The AVS Forum editorial team selected 12 companies to receive our new Best of CEDIA award for an outstanding product or demo at this year's show.

https://www.avsforum.com/avs-forum-be...a-2017-awards/

If an Epson projector with a laser phosphor engine costs $3,000, as mentioned in the article, how much should Sony increase the price of a projector to add a laser phosphor engine? Maybe $1,000?

Because you said in the article that the reason the top model Sony projector of the three new models announced costs $17,000 more than the next most expensive, is because "they added a laser phosphor engine".

I mean, you don't want to give awards to rip-offs, do you?

Of course, there's much more to it than simply a laser-phosphor light engine. I had to be very brief in this summary.

As much as possible.

Scott, did you hear the Alcon Audio demo?

I thought it outperformed Stark Audio, DARTS, JBL Synthesis, Procella and all the other high end demo's by a very very wide margin. Frankly it floored me how good they sounded. The Mad Max Dolby demo disc clip had sounds, voices and imaging that I've never heard with any other system. In fact I went back all three days to refresh my point of reference to what I was hearing elsewhere. It was the first home theater system that I can honestly say that I could live with happily ever after and never feel the itch to upgrade again. They use a high power ribbon driver that has the reference SPL of a commercial cinema, the clarity of an electrostatic speaker with the dynamics of horn compression drivers. Absolutely astounding detail, pinpoint imaging and unlimited headroom. It was truly in a different league from everything else at the show.

Mr scott needs to give awards for best bang for the buck. I am surprised no chinese mfgr stuff that occupies 100,00k+ pages of amazon.com didnt make the list.

Don't get me wrong, my projector is a Sony and I am interested in the next model down. Would like to see your itemized justification of $17,000 between models.

Sent from my HTC_0P6B using Tapatalk

I did hear the Alcons demo. It sounded quite good, though too bright for my taste. I also heard the dARTS and JBL demos, which also sounded very good, but I preferred Starke demo to all of them. I didn't hear the Procella demo.

These are interesting and instructive comments. I too heard the Alcons demo and did think it was a top-tier demo—not overly bright for my taste (and I do like Klipsch so, you know how that goes...)

And, if by virtue of sheer plentitude of wattage and displacement, or due to patented tweeter tech (it's hard to tell these days) there's no question the Alcons demo sounded great. Large rooms help too.

But, I only got goose bumps during one show demo and that was not Alcons. Actually, the goose bumps happened during the Starke demo. Now, I'm not saying that's the last word in determining what's good, but I know goose bumps are involuntary and typically a response to exceptional audio performance. It's just a thing. But it's totally fair to say Alcons "outgunned" Starke and pretty much everyone else.

Alcons needs to go to AXPONA and go up against Seaton and JTR. That's what I think.

Also, I thought PMC had bass down pat like no other demo at CEDIA. That was sick.

Yes, I attended the Alcons demo last year and know how much headroom there is. Tons. Great system, truly. I'm sure I could get everything I want out of an Alcons system because EQ exists and I'd use it to dial it in to taste.

side note...i dont use any eq and have a great sounding system....guess i just saved a bunch of money with luck

Effective EQ need not be expensive. Also a system designed for home use is typically tuned to have a favorable response curve in a residential environment, so that EQ is not a necessity. But with a pro-style system like Alcons, you usually dial in a house curve based on room acoustics and also there's room for personal taste.

One thing to consider is that tweaking can get a system sounding "just right" for one person, but in a home theater the size of the Alcons demo (i.e. rather large) a top-level goal is to get great sound for every seat in a multi-row arrangement.

I recommend room correction and EQ for subs and bass in general. It's rare it can't do at least some good in that range, but multiple subs and finding optimal locations and yes... luck... can make it unnecessary. Yet EQ and room correction is still something I prefer.

Probably a good moment to mention that I think proper setup is the key to great audio. More so than being rich. And unless you listen crazy loud, having absolutely massive amounts of headroom in a system can be overrated. Headroom is good. 20+ dB of headroom is... perhaps excessive?

Congrats to Alcons, shaking things up at the top end.

yea but my living room the 10-15 guests watching the game just gonna have to deal with 115+db's

or maybe should restate...Im jealous I dont have that problem with a dedicated theater

Trivia... Hamilton on Broadway uses an Alcons system!

while i'm sure there's a nice profit margin on that projector, but it's kind of the same as thinking it's crazy that it would cost an extra 3grand just to get lens memory when you can buy projectors with lens memory for that much... oh wait


i'm sure you get a lot more than just those notable changes though. something tells me the laser light engines are not equal between those two models. i sure hope not for 22000 difference! haha


also, i kind of chuckled at the 'best fiber optic hdmi cable' category. was there more than one? i understand you probably didn't have that category chosen until you saw the product, but i still thought it was oddly specific

Actually, there was at least one other fiber-optic HDMI cable at CEDIA, from Vanco (I think). But it required separate power from a USB port (clunky!), while the Fibbr cable gets its power from the HDMI port. And you're right, we didn't have all the categories defined until we saw what was at the show. Still, even if there was only one product in a certain category, I would give it an award if it was super-cool, and not if it wasn't. I thought the Fibbr Ultra Pro was super-cool—and very useful to many people—so I gave it an award.

you go old man...thats what the spice of life all about. and im only 45

i totally understood, that after seeing that product you 'created' a category for it, as it was an outstanding product worth recognizing. just thought it could have been an 'interconnect' or a more general category as i'm sure you considered it next to many other products that just didn't quite stand out as much.

but i guess most of your categories, in hindsight, are pretty descriptive of the product that won it, so it actually fits in just fine

Ah, a youngster!

Did you happen to make it over to the off-site demo at the Marriott for the dynaudio/datasat demo?

That got my vote for best of show but I agree that the starke demo was quite good along with PMC.