Genesis 10th Anniversary Show: International CES 2013
- Thread starter garylkoh
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The Genesis CES Candy Index
This is the Genesis CES Candy Index. Every year, we buy bags of candy and bottles of water to give away to visitors in the room. We usually estimate about a bag plus every day - by the end of the 4th day, we will be at the dregs of the fifth bag.
This year, two bags are still half full at the beginning of the last day. Either the audience is much more health conscious and don't eat chocolate, or the crowd is down......
The most we've given away was 6 bags about 5 years ago.
This is the Genesis CES Candy Index. Every year, we buy bags of candy and bottles of water to give away to visitors in the room. We usually estimate about a bag plus every day - by the end of the 4th day, we will be at the dregs of the fifth bag.
This year, two bags are still half full at the beginning of the last day. Either the audience is much more health conscious and don't eat chocolate, or the crowd is down......
The most we've given away was 6 bags about 5 years ago.
Gary,
As far as you told us you played only analog this year, people did not need extra sugar to neutralize digital induced stomach acid ...
Hah! You'd be telling a different story had I been there--I'm a (not-so-secret) chocoholic, so I would have been more than happy to relieve you of the burden of taking all that choc home. Good music on high end gear + chocolate = bliss.
Here's another picture of the awesome source that is driving the speakers.
I like to say that the speakers are where the sh*t hits the fan. Every piece of gear and ever cable and interconnect between the musicians and the speakers produce sh*t. Some produce more sh*t, others less, but then it all comes out at the speakers. The speakers produce some sh*t as well. All this does is that some sh*t covers the music as it comes out from our hifi systems. In this system, it's the least sh*t that both Touraj and I have experienced even in an untreated hotel room; period.
I like to say that the speakers are where the sh*t hits the fan. Every piece of gear and ever cable and interconnect between the musicians and the speakers produce sh*t. Some produce more sh*t, others less, but then it all comes out at the speakers. The speakers produce some sh*t as well. All this does is that some sh*t covers the music as it comes out from our hifi systems. In this system, it's the least sh*t that both Touraj and I have experienced even in an untreated hotel room; period.
great angle G, wow did not realize the Viola's were that deep .....
Yeah - the Viola's are massive. We hired union muscle to help us move and pack both my speakers and the amplifiers as we didn't want to hurt our backs. The designer was telling me that the choke and transformer on the power supply needed to be that large, and that is why the box is that big. The lower box is the power supply, and most of it is metal.....
End of Show Blues
Everything's packed up and all we have left are the sweet memories of the music we played in the room.
A few impressions of CES 2013 to share with WBF.
1) Traffic was extremely light - so much so that I even managed to get out and walk around twice!
2) Even though CES says that this has been the largest show ever - in terms of visitors, and in terms of floor space. However, in The Venetian, one floor was almost completely devoid of high-end companies - it was mostly occupied by chip manufacturers, software, etc. The number of rooms occupied by high-end companies was definitely down.
3) As this is my 11th CES and Genesis' 10th year anniversary, hopefully the industry now considers me a veteran and would consider this advice - build your system before the show and play it in before bringing it. Three other manufacturers hung out in my room lamenting that their room sucked. All of them had never heard the system that they had set up before. One of them had never ever heard their product with one of the partnering products. None of them set up the room before Monday night/Tuesday morning. You can't do the same thing every year and get a different result. I don't mean changing out the gear/partners. I mean building and playing the system together to make sure that there is synergy. Even if your room partners don't agree - offer to let them send the system to you and you pay for the expensive shipping to the show. The couple of thousand dollars you spend is going to be well worth paying for the better sound you will get.
4) When a system passes a threshold of quality, the reference changes. I mentioned this in the tonearm thread, but in this case, the whole system has to work. When the system sounds like life, you no longer listen and criticize sound and compare it to other hifi systems you've heard. You compare it to your life of music.
5) I leaned a few things about my speakers in this system - the major one is that I no longer regard the suite as too small for them. The problem was not the room, it lay elsewhere. On the Touch Yello album, right at the beginning of Side A1 Track 1, there is some synthesized bass that goes really, really low. Even at loud volumes, it doesn't decay. It stops dead. I thought, "Whoa! How did it stop so fast? Where did the bass disappear to? The room should have boomed and there should have been over-hang." When Touraj and I analyzed this, it was a combination of the tonearm having no resonance modes in the armtube, the turntable, and having four 12-inch servo-controlled woofers. All of a sudden what I've always attributed to room problems turned out not to be.
6) I enjoyed the two classical pieces I brought far more when concert A is correctly 432Hz and not 440Hz. This is only possible if the turntable can accommodate 32.7rpm. Why hasn't anybody got an app for this? It would have been far easier in the digital domain when the pitch can be changed without the timing being changed.
All my bags are packed I'm ready to go
I'm standin' here outside your door
I hate to wake you up to say goodbye
But the dawn is breakin' it's early morn
The taxi's waitin' he's blowin' his horn
Already I'm so lonesome I could die
So kiss me and smile for me
Tell me that you'll wait for me
Hold me like you'll never let me go
Cause I'm leavin' on a jet plane
Don't know when I'll be back again
Oh baby, I hate to go
All I have left are the sweet memories of the music as Touraj packed up his tonearm and cables and left already. I don't think that I'll be playing much music when I get home.
Everything's packed up and all we have left are the sweet memories of the music we played in the room.
A few impressions of CES 2013 to share with WBF.
1) Traffic was extremely light - so much so that I even managed to get out and walk around twice!
2) Even though CES says that this has been the largest show ever - in terms of visitors, and in terms of floor space. However, in The Venetian, one floor was almost completely devoid of high-end companies - it was mostly occupied by chip manufacturers, software, etc. The number of rooms occupied by high-end companies was definitely down.
3) As this is my 11th CES and Genesis' 10th year anniversary, hopefully the industry now considers me a veteran and would consider this advice - build your system before the show and play it in before bringing it. Three other manufacturers hung out in my room lamenting that their room sucked. All of them had never heard the system that they had set up before. One of them had never ever heard their product with one of the partnering products. None of them set up the room before Monday night/Tuesday morning. You can't do the same thing every year and get a different result. I don't mean changing out the gear/partners. I mean building and playing the system together to make sure that there is synergy. Even if your room partners don't agree - offer to let them send the system to you and you pay for the expensive shipping to the show. The couple of thousand dollars you spend is going to be well worth paying for the better sound you will get.
4) When a system passes a threshold of quality, the reference changes. I mentioned this in the tonearm thread, but in this case, the whole system has to work. When the system sounds like life, you no longer listen and criticize sound and compare it to other hifi systems you've heard. You compare it to your life of music.
5) I leaned a few things about my speakers in this system - the major one is that I no longer regard the suite as too small for them. The problem was not the room, it lay elsewhere. On the Touch Yello album, right at the beginning of Side A1 Track 1, there is some synthesized bass that goes really, really low. Even at loud volumes, it doesn't decay. It stops dead. I thought, "Whoa! How did it stop so fast? Where did the bass disappear to? The room should have boomed and there should have been over-hang." When Touraj and I analyzed this, it was a combination of the tonearm having no resonance modes in the armtube, the turntable, and having four 12-inch servo-controlled woofers. All of a sudden what I've always attributed to room problems turned out not to be.
6) I enjoyed the two classical pieces I brought far more when concert A is correctly 432Hz and not 440Hz. This is only possible if the turntable can accommodate 32.7rpm. Why hasn't anybody got an app for this? It would have been far easier in the digital domain when the pitch can be changed without the timing being changed.
All my bags are packed I'm ready to go
I'm standin' here outside your door
I hate to wake you up to say goodbye
But the dawn is breakin' it's early morn
The taxi's waitin' he's blowin' his horn
Already I'm so lonesome I could die
So kiss me and smile for me
Tell me that you'll wait for me
Hold me like you'll never let me go
Cause I'm leavin' on a jet plane
Don't know when I'll be back again
Oh baby, I hate to go
All I have left are the sweet memories of the music as Touraj packed up his tonearm and cables and left already. I don't think that I'll be playing much music when I get home.
I think that the best thing I can say about the showing was not that it was superb, but that it got out of the way and let the music through.
This was simply illustrated by a couple who came in - after the husband requested for "Female Vocal", the wife was wiping away tears from her eyes at the end of Over the Rainbow. I caught them discussing on the way out - she was saying that it was the most beautiful thing that she had ever heard, but her husband was gently admonishing "But, honey - nothing really stood out."
I think that summed out the system pretty well - there was no aspect of the sound that stood out and begged for attention. It just hung together and played beautiful music.
This was simply illustrated by a couple who came in - after the husband requested for "Female Vocal", the wife was wiping away tears from her eyes at the end of Over the Rainbow. I caught them discussing on the way out - she was saying that it was the most beautiful thing that she had ever heard, but her husband was gently admonishing "But, honey - nothing really stood out."
I think that summed out the system pretty well - there was no aspect of the sound that stood out and begged for attention. It just hung together and played beautiful music.
Arnie explained this to me right at the beginning, and I can't find a way to refute him.
A metal cone (especially pure metal) has one resonant mode only. This single resonant mode is huge and high, but narrow. If you don't excite this resonant mode, then it is clean every where else. There is simply no way to design a "perfect" cone - it will distort somewhere, and depending on different material and different shapes, the distortion is spread out, distributed, or damped. Since the damping mechanism cannot distinguish between distortion and music, any damping used will to an extent damp some of the musical content as well.
So, all the Genesis dynamic drivers are pure metal. The woofers have concentric ribs to increase dynamic strength, but all the others are "pure" designs. They are all designed to have a very high and narrow distortion band, and then we use the drivers far, far from that resonant frequency. As a result, I think that they all sound extremely clean and detailed. No damping whatsoever is used.
The smaller drivers (4-in cone and smaller) are solid titanium, the larger drivers are solid aluminum.
Along the way, I also learned that the baskets also have a resonant frequency, and as with the cones, I designed them to have this resonant frequency outside the range of utility. The strange thing that happened was that it turned out that the cheap and cheerful pressed-metal basket was the best basket to use for the midrange and mid-bass because the resonant frequency was far lower than the expensive cast metal baskets that are so popular in the high-end. It would have been difficult to make a midrange driver with a cast metal basket because the basket would have resonated within the frequency range that the midrange operated at.
For the woofers, the cast metal baskets are stronger, and had a resonant frequency far above the frequency range encountered.
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