Show Report

AV123 Pre-CEDIA Show and Press Conference - Denver, Colorado - August 6-7, 2004

August, 2004

John E. Johnson, Jr.



Introduction

Mark Schifter, President of AV123, hosted a small conference outside of Denver, Colorado to show their new products. One hundred invited guests were present, including representatives of magazines such as Secrets.

Mark demonstrated several new speakers, such as the RS1000 illustrated in the photo below. The RS1000 will be sold at $2,800/pair. They are tall floor-standers with one tweeter, one upper midrange, four lower midrange, and a side-firing subwoofer.

The complete system of seven speakers, which includes the RS1000s for the mains, RSC-200 center, and other floor-standers for the rear surrounds and side surrounds, is $4,500 (the subwoofers are additional). The sound was quite spectacular. Smooth and involving rather than drawing attention to the speakers.

Mark Schifter presented the new products, along with his staff, to the group in a large main room. The hotel was not overjoyed when a light bulb exploded because the sound was so intense. 200 watts x 7 can really shake things up.

One of the more exciting introductions was the Emotiva DMC-1 SSP and Emotiva MPS-1 7x200 watt power amplifier, shown below. You can purchase them separately, or as a package for $3,995.

The DMC-1 outputs 7.1 and will handle all modern codecs. There are eight XLR outputs, including four subwoofer outputs.

The MPS-1 is modular, and each module has its own individual power supply. Mark Schifter is seen below, holding one of the 17 pound modules. So, 7 x 17 = 119 pounds, plus the weight of the chassis, is about 130 pounds of power amplifier at less than $2,000 for seven channels at 200 watts into 8 Ohms for each channel.

AV123 also introduced the R-DES, which is a digital subwoofer EQ unit that goes between the sub-out on your SSP and the RCA input on your powered subwoofer. The unit is very small and interfaces by USB to your laptop, where you can set the four-band EQ parameters for frequency of each band, number of dB of gain or reduction for each band, and Q (width of each band). Then you load the data into your R-DES box via USB. The box has four memories for individual EQ settings that you activate from buttons on the front. That way, you can have EQ for different sitting positions in your home theater. Here is a screenshot of the EQ page, with settings for a subwoofer in use at the show.

If you remember the room peaks at 35 Hz, 60 Hz, and 80 Hz for the subwoofer I reviewed recently, you can lower those peaks with the R-DES. Below is a screenshot of the EQ page with appropriate settings for that subwoofer.

MSRP of the unit will be $399. Shown below is Dave Tremblay, of AV123, demonstrating the unit (aluminum box in bottom right corner) to JJ.

A new CD player is about to be introduced, seen below, sitting in between a Cinepro PowerLIGHT 2400 and PS Audio Power Conditioner.

The speaker in the photo below was custom designed by AV123 for a specific client. By taking the midrange and tweeter out of the main enclosure, interactive resonance effects are minimized.

The Reference 3 floor-standing speakers were also introduced, at an MSRP of $4,500/pair, shown below. The center and subs in the photo were used to demonstrate the Ref 3s in a surround sound configuration.

A close-up of the Ref 3 ribbon super-tweeter and cone tweeter with its phase plug, can be seen below.

Here is a close-up of the center channel speaker.

Onix Rocket ELT speakers were shown in a separate room.

The Onix SOCS system was demonstrated in another room, shown below. SOCS is a system that corrects for a speaker's frequency response and phase shift. The speaker is measured in an anechoic chamber, and the data are put into software that can be downloaded to your SOCS system. An AV123 staff member can be seen below, turning the SOCS on and off for guests to hear the difference. The difference was very obvious, and a definite improvement. At some point, the SOCS will include files for many different speakers. You just download the file for your speaker model, and away you go.

There were several nice restaurants near the show, and below, Ron Stimpson of SVSubwoofers, along with Cindy Johnson and JJ (taking the photo), enjoyed the local Colorado-Mex.

The last evening had a cocktail hour.

This was followed by a dinner, and JJ got a chance to give some remarks about Mark and his new company to the group.

 

- John E. Johnson, Jr. -

 

© Copyright 2004 Secrets of Home Theater & High Fidelity

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