Padood, Nintronics, NAGRA & The CES!

As a 16-times over 26 years CES-served old hack, I have no idea how the resident population handles living in Lala land in Las Vegas. Because so many people that I know agree with me that they have a love/hate relationship with the town. Unlike employees, tourists and conventioneers alike tend to burn the candle at both ends when they visit, before cutting said candle in half to make two new ends and setting fire to them as well. It burns your brain. And in my case, the epic time difference from the UK messes with my brain chemistry as well. Go Google Melatonin. I have still been a couple of times just for fun, mind, but I’m still glad to come home each time.

I do suffer from FOMO when I do not go to CES, As it is a simple fact that if you do go, you are part of the elite. Certainly from Blighty. If you do not go you are behind your colleagues. I am privileged to be on the seemingly permanent top end press list with the CTA, who organise the show, with a recurring invitation to their ‘Emerald’ press room. This is the much much smaller room, central to the entire show in the Las Vegas Convention Centre, rather than the massive one with hundreds of people fighting for space, a quarter mile walk away. The CES press room was always my top end journalistic experience though. What a buzz!

And NAGRA, SME and YG Acoustics are to do a little bit of CES-ness for the FOMOs, with their products, courtesy of their UK star distributors, Padood. And I have been sent an invitation to go experience them a lot closer to home, with no time zone difference at one of their top dealers, Nintronics.

NAGRA are the literal legends of broadcast audio recording since Tony Blackburn was a boy and have a Digital to Analogue Converter that is new, just CES-launched. SME are likewise Neo-Deities of the Analogue with history as long and illustrious in their field. YG Acoustics make high end loudspeakers. They offer a dual 21 inch subwoofer, with six kilowatts of its own power. I have seen the scale of this product and seriously misdoubt the UK consumer market will support it being imported just as ‘stock’. But I want to be wrong so badly, I can taste it. Killer headroom for cathedral bass.

Their dual cones are CNC machined from 66lb of aircraft grade aluminium billet each, as were the stonkmonsterously good cones of the Eclipse subs made by Fujitsu Ten years ago for high end use in cars. The basket is also assembled from CNC created parts. But the truly awesome thing, (UK-meaning, actual awe) is that the enclosures are also carved from a lump. Just limitless levels of engineering. I am keen to hear their speakers, I suspect them of being a bit posh.

So, I have a fun week to look forward to! Watch this space for more, with video, too….