This is my first CES, and though my colleagues insist that
attendance is down significantly, I think they might be pulling my leg.
The biggest impression CES left on me after day one is that
it’s all about scale. My beat was the gigantic Las Vegas Convention Center, a place
so huge that even when I had a clear line of sight I couldn’t see from one end of the
biggest hall to the other. Inside there were throngs of people gathered around booths from
every kind of technology company one can imagine. Some were not much more than a few
tables and a curtained backdrop, while others were done on a scale which hardly seemed
imaginable before today. Take Samsung’s "booth," for example. Its entrance
featured a wing-shaped array of big-screen LCDs that must have been about 100 feet wide.
Surprisingly, audio companies were something of a rarity.
After Roger Kanno and I finished touring the first and largest hall, we had information on
only four new audio products. As the day progressed we added several more, but it was
something of a surprise to realize just how small a fraction of the electronics industry
is represented by our beloved audiophile products. Then again, when I reflect on how so
many of my friends and family members think that MP3s sound great, maybe it’s not
such a surprise after all!
