This year's Consumer Electronics Show was one of the best I can remember. There were a great deal of products and new ideas, as well as enthusiasm about the future. It was really good to see all this because I have been to a few shows where people were just plain glum.
For the last 18 months CA&E has been covering so many new emerging technologies and trends - and the 2001 CES was hard proof that a great many of these products, services and concepts are going to be a reality.
Three things really struck me as innovative enough to really cause a stir or a shift in car audio as we know it.
Satellite Radio. It's finally here and it's every bit as good as we hyped it, maybe even better. By some time this summer, you will be able to sign up for satellite radio from one of the two companies, XM or Sirius. What seems to differentiate them is that XM is concentrating on creating a radio station feel with DJs, live bands and original content. XM has created a giant facility with over 80 studios to accomplish this. Sirius, on the other hand, is focused on content. Their 50 music channels will not have DJs interrupting the music and the other 50 variety channels will feature great stuff like Sci-Fi channel, Comedy World, even Speedvision (how they'll do that I don't know). It's going to be fun to listen to the radio again.
MP3. Actually I probably shouldn't use MP3 specifically - more of a format that's compressed so you can get more songs in a smaller space. In 2000, only Kenwood and JVC sold CD players that would play CD-Rs with MP3 on them. At CES, I couldn't keep track of how many companies would be shipping decks to play MP3, CD-Rs or even memory cards (e.g. Sony's Memory Stick). The big news was at Sony and Pioneer. Both showed a CD player with a hard drive built-in. The good news is that they don't use MP3; they use Sony's new and improved ATRAC compression (used on MiniDisc). Sony now has it working so well that a single MiniDisc can now hold up to 5 hours of music versus the old 80 minutes. Both the prototype Sony and Pioneer units would rip music to the hard drive at high speed, letting you listen as it ripped or listen to the tuner instead. Sony claimed 100 CDs would fit in their unit; Pioneer, even more. Don't look for these units this year, but that these big players are even showing prototypes means that's where the market is headed.
Amplifier technology. Digital amps are finally here. At the 2000 CES it looked like there might be two competitors for a true voltage amp, Tripath and Texas Instruments. TI has decided to focus on smaller, low-powered devices and Tripath has truly excelled. Class T amps as they're called, work slightly different than TI's true voltage amp solution, but who cares when you can get over 75% efficiency and awesome sound quality. There were two prototypes at the show that really blew my mind. First was Blaupunkt's new plastic amp. We brought you the exclusive scoop on this amp in the January 2001 issue. Blaupunkt had the real thing at the show and it's going to be awesome. Next was in Tripath's booth, where they had modified an Alpine CD player by putting in their own Class T amps just to prove how much power you could get from a small chip. It was rated at 4 x 80 watts and was every bit of it. Powering top quality 6.5-inch speakers, the deck was easily bottoming the four cones and showed no sign of clipping.
I have to say that 2001 is going to be a great year for CA&E and for you the consumer, because so many new and cool things are going to be coming your way. To help keep you up to date and on the edge, I'll be covering a new technology or service every month starting with the June issue. You'll not only get an explanation of how it works, but, if possible, I'll be using it and relaying to you my first-hand experience. Get ready for some real car audio excitement! -Tim Kelly