CES 2017 Show Report

It's time to get ready for the 2017 CES Previews have started including the announcements for the shows live streaming with "Enjoy The Music".

"Fifty years from now, the CES show floor may be some hybrid of the real and virtual world, as telepresence minidrones hover and swoop through the aisles, beaming the scene back to our VR contact lenses. But in 2017, the 50th anniversary show was something that would've been an equally unrealistic sci-fi vision to attendees of the first electronics exhibition in 1967: wall-sized TVs as thin as a house key. Electric cars that can drive themselves. Tiny robots that stand guard in your home. And an entire house that you can control with your voice. All of them real, touchable and available to home consumers soon, if not already.

Boring, you say? Stop being cynical, and start appreciating the fact that you're already living in the future: Take a look back at everything we saw on the show floor of the world's premier technology show, from the jaw-dropping to the groan-inducing to the just plain fun."


https://www.cnet.com/news/ces-2017-the-final-word/
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Stop, take a breath and realize where we are and where we have been. I can remember two, maybe three, years ago talking on one of the main audiophile forums and being mocked by the "so called" designers who claimed to be so advanced that they stated high end audio had no answers "it's one big mystery". I know what your thinking, seemed weird to me also. I mentioned the theme of that year's CES being "innovative technologies" and you could not imagine the negativity that spewed. The High End Audio senior club of all things cynical and mythical which has paraded it's ugly head for the last 20 or so years, dressed up as internet audio trolls, almost overnight was silenced by advanced technologies that only a short time ago were inconceivable. The mythical theories of high end audio are quickly being debunked and replaced with a future that is almost as amazing as an episode of the TV show Humans. We're not in Kansas anymore that's for sure. The tiny mindless clubs that once existed as if their audio guilt would prevail as the absolute authority brought down from the mountain, has crumbled into dust. What's exciting to see is how quickly high end audio has stepped up it's game plan to meet the challenge of not becoming obscure and obsolete.



One must ponder the question of relevance in todays world concerning the High End. Is high end audio obsolete? Only if high end audio stays stuck on theory (myth) creating instead of actual scientific methodology, based on practical application. It's great to see true technology fly by the folks that for years have been able to get away with fictional story telling. Nothing like looking at a technology that makes sense and is based on the doing instead of interesting, but fictional, talking points. Anyone can tech talk, this last 50 years though has produced real proof. It's called time.

Recently when talking to a group of audiophiles I was asked "haven't we arrived". My answer caused the room to grow nervous. I answered by asking a question in return "can you play any piece of music and have it reproduce itself in your entertainment space accurately?". The excuses came rolling off of tongues like well rehearsed reasoning without the ability to sit us down in a room and actually make it happen. I went on to say "this hobby is still a baby until we move forward enough to realize audio is a moving part.

The 50th anniversary of the CES is important to all of us. While we can see how far we have come, we can also catch a glimpse of how silly today looks as compared to our future. We've come a long way baby, but we are still just babes in the eyes of what is to come.

Michael Green