Surveying the soundscape.

A Really, Really Big Shew: When the Home Entertainment 2001 show hit the New York Hilton in May, it was more like an invasion than an event. At one point, I overheard a walkie-talkie conversation between a couple of normally unflappable Hilton staff members: "There are more people on the ninth floor than it should ever hold. And the exhibitors are turning off the air conditioning in the rooms they don't want the noise. It's getting stifling."

Yes, it was warm and it was crowded, but no one seemed to mind. I've never seen so many hi-fi and home theater fans sharing an experience with such evident pleasure. Energy and excitement, not tempers, rose with the heat. At the end of the three-day run, the total attendance topped 12,000 and after a five-year absence from New York, the show formerly known as The Hi-Fi Show had already committed to coming back to the Big Apple for the 2002 extravaganza, but probably at a different venue, one that can better accommodate the traffic.

The big story at the show, or at least what Sony hoped would be the big story, was its SACD presentation. Sony tried to be very theatrical and impressive, but ultimately left a sense of corporate blandness that the SACD format itself certainly doesn't deserve. What was supposed to be the kicker was a video of Bruce Springsteen in full live unfettered performance at Madison Square Garden. The pictures were sweet but the sound delivered only thick bass and lifeless dynamics.

I turned to the guy in the seat to my left and asked, "Is this supposed to sound good? Is this supposed to sound live or real or exciting?" He replied, "That's what everybody else in here is wondering but doesn't want to say."

The Sony SACD display in the adjoining room used a lot of white space to help make the selection of available SACD software look both classy and more voluminous than it really is. I'll be happy when the high density audio disc camps resolve the current skirmish. Until they do, both SACD and DVD-Audio are going to remain borderline technologies with negligible impact.

Bass Fishin': In the Outlaw Audio demo room, I did find one early and unintended effect of the new multi-channel, high-bit, audio formats: an apparent need for add-on bass management. Both SACD and DVD-Audio essentially provide none. The players do the digital decoding internally and send out six discrete channels of full range audio. That would seem to be an ideal situation. But it only pays off if you use six speakers with full-range bass capability.

Most people with multi-channels systems use bass-limited speakers in a few of the channels and use the bass-management provisions of their AV receivers or preamps to keep the smaller speakers from being stressed by sending the bass belonging to those channels to the system's subwoofer. But currently this handy option is only available for signals decoded by the receiver or preamp. Previously decoded multi-channel audio from SACD or DVD-Audio players is untouchable.

If and when the new formats become widely accepted, bass management for the audio inputs may be appearing on AV receivers and preamps. For now, a new product from Outlaw Audio, the ICBM (Integrated Control Bass Management), is the only way to do the job. The ICBM is essentially a very fancy electronic crossover and bass routing device. Its simplest application is to send the low frequencies from selected channels to your subwoofer and the mids and highs to the smaller speakers you might be using for those channels.

If you need to, you can even select different crossover points for any of the six channels. You also can use the ICBM to feed left and right stereo subwoofers. You can check out more details on Outlaw Audio's web site: http:// www.outlawaudio.com. That's also the only place where you can place an order for the ICBM. It's a quite affordable option at only $249.

Nettin' 'Em: Speaking of buying audio via the internet, check out World-Exchange.com. This company made quite a splash at the show with its bank of computers and high-speed internet feed set up to home in on the World-Exchange.com website. This company's specialty is selling "Certified Mint" gear at attractive prices. They take display goods, customer returns, and trade-ins from authorized dealers, add their own warranty, and sell the products from their website. They even offer like-new products from carefully controlled brands such as McIntosh and Bose. Of course, the World-Exchange warranty will only remain good if the company endures. But they say they're doing well and project $13-million in sales for 2001.

Hot Coolness: In the demo rooms, I was really taken by the coolness of the Njoe Tjoeb 4000 CD player from Upscale Audio. This is an updated version of the AH! Tjoeb'99 player that TL reviewed in Issue 86. This newer model is based on the Marantz CD-4000 player, and most of the goodies that were optional on the earlier model are now standard. There's a headphone jack here, too, and the unit will play CD-RWs.

Another step up from the previous model is the elimination of the between-track clicks that (properly) bugged TL so much. The clicks aren't totally gone. You'll still hear one when you start, stop, or pause a CD, but not during normal playback. The price of this new model is $579 and there's plenty of current availability.

Digital Rules: The TacT room was absolutely impressive. The new M2150 and S2150 digital amplifiers were, to borrow Duke Ellington's favorite accolade, "beyond category." TacT's own claim says that "One day every amplifier will be all digital." Certainly every amplifier should aspire to the level of sonic performance I heard from the Tact units--no noise, expansive dynamics, utter clarity, and totally convincing bass.

And people who run six channels of amplification will greatly appreciate the twin benefits minimal heat dissipation and high efficiency, particularly if they live in California. These new Tact models should be available in August, 2001. Price for the integrated M2150 amp will be $3495 and the S2150 digital power amplifier will cost $2995. If you need to feed an analog signal into either, you'll need an add-on A/D converter for $599.

I should mention that the Tact demos benefited tremendously from the Dali brand loudspeakers that the company brought over from Denmark. They produced prodigious levels of sound with apparent ease, delicacy, and attention to detail under the control of the Tact amps. Dali speakers currently are not available in the US. They deserve to be.

Of Mics and Men: For the other end of the audio chain, AT&T Labs showed up with a neatly conceived microphone array for recording live events. (This might seem a rather unusual path for a $66-billion company to go down, but AT&T's multichannel recording experience goes back to 1931 when it made a stereo recording of Leopold Stokowski conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra.) This mike concept, called Perceptual Soundfield Reconstruction, uses seven individual microphones. Five form a horizontal array with 72-degree spacing between them. The sixth and seventh aim directly up and down from the center point of the other five.

The signals from the up and down mikes are blended equally (with some attenuation, I believe) into the other five channels, which are identified as center, left and right front, and left and right surround. To produce a two-channel mix, the center mike gets blended equally into the left and right front signals, and the left and right surround mike signals fold into those of their respective front partners.

AT&T's description of the benefits of this array points out that it "reflects the time delays from the acoustic paths around the human head." This suggests to me that recordings made using this technology might be particularly well suited to headphone as well as loudspeaker listening, sort of a quasi-binaural.

AT&T Labs isn't in the microphone manufacturing business, of course. It's in the research business. The company expects to license manufacturers who will produce the actual Perceptual Soundfield Reconstruction mike arrays.

Music Matters: The night before the show opened, I dropped by Cajun, a restaurant and venue for traditional jazz at 128 8th Ave. Holding forth that night were Vince Giordano's Nighthawks, playing big band music of the 1920s, '30s, and '40s. It was an amazing experience, like stepping back in time and hearing this energetic music not as an antique artifact but in all its vibrant glory.

Enhancing the effect was the nearly total absence of electronic sound reinforcement. There was a mike on the piano and another for the vocals, but that was about it. The band balanced itself, blended itself, and filled the room with natural acoustic music and joy.

Other evenings, you might hear banjoist Eddy Davis's New Orleans Jazz Band, Stanley's Washboard Kings, and other traditional combinations. There's music at the Cajun every night of the week. And the price is right. Just drop down for one of the restaurant's Louisiana-style dinners and the music is thrown in for free.

If you can't get there, you can order a sample of the Nighthawk Orchestra's art directly from Vince Giordano at 1316 Elm Ave., Brooklyn, NY 11230, [phone]. Try the Quality Shout CD. You'll appreciate not only the music, but also the fact that it was recorded much as the band performs in person, with a minimal number of microphones and natural balances achieved by acoustical means.

Speaking of CDs, one of the great surprises at the show was hearing the familiar singing voice of Nancy Marano floating out of one of the demo rooms. Nancy was half of the Marano & Monteiro duo, whose recordings for Denon made quite an impression on jazz vocal lovers a few years ago. I've kept in touch with her work since then and I was surprised to hear a recording by her that I didn't know about.

This new CD, Sure Thing (BluePort BP-J007), is one that Nancy produced herself. The track I heard at the show was a classic reading of "The Man I Love." It's one of the high points of a beautifully structured and performed set.

Corrective Feedback: After questioning the originality of the DiAural approach to crossover design, I received a letter from Ray Kimber correcting my impression. He said that the use of a resistor across the tweeter rather than the coil that was the usual component in this sort of crossover topology made the DiAural network significantly different from the ones that have been described and detailed for years.

So, although the DiAural crossover bears a resemblance to other earlier designs (technology does build on what has gone before), its special characteristics and benefits depend on a small but important variation.

-TK