand Mount there's like $7,000 a pair uh and uh and then Chris might have a comment where else now where where else can you actually find products that look like this and the answer is really nowhere bang Olson's you know trademark is is their their look and also great sound yes but we're not you're not really just paying for the sound you're paying for the present you're paying for products that are unique flat out you know where else do you see a soundar that looks like it's made from you know a bamboo Grill where else do you see yeah um there's one of their TVs is remote control that comes out from the wall so when you're in a hotel you can view it um right this is another example of where Bay olon was partnering with other manufacturers you know we talked about weissa earlier LG TVs do have the wireless weissa Channel standard built into some of their models and this was their 118 inch micro LED TV which was set up to play wirelessly to the new baab 50s I think right $52,000 a pair but it's all right because the TV is like 237k so it's like it's an option it's like chump change like of course you're gonna get the speakers you're GNA drop 237 on the TV um what was unique about this TV and it actually almost made my you know best extra-large TV is that most of these microad TVs are comprised of multiple modules like lots of different modules so you've got like a 32inch panel and you put 16 of them into a TV to get 180 inch TV uh or no 140 inch TV something like that um in this case there there are still multiple panels but there are only two there's two panels one on the left one on the right and the thing that I don't love about microed TVs is that once you see a scene it's kind of hard to unsee it in this particular case the scene was almost invisible and since there's only one there's much less to distract you from what you're trying to do which is you know enjoy the movie or enjoy the TV show so you know kudos to to LG for making a TV this big LED that only takes two panels it also simplifies the installation and allows the installers to get set up a lot quicker I think this was in a 4K configuration um this is for the guy who like doesn't like the projector being too dim or having to wait for it to warm up it's for someone who's got money who wants their home theater to be as responsive as quick as bright as saturated as beautiful as their TV in their living room and because it's microed it's got the same advantages of OLED instant off instant on pixels pixel level you know black levels um so it's gorgeous looking set 237 is a lot to spend on a TV for my money drop the size down a little bit go with the 97 inch and uh do the OLED that's my my opinion but I know 97's not not big enough for everyone um and to further enhance the the idea of bang Olson's you know design Forward Thinking um they're using LG's panel it's an noed TV it's called the bision Harmony and um it really is trying to be as discreet as possible in your living room so when you're watching it it's it's standing up and taking notice and it's got a nice sound bar at the bottom that reproduces the sound when you um want to put it away for the evening uh you can hit a button and what you can see that's actually when it's open and you're watching TV but then the previous version shows that when you when you hit a button the speakers uh rotate up in front of the television and the TV goes down so if it was blocking the view it's not blocking anymore doesn't go all the way into the floor it goes right next to the floor FL and what this does is it it it makes it less the focus of attention in the room and it brings the tweeters and the drivers of the speaker up to a little bit higher room height so you can use it as as like a Bluetooth speaker and play music on it when the TV is not in use um again Wi-Fi connection to the um the baab 90s I think of Bang & Olufsen since Flagship this was another one of those systems that just really stood out even though it was wide open on the show floor lots of background noise lots of people behind these things can kick out the jams as they say so it was a great looking system great sounding system prices up in the stratosphere as you're used to from Bang & Olufsen but you can't get this from anyone else nobody else is doing this level of design in the in the market period if someone is that's true you know leave comments on the podcast or on the video and tell me tell me how I got that wrong tell me who else is bringing this level of attention to detail and design into the into the CI Market I dare you all right I'm gonna be in trouble now because I'm I'm getting a lot of comments on that one I'm sure well I think I think we've wrapped up our best of CEDIA Expo 2023 what already we're even under an hour any closing comments final thoughts things you want to add you forgot I'll add in my two cents it's been a few years since I've been to cidia sure um you know after a 2021 uh show that didn't really happen even though that it happened um 2022 I heard great things about they really made comeback 2023 if it's any indication I'd say the market for these products and U Services is extremely strong you know it was very upbeat crowd again I think there were tens of thousands of people um don't quote me on the actual number I heard it was around 60,000 the floors were always busy always packed the vendors were always busy there was always good conversations to be had I think Robert overheard a conversation between a turntable maker and WiSA about a potential partnership there can't can't go on the record about who it was but you know the conversations are happening the Partnerships are being made the products are coming out um I think you know people are still excited about what home entertainment products can can bring to their homes in terms of enjoying all that content we love so much movies TV shows music [Music] Etc
2023-09-24 23:51
