 This is the first time, that the Berlin exhibition is held one year after another. The success of the last year edition and the push of the market (big companies, like Sony, Panasonic, etc. exchange their product lines once a year) made the organizers tackle the risk. It seems, that even though the number of visitors was lower than always, the venture was a success. Most probably, the new yearly pulse of IFA pumping the "blood" of new technologies and visions, changing in two - three year pace the face of consumer electronics in the whole world, through the arteries of the gigantic exposition halls, must yet go in the veins of the visitors and companies. But even here and now, for the first edition, it was very good. I will not write too much, a more detailed report and a bigger amount of photographs are in my article in the newest edition of "Audio" 11/06 . I just want to point you to some trends I observed. First of all - wireless transmission of data and grouping of all home appliances in one network, with a common remote control. Companies like Nokia, obviously, but also Monster - what is not so obvious - are involved in this. During the show I had a chance to interview the head of the latter company, Mr. Noel Lee, who told me very interesting and revolutionary things, about how electronics will probably look like in a few years, and for sure how Monster portfolio will. In a brief summary: first of all the company that Mr. Lee is leading, is finishing working on a system, the heart of which is a server-conditioner, connecting to all other appliances at home through wireless connection and the power lines. The last idea is related to the introduction of commercially available systems for internet transmission through power lines. The thing is, that those incredibly litter, the already poor power. However Monster sees a chance for itself there. New conditioners will not only clean the current, but will also be send-receive stations (they are plugged into the wall socket, nevertheless). The second big revolution is related to new video disk formats - Blu-Ray and HD-DVD. Both have bright future, but to achieve success, few conditions must be met first, among them, the most important one: copies of films must really be of high quality. During the Berlin exposition I took part in eight displays, and only during one of them a truly magnificent picture was presented. However it was not BR or HD, but a demonstration from JVC, that showed a projector with 4 times the HDTV resolution - 4320 lines. The picture, played from hard drives, was better than reality. I am not kidding. But when it came to HDTV, then in every case, regardless of the fact if it was BR or HD, it was a big disappointment. I think, that it was due to the film transfer, but according to me, a scaled-up picture from a high quality DVD looks better than what I saw there. So hold-on with your purchases, it will take some time before movies with quality picture will become available, and we will have to wait for at least 5 years more for reference disks. There is little talk about the audio part of the high resolution disks, but it was the only element that really impressed me. The sound, coded lossless in eight channels 24/96 (in Blu-Ray it can even be 8 x 24/192), in the lossless codecs Dolby Digital True HD and DTS-HD, was really brilliant. It is yet unknown, how the future of the audio only disks will look like, because nobody knows if they have to replace the (un)graciously reigning CD, or to let music aside. Almost nobody tries to think that far into the future. Almost, because the exception is Bob Stuart, owner and "brain" of the company Meridian, who made sure, that in the specs of both formats MLP - Meridian Lossless Packing - will be implemented, that is used now on DVD-Audio disks, allowing for lossless compression of audio signal. This means, that SACD was dropped by all its supporters, because even in the newest generation console, the PlayStation 3, there is no mention of SACD, but there is Blu-Ray, a platform supporting DVD-Audio... And the PS3 will be found in homes of billions of potential consumers of new technologies, and they will be educated in the realms of audio and video by it. But don't let us worry - we will live, we will see - as our brother from the east use to say. Now, the newest generations of CD players are finally good enough, to let us concentrate on the Compact Disc, hopefully not "copy protected", because this is rubbish. And most of all, the element of the system, that introduces the most distortions, are the loudspeakers. As you can see on the photos below, in the technology hotbed like the IFA, you can find incredible examples of devices, that no one has seen or heard of 1. Golden record and golden cassette for the "king of pop" Michael Jackson - a sign, that the golden years of the vinyl are some kind of reference point for music reproduction, even in the ultra-digital reality.  2. Garfield was one of the guests...  3. Companies trying to catch our interest in their products use some less conventional methods: Who wouldn't listen to information about the newest novelties laying in bed with someone like that?  4. Vodafone, one of the biggest German cellular phone operators advertised with the help of Formula 1 - isn't it something for the Poles?  5. The Swedish company DLS is present in Poland, however it is just making first steps here. It offers many interesting constructions, classic, with silk domes and carbon mid-woofers, like the R range, and lifestyle, metal casings in the T range and, visible on the photo, newest models of the D range. Although the company grew out of the car audio sector, where it is still present, its constructions for the home audio look really intriguing.  6. Sansui - a company for long unheard of in the audio industry, is now in one finance group with Akai and Nakamichi. And on their stand I have seen the most beautiful, best designed tube amplifiers, like the hybrid Uemo 50 or Uemo 4.   7. Heco presented on their stand all their design lines, among them the Celan 700 with separate bas-reflex outlets for the woofer and mid-range. One should notice the multiplication of the outlets, allowing for a large airflow while minimizing noise and turbulence, that usually accompany it.  8. The French company Davis is known on the Polish market mostly from their speaker drivers. Its portfolio encompasses ready built, very interesting, loudspeakers, among others this stand, three way box (on top the speaker is co-axial) model Nikita for 3000 Euro.  9. Davis drivers are characterized by Kevlar cones and - for part - unusual magnets, like the one on this photo AlNiCo.  10. For me the hit of the show - Canadian company Amari Acoustics, which started its activities this year, and that with ingenious products. The devices are designed in Canada but manufactured in China. After the ready products arrive at the company storage they are unpacked and a thorough quality check is performed - an element that in the Chinese products is neglected. On the photo is the Arcana CD 1.2 with a tube RCA output. The device is equipped with an upsampler and has extraordinarily high dynamics in the 100 dB range and high sound to noise ratio of 120 dB (for the solid state XLR, for the tube output it is 100 dB).  11. Amaro Acoustics offers not only electronics, but also speakers, on the photo a model with two ribbon tweeters and an extraordinary shape of the enclosure. The issue is not that easy, because the manufacturer of those is a Taiwanese company Loreus-Avati, partner of Amaro. In any case, the boxes look exceptionally beautiful, and are extraordinarily well manufactured. The tweeter is cut-off at a very low level, below 1,2 kHz, and the mid-woofers are made from a mixture of carbon fibers and Kevlar.  12. Amaro Acoustics - maybe the turntables are the reson de etre of this company: on the photo the most expensive one, costing 35 000 Euro model LP 1.3, with a quartz revolution stabilizer of the DC 300 rpm motor and 50-mm table with an additional 20-mm graphite matte. The chassis is made from an aluminum-graphite laminate.   13. Amaro Acoustics - carbon tone arm Mozart with full VTA regulation.   14. KEF organized this year the biggest presentation yet. On the photo two new products - subwoofer HTB2 and known earlier KHT 5001.2, but this time available in the most fashionable color piano black.  15. Well, this could be expected - when three years ago I visited the KEF factory in Maidstone I saw these in the form of a prototype (I was not allowed to write about those). The new FiveTwo range is an enhancement to the concept of the speakers sold with the KIT: in front we have a row of small mid-woofers and the newest iteration of the UNI-Q with 75 mm diameter. This is the front channel. The second UNI-Q, above, together with the mid-woofer is connected to the central channel - together with a second system in the second box they create perfectly focused dialogs - I listened and I believed. But this is not the end - on the sides there are two NXT panels, used to play the surround channels. The whole was designed to play 5 channels of home theatre in just two boxes. Somebody, that listened to the KIT before, knows that it worked all right then, but just now we got an additional injection of really good sound. Self standing Model 11 (you know: 11 transducers) has a very high effectiveness (the maker states 109 dB, 2,83V/1m) and plays really very well. In the portfolio is a smaller model 7, which can play as a front speaker, aided by the subwoofer HTB2, or as surround.   16. Probably everybody was waiting for this - I was, very impatiently. After very good players SA-11S1 and SA-15S1 time came for a flagship - model SA-7S1. It was designed based on two top high-end hits of the company - CD player CD-7 and SACD-1. Emphasis was laid upon total separation of power supply and the audio circuits - patented Giant Magneto Resistor technology. The D/A conversion is handled by serious SM5866A ICs.  17. The SA-7 player is to cooperate with, among others, top preamplifier of Marantz SC-7 - here in the new S2 version.  18. : Further novelty - beautiful tuner ST-15S1 - DAB, FM, tuning with the Gyro Touch knob. To convert D/A in the DAB radio 24/192 converters are being used..  19. Where is Marantz, there is its ambassador, Ken Ishiwata.  20. Restek on IFA? No, not - it is just a French company Advance Acoustics. From the former exhibition many new products have appeared here, among others the big class A MAA-705 power amplifiers, with LCD VU-Meters, that make those look like German Restek products.  21. Beyerdynamic, in his top model DT-990, amends something here, something there, but the overall concept remains the same since long time. Also very interesting should be the new headphone amplifier A1, designed to be able to work with demanding load 600 Ohm (like DT-990 Pro).  22. : IFA is not only lifestyle, but from time to time also audio pearls. Here I found the company OM-Audio. Its activity is focused on high effectiveness speakers. Shown on the photo model Genuin FS2 is the second from top in the line. The speakers were equipped with a titanium driver with a large tube, and the woofer is a 11" TAD speaker. Frequency range - 35 Hz - 20 kHz, effectiveness 94 dB/8 Ohm. The enclosure is exceptionally rigid, because it is made from thick plywood panels, the front is 50 mm thick. A real gem is the way to regulate the top section - it is isolated from the lower, and is being placed according to listening range, and the height on which our ears are located when listening. That is called optimizing...   23. Our "black horse" in KEF is Mr. Jacek Dukat, one of the most important people in the company. It was probably no accident, that he stands besides the top model Reference 207...  24. : Japanese company TimeDomine probably provocatively exposed two models designed for the i.Pod and computer. In this constructions a single driver is used in a specially designed cabinet. For this kind of product, those speakers played very good, and though the 6-eggs speakers manufactured by Fujitsu-Ten, together with the accompanying amplifier, are in some of the most renowned recording studios in the world.  25. Mr. Hiroyuki Yoshii, designer and owner of TimeDomine.  26. Next company, that, theoretically, should not be here, but gathered many curious visitors around its stand. I am talking about the speakers Active High Definition of the German company BnS Loudspeakers. Besides this model, driven by a budget system NAD/Cambridge Audio, BnS has in its portfolio also normally looking speakers, but those look like just imported from China or Taiwan.   27. Tangent Audio proposed exceptionally finished speakers - car varnish in a dozen layers, every time polished. The inside is more familiar, but still noble - silk dome, mid-woofers from aluminum-magnesium alloy. On the photo the newest range Clarity, model 8.  28. Something beautiful: Denon has its roots deeply in the stereo, an example of that is a classic pick-up element MC DL-103, here in the newest, special edition DL103R.  29. : Hit of the show, at least in the video sector, were screens with 1080p resolution. Due to the XD Engine processing and the increased resolution the picture on the EISA awarded plasma screen LG 42 PC1RR was simply breath taking. I know that the movies were projected from hard drives in maximum available resolution, but they showed what the LG can deliver.  30. Display LG showing a "tree" of the drives ends on the Blu-Ray...  31. : JBL Tube speakers are valued everywhere, but in mostly in Japan they have a cult status. On the photo Model S4800 with regulated amount of high frequencies on the back panel.  32. Array series of the tube JBLs. Besides the big monsters also stand speakers are available, looking as if they were created in a process of gemmating from the big parents - everything is the same, only smaller.   33. I could not resist taking this picture - model K 701 AKG, probably most wanted, besides Grado 1000, novelty from the "head" world.  34. Pioneer secret weapon: TAD loudspeakers. As I have written in the reportage from Munchen, they were created by a man, that was responsible for the development of UNI-Q at KEF. Here we also have the UNI-Q (although it is named differently - the trademark is restricted), with a beryllium dome and an aluminum-magnesium midrange cone. The speakers were used for the presentation of Blu-Ray and the sound was splendid. Interestingly, every speaker was accompanied by a sub-woofer, making a 5.5 system - yes, there was no 7.1 sound. I am sure we will hear more about those speakers.  35. : In the hall occupied by Toshiba, besides equipment playing HD-DVD - this is the company that, as the only one on the show, promoted a way of encoding high definition picture competitive to Blu-Ray - many movies were shown. Some of those are, in contrast to Blu-Ray, is compatible with DVD.   Reportage IFA 2005 HERE |
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