Magnepan also introduced a new freestanding woofer for their smallest home theater/ plasma wall mounted speakers (the MGMC1). Left and right MGMC1s cost only $750/pr and the woofer adds only $800 unless you want a special finish. The MGMC1s can also be mounted flush with the wall and made to swing out automatically into playing position with the touch of a button. Note the nice table in the picture under the wall mounted MGMC1. That’s the new woofer. The MGMC1s have been criticized for an overly thin sound, but not anymore.

JBL is showing their new cost-no-object Everest speaker system. This system has a virtually unmatched combination of high-end transparency and extreme dynamic range. The horn midrange covers from 700 Hz to 40KHz with less coloration and better transparency than I’ve ever heard from a horn transducer, thanks to newly developed Beryllium diaphragms. A horn super-tweeter increases dispersion in the extreme highs. With an efficiency of 118 db/1w/1m, the main horn operates at such a low power that distortion and dynamic compression never increase, even in high level listening. Touted as the finest speaker JBL has ever built, these $60,000 beauties, with their slightly retro look, are a fitting tribute to JBL’s 60th anniversary. Hopefully the technology will trickle down to more affordable home theater models.

I ran into industry icon Joe Kane at Warner's Total HD glitz and glam event, and among tha many things I learned in the conversation was that the HD DVD version of Digital Video Essentials is on hold again.

SVS is a company that specializes in subwoofers, sold mostly on-line. They had one of the few home theater demos at the Venetian, and the only one that actually used film as a program source. I know, that's tacky in a venue in which 99% of the demos are 2-channel audio, but they did their best.

I may be the only reporter to take pictures of raw loudspeaker drivers at this year's CES. But I've always been fascinated not only by the products we buy, but by the parts that go into them. And SEAS of Norway is one the biggest suppliers of high quality loudspeaker drivers. These new DXT tweeters offer controlled wide dispersion. Note the rings molded into the front plates of both versions. These rings produce diffraction, thereby widening the radiation pattern above 7kHz—the first time to my knowledge that this audiophile boogie-man has been deliberately generated to enhance speaker performance!

PMC also showed these new in- and on-wall speakers. The Wafer 1 sells for $1199 each (on-wall version) and the Wafer 2 for $1799 (on-wall). The demo was a bit atypical of how the environment of the speakers in an actual installation, but they still sounded quite good. The speakers are actually loaded into transmission lines, despite their small size.

Here's the gear that drove the system above. The CD player is from DCS.