Thinking outside the box: our man in New York covers the Home Entertainment 2004 Show.(Show Report)

This is the fifth Home Entertainment Show that I've covered, and I'm happy to report that speaker design keeps getting better. Each time I audition 4050 speakers, and give you both my impressions as the show went along and my conclusions now that I've had a chance to reflect on what I heard. Starting with some introductory conclusions:

The 2004 Show was back at the New York Hilton, which is probably the best venue that you'll find in New York City. There's plenty of electric power, plenty of air conditioning, almost enough elevators, and almost enough soundproofing (with an empty room as buffer between most audition rooms).

Home theater demos put a strain on the soundproofing on the upper floors, particularly when they leave the door open. They really need to figure out a better way to keep them away from the pure-music rooms--maybe one floor for home theater and the other for music only, or one wing for home theater on each floor. But there was at least one exhibit where it was totally impossible to hear the sweet music for the low frequency effects spilling over from a nearby room.

There seemed to be fewer outrageous tweak concepts this year. Single-ended triode tube amps were much less evident than last time. The Harmonix Cable Support (see #32 below) was the most noticeable voodoo device, but pucks and crystals were thankfully sparse and one man was having trouble buying a green pen to treat his CDs.

But the best news is that speakers keep getting better and better. At the first show I found lots of design flaws that produced boomy bass, screechy highs, and boxy or chesty mids. Boomy bass is still a problem, because that's caused by interaction with the room resonances and hotel rooms aren't where speakers are designed, but the vendors seem to be getting used to the Hilton so it's not as bad. Screechy highs tended to come with super-efficient speakers, so the ebbing of the s-e triode fad has thinned their numbers. But the boxy or chesty midrange sound was a tough speaker-box design problem and it's great to see that modern speaker design has it pretty well handled. So now when you're in the market for new speakers you can focus on sound and appearance, and you can think outside the box!

As usual the Show was spread out over five floors. The second floor included registration, several bazaars of CD and accessory vendors, and some big demo rooms. The fourth floor included eight big demo rooms, and the Concourse level (basement to you) had eight large but largely overlooked rooms. The sixth and seventh floors included the bulk of the show, and most of the Sensible systems. Being a sensible person, I started on the seventh floor and worked my way down.

Day One