Tom Norton

Yamaha's new Soavo speaker line currently has five models, the Soavo 1 floor stander and and Soavo 2 bookshelf, plus a center, surround, and subwoofer. the big Suovo 1 is priced at $1800 (each). They're classy-looking and appear to be very well built. A brief 2-channedl audition in a small demo room on the show floor (not the best listening conditions) revealed an extremely tight bass response, but a rather forward midrange and high frequency balance. Still, they are definitely worth a closer audition under better conditions.

Earthquake's premier subwoofer driver is said to have a peak-to-peak excursion capability of 4". Feel the Earth move.

In addition to their larger Signature V.2 speakers, Paradigm also showed a bookshelf 2-way, the Model S1 at $1600/pair, and this cute UTE center channel, the Model C1, at $900 each. It's not much wider than a big laptop. I'm intrigued by the possibility of using three C1s across the front, if the speaker's horizontal off-axis response is up to the job. The physical layout, with the vertical orientation of the midrange and tweeter (the smallest center channel design I've seen using this arrangement) is a good first step in that direction. As in the other new Signature speakers, these both sport the new Paradigm pure-beryllium tweeter.

Optoma took two of their pro projectors and electronically stitched together this widescreen image. The seam is barely visible here, but a bit more visible in the flesh. Engineers playing games. The image was much sharper than this available light image suggests.