When Nancy Burlan and I headed to this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, it was with a mix of curiosity, and confusion. Ostensibly, our primary interests were in audio, digital imaging, and general technology. What makes CES so interesting is that every square foot offers something different. For example, at the press events we typically attend, there might be an Onkyo A/V receiver in one booth, next to a gardening robot in another, with a display of Bluetooth headphones and imaging-based electronic telescopes for deep sky observing nearby.
This is why it’s so much fun, as well as diverse, exhausting, and exciting. Last year our illustrious editor Frank Doris and I tossed around possible titles for our article on CES 2024 (Issue 207), and he wondered was it would be the last-ever CES in terms of audio coverage. He was right of course. Well, not entirely. There was audio, high-end audio, just not in the usual places. And there was the Sphere, which I’ll discuss later.
Heading through the desert, the light was gorgeous, the traffic was light, and we arrived just in time for the start of CES Unveiled. That event is sort of strange, with a large mix of European companies, whom while interesting, are almost useless in terms of my obtaining products for review, along with a variety of more mainstream companies and products. To exhibit, manufacturers generally have to enter their products for consideration, and most are supposed to be CES award winners. The event also tends to have great booze, and not-so-great food. We’ve ended up at In-N-Out Burger afterward.
All roads lead to CES. Here's the view from Highway 15 as the sun sets over the desert.
A sign you’ve arrived at CES Unveiled: encountering their signature cocktail.
The popular Birdfy folks were there with webcam-equipped bird houses, Vinxper had a unique vibrating spigot designed to optimally aerate wine and alcohol, Serafim showed a cool new gaming controller, the Serafim S3 controller for your Android phone, along with a dedicated set of headphones, the Serafim A1, whose claim to fame is multi-platform virtual 3D surround sound and the ability to work with a wide variety of gaming platforms. Several companies showed robotic pool cleaners, which we have been testing at Mac Edition Radio. Yarbo had a powerful home yard-work system, including a remote-control snowblower, mower, and more.
Want to get up close and personal with the birds in your yard, but don’t want to actually get up close and personal with them? Here's Birdfy to the rescue with their line of WiFi and camera-equipped bird feeders.
Here are Sharon Wuoo and David Wang of Vinxper, whose product vibrates wine and spirits to simulate decanting time for better-tasting libations.
Guo Zen Chen and his colleague from Serafim are holding the Serafim S3 Android Gaming Console. They also introduced a nifty new multi-platform gaming headphone.
Here's Harris with David Wang of Vinxper.
Beatbot showed a unique design for pool cleaners, one of several shown at the show. Here are York Guo, Olive Ou, a staff member, and Maelle Lhoste.
Many Mac users know of products from MacPaw, especially since so many audiophiles rely on the Mac platform. The author uses their Unarchiver platform to unzip high-resolution audio files. Garett Krivicich, Jennifer Kochanski, Marlies Doppelhammer and Ethan Wayne help keep Mac people happy.
From our friends in Canada, a small company, the Olight Group, showed their Ostation X smart battery charger, a product category that is obviously growing. As you might imagine, AI is impacting and making huge improvements in all sorts of tech, even where you don’t expect it. But in terms of serious audio, it was slim pickings. There were of course, lots of fashion-oriented Bluetooth headphones, most of which sported the latest chipsets for full compatibility with the newest Bluetooth protocols.
The next day we attended a press conference for Shokz, a company that helped pioneer bone conduction headphones, which allow you to hear ambient sounds. Along the same lines, Cleer was showing its excellent ARC 3 open-air headphones in a Venetian hotel suite which also allow ambient sounds in, and include Dolby Atmos virtual surround technology along with a slew of other features.
We have been putting the robotic pool cleaners from Aiper through their paces, freeing up time for us to listen to music on Qobuz. Nick Phillips, Jill Wang, Sara Osborne, and Jame Edwards are all smiles!
Yarbo introduced a line of robotic lawn and home accessories including remote controlled snowblowers, mowers, vacuums, and more, all represented by Kathy Xuemei Zhang.
From the rugged lands of Canada come the award winning Drop, Charge, and Go chargers from Olight.com, here with Sam Foster, Shangyu Zhao, Huimin Zeng, and Fen Li holding the Ostation X 3-in-1 automatic rechargeable AA battery charger. You load it up with AA batteries, walk away, and it recharges them one at a time. Cool.
Some of the most useful advancements from AI are automatic translators. TimeKettle is a major player in the field. You place an earphone in your ear and they can translate to the language of your choice. Brian Shirfliffe, Jocelyn Jiao, and Simon Ding were there after hours. How do you translate “It’s been a very long day?”
Speaking of relaxing, John Mulhern III (Mac Edition Radio) and Dr. Thomas Coughlin hang out in the CES Media Center at the LVCC. Coughlin founded the respected Storage Visions conference, and now is the president of the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers), the standards organization we all bow down to!
We attended a very informative press conference led by Shokz founder Qian Chen introducing their new OpenFit 2 open-air true wireless earbuds. For many active sports users, open-air designs that don’t block ambient sounds are a good choice for safety reasons.
At the next night’s Digital Experience! Event run by Pepcom, there were lots more products to consider, from a fun, if not a bit gross, ear cleaner with a tiny camera from Bebird, all the better to hear those fancy cables you purchased, to a great multiple-USB charger from Plugable. Nancy may or may not have met Snoop Dogg (we’re not sure if that was actually him, but there’s no proof it wasn’t), There were more lifestyle audio products at Digital Experience!, with portable charger company Anker showing their growing line of audio gear along with others, but for serious audio, it was once again pretty sparse. (Last year, Meze Audio was there, for example.)
Want to make sure you can hear those audiophile speakers? Try the BeBird system for examining your ear canals with impossibly tiny video cameras and tools to clean your ears. Here they met the press at the Pepcom Digital Experience!
For some of us, there are never enough USB chargers at hand. Has Plugable got a product for you! One of its most useful features is a digital gauge to keep track of how much current your devices are pulling.
Darryl Miya and Chris McCloud of Scosche were at the show with a full range of battery-centric, lifestyle, automotive and other products.
Proof that as much as the press likes to prove that they are working, they usually manage to have a good time. Here Brian Mitchell, Robert Silva, and Chris Boylan of eCoustics are joined by Garrison Krotz of Shure.
Nancy Burlan (Mac Edition Radio) met Snoop Dogg, or maybe not Snoop Dogg! He was a beacon of mellowness, so there’s that.
With many audiophiles depending on Wi-Fi, of interest was the Orbi line from Netgear offering a very fast Wi-Fi 7 connection for smooth data transfer. Here Ravindra Bhilave, Christina Metza, Maggie Zaboura, and Valerie Motis celebrate the end of the Pepcom show.
The next day began with a visit with two audio industry PR legends, Roberta Lewis and Carol Campbell, in the Premium Audio Company suite at the Virgin Hotel, where we heard the new line of Onkyo components with Klipsch speakers. The demonstration sounded lovely, and the new components show a renewed interest and commitment by Onkyo to the serious audiophile market. We only had around 30 minutes, so we are looking forward to spending more time with these companies. It was also a reminder of just how good traditional Klipsch speaker designs are, especially in a two-channel system.
The amazing audio PR power duo of Roberta Lewis and Carol Campbell in the Virgin Hotel, where the Premium Audio Company (Onkyo and Klipsch), was located.
Here are the new Onkyo Icon P-80 preamplifier and M-80 amplifier.
I’m working on a review of the new Onkyo TX RZ-30 9.2-channel A/V receiver, which was designed in part with matching Klipsch speakers. This compatibility is included in the audio setup menu for the AVR. The menu on the RX-30 gives you the option of selecting Klipsch or “Other” speakers. It’s an interesting idea, to see an audio profile tailored for a specific speaker designed into an audio component. I suspect that once the new Onkyo Icon Series P-80 Network Preamplifier ($1,999) and M-80 2-channel power amplifier ($1,999) start arriving in the fourth quarter of 2025, the reviews will come flooding in. The P-80 is loaded with features like Dirac Live Room Correction, numerous streaming options, a phono stage and more.
Another key thing about seeing Carol Campbell is that normally, the first floor of the Virgin Hotel has been filled with an enormous Harman/JBL/Samsung display area, as mentioned in previous CES articles. This time, nada, and no legendary Harman concert at the hotel’s concert venue, though Samsung did exhibit at the Convention Center. and there was a large private booth for the Harman automotive group there. I’m not sure what this means for the industry, and we certainly missed the big displays and the concert. At least we were able to meet up and say hi to Carol. She is a vitally important force in the industry, and created the Women in Consumer Technology conference amongst a long list of other accomplishments.
That night, most of the press headed over to the Sphere for the Delta Airlines keynote address. To be honest, some of us weren’t all that interested in the keynote; we were mostly interested in the Sphere itself, as it would be a first-time visit.
The outside of the Sphere is almost more extraordinary than the inside. Here are Delta's graphics in anticipation of their keynote.
I'm sorry to say this, but just about every aspect of the Delta production was a waste of one of the most incredibly technologically-rich concert venues on the planet. 90 percent of the production could have easily been a PowerPoint in a boardroom or school auditorium. The large 360-degree views of the jets were fun, and it was nice to have the seats vibrate, but the rest…I mean does anyone care that Tom Brady likes to hydrate? Delta really needs to rethink this if they plan to do it again. Please, please, please, watch Steve Jobs' past keynotes to see how it's done. It was commendable to see Delta acknowledge long-time employees, and I hate to sound like Debbie Downer, but really did feel like a waste of the venue.
They’d collected great data about various aspects of air travel… and that was it. The keynote speaker then left the stage. But I wanted them to show us some of that data and an analysis of it, expected or unexpected, from that information. In front of one of the largest gathering of geeks on the planet, show us your results. Maybe post your stats on lost and returned luggage? All we learned is that they used computers and collected data. The presentation mentioned that Delta began as a single crop dusting plane, and they showed an old photo of one, but why not create a virtual one to thunder over the crowd up close and personal? Use the Sphere, Luke! On top of that, I saw an entire row of women in front of us covering their ears from the overly-loud and distorted passages of the keynote, not from Lenny Kravitz’ concert as a comparison, but from the talking heads. One of the questionable ideas they showed was allowing a gambling app to be used on board. Jeez, just what we need, trapped for five hours with a loser who just blew a ton of money.
This 180-degree view shows the audience experience at the Delta keynote at the Sphere, here with a Delta jet filling the screen.
We enjoyed seeing the Sphere, but next time, make it a keynote where we are engaged, excited, and learn something. CES keynotes are almost often terrible, but not always, as Nvidia demonstrated this year, which from all reports was serious two-hour tech discussion of where that company and the industry is headed. My colleagues who attended said it wasn’t a sales pitch, but more of a status update on AI computing.
Oh, Delta if you are gonna invite an amazing actor like Viola Davis to your keynote, could you use them to your advantage, and possibly talk about aviation? Silly pop up appearances by celebs are one of the ongoing failures of CES keynotes. Fortunately, after the talking heads of the keynote address, Lenny Kravitz stepped up to do a lively, but short set. The graphics were great, and he played his heart out, but from audio standpoint, it seemed like we were hearing a standard stereo mix. I couldn’t really hear the vaunted audio capabilities of the venue. To be fair, one of our friends told me that it costs a fortune to create visuals and audio for the location, and that for a short corporate gig like this, there’s no time or budget to accomplish the kind of mixes and graphics for artists with a long residency like Dead & Company have. Still, we were glad to have attended.
Delta wrapping up their keynote presentation at the Sphere, here taking advantage of the extraordinary graphics of the venue.
Lenny Kravitz got the Sphere rocking, with beautiful graphics taking over the space.
There was a lesson to be learned that applies to audio shows: the best experiences are not always in the best-equipped rooms, but from those with a combination of great gear, a great choice of music, and flair. And it’s important to remember that visitors should leave the exhibit having learned something. I remember sitting with folks at the Capitol Audiofest, and other shows, and in certain rooms, there was an effort to educate people about products and how they can make a difference. It’s difficult, because those shows usually don’t have my favorite activity, namely product shootouts. Give us the opportunity to judge for ourselves the difference a component or technology make.
I really want to walk into a room at an audio show and hear for example, last year’s amp versus this year’s version, and try to discern the differences. Some exhibitors don’t want to diss a competitor, but hearing two different speakers with the same gear is really illustrative.
If CES keynotes are just glorified sales pitches, you could stay in bed at the hotel reading press releases or looking at webcasts, similar to our heroes Anne and Joe from Robert Altman’s 1994 film Prêt-à-Porter (released in the United States as Ready to Wear) about Paris fashion shows. In the movie, the two American journalists Anne and Joe end up just writing about the fashion shows by watching TV coverage while having a tryst. No need to bother showing up in person.
After Lenny’s set, we all headed over to the annual CES ShowStoppers press event, which had lots of fun gear on hand, including a cool powered exoskeleton, the Hypershell X that Nancy and I and tried on, feeling like a klutzy but powerful Tony Stark. It was really interesting to have that extra power on your limbs. I’m thinking that it might come in handy when trying to lift an Acora Acoustics speaker or two.
Nancy had her Tony Stark moment, wearing the Hypershell X powered exoskeleton. It provides an enormous boost to your physical power, making it perfect for heavy lifting, mountain climbing, or rearranging speakers. With her was Emmanuel Peype of Hypershell, who not only fitted it to me and Nancy, but adjusted the power levels, so as we strutted around ShowStoppers testing it we didn’t do any Iron Man-type damage.
Back to the LVCC the next day, Shokz was showing their OpenFit 2 bone conduction earphones, we met with JVC, who showed headphones with LCD panels on them for some reason, and then headed to speaker and subwoofer maker SVS. They were demonstrating a new subwoofer that was almost as large as the one Marty McFly plugged into at Doc. Brown’s house in Back to the Future. The SB17-Ultra R|Evolution was a beast; there are no other words to describe it. With a dual-mono subwoofer amplifier, Analog Devices 295 MHz DSP, dual voice coils, auto-EQ room correction, and a stated 2,800 watts RMS power output (6,000-plus watts peak) it may be able to weaken your home’s foundation. Don’t turn it up if there are low-flying airplanes around! SVS also offers the PB17-Ultra R|Evolution, a ported variation on the SB-17’s non-ported design at about $500 more.
Audio-Technica, usually one of the most reliable mainstays at CES, wasn’t there this year, which somehow feels important. Sennheiser was there, but only at the ShowStoppers press event, not on the main floor.
The most interesting product from Samsung was their new Samsung Art Store, which offers content from leading international museums such as the Museo Nacional Del Prado, Art Basel, MoMA, the Tate, and others. The content is designed for their new line of Frame Series line of flat screen 4K TVs, and the TVs look more like framed art than a digital video component. You can choose the basic design, and the look of the bezel, edges and other aspects in sizes ranging from 32 to 85-inches. These might be the ideal addition to a listening room. They aren’t outrageously priced either, starting at $599 for the 32-inch, to $2,999 for the 85-inch model. The new models might be a great fit for a listening room.
Leiyin Audio is a distributor of a multitude of Chinese brands, including1More, SMSL, xDuoo Technology, TRN, and Moondrop, among others. It’s important to note that they were in the Central Hall, an indication of their growing presence in the audio industry, and their booth was strictly a B-to-B booth, not a suite as in the past.
I don’t think I can overstate the importance of Leiyin Audio. They provide incredibly feature-rich and high-quality audiophile level design and components at intro-level pricing, to audiophiles around the globe. Chinese audio has made true audiophile-level sound available to a greater number of people.
Somehow we ended up at a swell Indiegogo party in the West Hall, where Brian Mulcahey of OZLO was showing off his new snore-and noise-blocking Sleepbuds. Featuring a soft, easy to wear design, we are looking forward to reviewing them. Five minutes later we bumped into Emiko Carlin, head of T.H.E. Show, which will host a new audio show, T.H.E. New York International Audio Show, in New Jersey on October 24 – 26 this year. With Emiko were Daryl Sanservo and Sophie Assencoa of T.H.E. Show.
The next day we headed over to the Venetian Towers and saw the Victrola team, now under new leadership. They showed new turntables and a smartly-designed powered speaker pair with USB-C, optical, and RCA analog inputs. We met with Joseph Jiang, the Co-founder and CEO at xMEMS, who as Copper readers may know from an article in Issue 206 on Sonic Edge specializes in ultra-small MEMS drivers for headphones and other applications. For an idea of how tiny these new transducers are, I’ve included a photo with various design samples. They promise improved sound quality, lower power consumption, and other advantages. We then met with the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS, who demonstrated their upHear Flexible Rendering system. This allows you to move surround speakers while the system tracks their new locations and adjust audio accordingly.
Joseph Jiang, the Co-founder and CEO at xMEMS, showed us the different technologies he helped pioneer.
Here are uFidelity Sycamore xMEMS drivers with an Apple iWatch next to them for scale.
Sebastian Meyer from Fraunhofer, who demonstrated their upHear Flexible Rendering system. This allows you to move surround speakers while the system tracks their new locations and adjusts audio accordingly. It was very impressive to witness how fluidly it worked. Home theater fans, this might be coming your way soon!
Scott Hagen, Jamie Dillion, and Terrence Groth are the new management team at Victrola, who are dedicated to upping their audio game.
Victrola showed an update to their Onyx turntable lineup, this one sporting an Audio-Technica cartridge.
Heading down to Eureka Park, an area full of startups and, small and large companies alike, all bristling with ideas, we had an unexpected meeting with a company we think most Copper readers will know. Yes, in the French Pavilion area, the VLC gang, whose product, VLC Media Player, has enabled millions of video lovers with an essential tool. Did I say millions? Oops, I meant an incredible six billion downloads! While we were there Microsoft came by to show their respect.
There were of course robotics galore, including a nifty pair of E-Skimo skis that power you up a hill, so you can save your energy for skiing down that same hill!
One of our favorite booths to visit each year is the popular U.S. Federal Government Pavilion, with representatives from the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Small Business Administration, and the Department of the Navy’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR), among other business related agencies. All of which are full of hard-working, dedicated, and talented folk assisting and answering technology-related business questions. Included in their exhibit was a display of counterfeit goods including memory cards, sporting goods, toys, and more. The exhibit featured a game where you had to try to choose which version was the real thing or the counterfeit.
Even with our eagle eyes, Nancy and I came up short over 50 percent of the time, which was shocking. I’ve included a photo of a bogus SanDisk memory card next to a real one as an illustration. Included in the game were two Bose SoundSport earphones, Crocs, basketballs, even Barbie toys and ChapStick lip balm. Spotting the real versus the fake was difficult in every case.
The United States Patent and Trademark booth featured a popular game which involved guessing the counterfeit product from the real one, here two Sandisk micro-SD cards compete, with the genuine one on the right.
Nancy with the folks from VLC. Here the honorable Navas Julien, and Mavin Scholz were celebrating a mind-boggling six billion downloads!
Everything that goes up must come down. The problem is getting up! These powered skis from E-Skimo are just the ticket to beat the high cost of lift tickets.
That night we made a return visit to Mike Tyson’s old mansion in Henderson, Nevada, where he had tigers for pets. It was the site of Startup Debut 2025, AI & Crypto edition, with a performance by Scott Page, the saxophonist from Pink Floyd, and his Dark Side of the Moon band. It’s a surreal mansion, with the tiger motif still very much in evidence, and a number of participating companies had set up small displays. It was wonderful to hear those iconic Pink Floyd sax solos in what had been Tyson’s living room. The event is sponsored each year by Michael Terpin, a respected author in the field of cryptocurrency.
Although we did see some high-end audio and a good deal of lifestyle audio, we encountered precious few audiophile-only rooms. What high-end audio we found was mostly centered around automotive applications in dream cars, or in headphones. We missed out (for the second year in a row) on McIntosh and Sonus faber, who hosted press appointments on Wednesday afternoon at the T-Mobile Arena. Copper readers might remember that during last year’s CES 2024, the McIntosh’s Villa of Sound demo at the Wynn Hotel featured a million-dollar system, so we were disappointed to miss them this year, but at least they had a presence at the show. There was more audio, to be sure, but covering the show is like mapping out a military campaign. CES is always fun, interesting, exhausting, a bit bewildering and impossible to cover completely, and we hope to see more serious audio next year.
The Startup Debut 2025, AI & Crypto edition featured a performance by Pink Floyd saxophonist Scott Page and his Dark Side of the Moon band.
Your author experienced a psychedelic Zen moment. It was during then when he came to understand the physics behind the phenomenon of directionality in cables.
Here's author Michael Terpin with Scott Page.
The red carpet for Copper journalists keeps getting shorter each year at Tiger Mansion.
Gary Yacoubian and Nick Brown of SVS were having a great time showing off their new subwoofers and other speakers.
Video art: the new Samsung Art Store, which offers content from leading international museums, designed for their new line of Frame Series line of flat screen 4K TVs.
Timothy Hsu of 1More works the Leiyin Audio booth in the Central Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center.
A wider look at the Leiyin Audio booth, where a variety of audio products were displayed.
CES hosts many parties and after-hours events. We chanced upon one from some of our favorite folks, Andy Striph, Luke Plozek and a colleague from crowdfunding website Indiegogo.
Brian Mulcahey of Ozlo shows off his new snore-and noise-blocking Ozlo Sleepbuds.
Emiko Carlin is head of T.H.E. Show, which will host a new audio show, T.H.E. New York International Audio Show, in New Jersey on October 24 – 26 this year. With Emiko was the show's Daryl Sanservo and Sophie Assencoa.
If you were curious about Qualcomm’s latest, all you had to do was visit their CES booth featuring their latest Snapdragon processor used in a number of new cell phones.
Header image: robots were a popular product category at CES 2025. Here's one from Enchanted Tools. Rumor has it that it will be meeting with Frank Doris about replacing the editor.
