Home Theater Geeks 467 Transcript

Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.
 

00:00 - Scott Wilkinso (Host)
In this episode of Home Theater Geeks, I conclude my conversation with Mike Heiss, who just got back from CES 2025. Today it's all about audio, so stay tuned.

00:15 - Leo Laporte (Announcement)
Podcasts you love.

00:17 - Mike Heiss (Guest)
From people you trust.

00:19 - Leo Laporte (Announcement)
This is TWit.

00:31 - Scott Wilkinso (Host)
Hey there, scott Wilkinson. Here, the home theater geek. In this episode I conclude my conversation with Mike Heiss, industry journalist and consultant, who just got back from CES 2025. Today we're going to talk about audio.

00:50 - Mike Heiss (Guest)
Hey, mike, welcome back to the show. Hey there, scott, glad to be here. And you didn't say I'm a Cedia Fellow, which means I'm jolly good.

00:57 - Scott Wilkinso (Host)
Well, I didn't say that and I should. You're right, he's a jolly good Cedia Fellow, and when we talk about the Cedia show, I certainly make a big point of that. No, I know this was CES, so I thought, ah, what the heck? Yeah, anyway. So we're going to talk about some audio announcements. Ces is more about video, I think, and certainly has gotten so in the last few years. There used to be a pretty big audio presence, especially at the Venetian Hotel, or Venetian as you call it, and that has decreased over the years to the point where a lot of audio journalists I know just don't even go anymore.

01:40 - Mike Heiss (Guest)
And again, because of the fires, I had to leave the show a day earlier and Friday was going to be my Venusian day. There were some audio people there, but nowhere is near to the extent they were. They either go to Cedia Expo or they go to the regional exponents.

02:00 - Scott Wilkinso (Host)
The audio shows more regional. Yeah, exactly.

02:04 - Mike Heiss (Guest)
And there isn't that much news.

02:06 - Scott Wilkinso (Host)
Right, but there is a little, so let's talk about it. The Hisense had a few interesting things. Most important, I think, was what they called their HT Saturn, which is a multi-speaker system and it integrates with the Hisense TVs and here you can see it deployed in a nice environment. The center channel is, I believe, being supported by the TV itself and then you have right and left front speakers, you have a little subwoofer off to the side and you have right and left surrounds and they were making something of that. The sub and the surround speakers are wireless and, as I said, the TV is serving as the center channel. So that was kind of interesting.

02:59
They also had something called the HWQ990F, which is a soundbar, sub and surround speakers with upfiring drivers. It is supposed to create an audio surround immersive sound field of 11.1.4. They're a little hard to see these little satellite speakers to the right and left in the foreground and the soundbar itself is doing the front, left, right and center and probably some wide simulation and some overhead simulation which you know. That's kind of interesting. They also had an HWQS700F, which is just the soundbar and subwoofer.

03:48 - Mike Heiss (Guest)
Can I say that that room's going to need some acoustic treatment.

03:54 - Scott Wilkinso (Host)
Why yes, it will.

03:56 - Mike Heiss (Guest)
That room's going to need some acoustic treatment and, with all due respect to our pals at Hisense, that looks like that's a tall room. I'd be putting bigger speakers in that room.

04:09 - Scott Wilkinso (Host)
I would too. I would too, no doubt about it. Oh, I take that back. That's not Hisense, that's Samsung. Well, same diff.

04:22 - Mike Heiss (Guest)
Same comment.

04:23 - Scott Wilkinso (Host)
Same comment. Yeah, exactly that was the Samsung HWQ990F and HWQS700F we were talking about, and you're right that HWQ990F, in that concrete room, needs to be bigger speakers and there needs to be some serious acoustic treatment.

04:49 - Mike Heiss (Guest)
Well, and the hardwood floor and the clear story and the teeny tiny speakers. But you know, god bless, I'll bet that guy in the chair is going to get a really weird sound field Very weird Yep chair is going to get a really weird sound field.

05:03 - Scott Wilkinso (Host)
Very weird. Yep, now, samsung had a sound bar that you did get a little sense of. Anyway, you actually got a picture of its.

05:14 - Mike Heiss (Guest)
I heard it. This was in the secret. Oh, you actually heard it, okay.

05:17 - Scott Wilkinso (Host)
This was in the secret room. This was in the secret room. Tell us about this.

05:21 - Mike Heiss (Guest)
So the deal is they say that, uh, samsung secret room.

05:28 - Scott Wilkinso (Host)
They say they do every year, they do a secret room that they invite journalists to and me too well, you're a journalist yeah, I guess so.

05:37 - Mike Heiss (Guest)
Okay. So they said that 46 of tvs are wall, but only 12% of those have a soundbar.

05:47
So the deal is that they are concerned that the sound will be different whether it's mounted on the wall or mounted flat on the credenza in front of the tv whatever it is so as uh, as it says in this image, it has a gyro sensor that shows where the, how the speaker, is mounted, and it, you know, helps when you flip the. If you sit it down, it knows where the speakers should be, or where the little center channel pops up yeah and you know it's an interesting, it's an interesting idea and I did ask who developed this. And again, this is, you know, part of my past life, the when they talk about the samsung of then, not ventura somewhere up in Ventura County.

06:46 - Scott Wilkinso (Host)
Oh yeah, the audio lab, the.

06:47 - Mike Heiss (Guest)
Valencia Audio Lab is run by a fellow by the name of Alan Devontae who used to work at Harman, which is how I know him, and he's one, if you will, of the Floyd Tool Canadian Mafia, as is Dr Olive and a bunch of people, and they're all very, very good. And years ago, before Samsung bought Harman, Samsung stole Allen and a bunch of his buddies and they're the Valencia Sound Labs. So if you say, yeah, Samsung, what do they know about audio? The guys who developed this, they know audio know a lot.

07:25 - Scott Wilkinso (Host)
Yeah, yeah, also from samsung. That I thought was interesting, and probably coming out of that same lab, is something they call eclipsa, which is a 3d immersive audio technology developed, they say, in in partnership with google and integrated into its 25 2025 tvs and soundbars.

07:48 - Mike Heiss (Guest)
Um did you hear.

07:49 - Scott Wilkinso (Host)
Did you hear anything about that?

07:51 - Mike Heiss (Guest)
I saw it but I wasn't able to.

07:53
That was in their first look in their not so secret secret display right before the show the day before the show they have a thing called first look, where they took over a huge ballroom at caesar's, yeah, and if you have, uh, what is it? Eclipsa? If you have eclipsa for more than four hours, call your audiologist. No, audiologist, anybody, no, uh, yeah, but um, you know it's marketing and you know it's. That is their attempt at the age-old problem of small speakers in TVs. And again, it's like everything else If it works for you, it works for you. It may or may not work for folks here.

08:35 - Scott Wilkinso (Host)
I would love to hear it myself. It appears to be an encoding technology.

08:40 - Mike Heiss (Guest)
It is a somewhat parallel competitor to because we don't need any more Atmos DTS-X 360 Reality. It's in that vein. I don't think that they're going to get much in the way of Hollywood, because really what Hollywood needs now is another encoding technology.

09:08 - Scott Wilkinso (Host)
Well here, I saw this in a press release and I thought it was really interesting. I think you did not get a chance to see it or hear it. It is a simulation technology that does not require any encoding, called Deep Stereo, from a company, a French company, called Leson, which is a spinoff of a company called Music Unit, and it is said to convert any mono or stereo signal into immersive audio playable on any headphones or speaker setup.

09:46 - Mike Heiss (Guest)
Has anybody told him about the Dolby headphone or DTS X virtual?

09:52 - Scott Wilkinso (Host)
Yes, I don't know. No, no, no I'm being a little, it's in the same vein.

09:58 - Mike Heiss (Guest)
That's the point. It is in the same vein of that, and you know there are two parts to that. Is it going to get enough market traction? Does the market want it? You're a headphone guy. Do you want virtualization in your headphones?

10:15 - Scott Wilkinso (Host)
If it works well.

10:16 - Mike Heiss (Guest)
yes, I do oh okay, because I was going to guess, not because you're a pure music guy.

10:21 - Scott Wilkinso (Host)
I'm a purist, that's true. However, I also really enjoy immersive music, and if it's done well, I really like it. Now I'm curious to know if this technology will accept into it an immersively mixed soundtrack, not just mono or stereo, but an Dolby Atmos soundtrack.

10:50 - Mike Heiss (Guest)
If you play an Atmos soundtrack whether it's music or movie content and then you play it into these headphones, what are they going to sound like?

11:00 - Scott Wilkinso (Host)
What are they going to sound like? This is what I want to know.

11:02 - Mike Heiss (Guest)
Under this green piece of felt behind me that's hiding all the garbage in my a pair of Razer headphones gaming headphones that are supposed to be able to do that, but last time I looked I only have two ears. I don't have 7.1 ears?

11:20 - Scott Wilkinso (Host)
Well, no, of course. But the argument there is you only have two ears, but you hear sounds coming from all different directions.

11:29 - Mike Heiss (Guest)
No, I know that. But you know binaural sound, or listen to Coast to Coast AM and maybe the aliens have.

11:36 - Scott Wilkinso (Host)
Well, maybe, yeah, exactly. Anyway, I just wanted to point it out and mention it and I sent them an email. Actually I said tell me more, and I haven't heard back yet.

11:46 - Mike Heiss (Guest)
But we will get to you when we are ready.

11:48 - Scott Wilkinso (Host)
Yes, and it could be that they took a vacation after CES, and who could blame them? Yeah, okay, so you probably didn't see the Onkyo. I saw the press release for two items. One is the Creator Series powered speakers.

12:07 - Mike Heiss (Guest)
I did see them. I did see them, but I saw them. They were not active. They were in the middle of of. They were just when you come down the ramp, when you go into the central hall. They were in a huge open booth. So they didn't have them on, and it's probably a good thing, because you wouldn't have been able you wouldn't have been able to judge anything anyway but they look, they look nice oh, I from the specs.

12:32 - Scott Wilkinso (Host)
They really look very good. The GX10B has a three-inch woofer and a three-quarters-inch tweeter. 17 watts per channel. They're powered speakers.

12:44 - Mike Heiss (Guest)
And you know, there was a day, when I was working for a famous audio company, when all that they were talking about were desktop computer speakers.

12:54 - Scott Wilkinso (Host)
Which is what these are except these are actually.

12:58 - Mike Heiss (Guest)
You don't get those kinds of things anymore because people don't use desktops for the most part well, it's true, except for me, but no but these are probably. I would consider buying these yeah because the comparison to that is when I, when I, did work at harman, they had the jbl um gla. Remember those ones that were loose site and they looked like a yes, yes, yes, and they really sounded great, but they were a thousand dollars yeah if these are 299 if I were doing a desktop thing, I'd consider buying these.

13:34 - Scott Wilkinso (Host)
Exactly. The GX10B is $200 a pair, the larger GX30ARC is $300 a pair. Those are bi-amped.

13:50 - Mike Heiss (Guest)
They both have a bunch of input modalities and the larger ones also will even do hdmi arc audio return channel as do most of the little streamer boxes that are out there now and that is a big trend that I saw down in the, the basement of the south hall, where they had all the streamers, or in the other end, the um svs sound base, which is a play fight uh technology with an amp. It's like a modern day receiver, uh stereo receiver without a tuner, instead of a tuner that has a streamer. So this is a growing thing and e-arc is a big e-arc, or e-arc is is a big part of that.

14:34 - Scott Wilkinso (Host)
Big part of that. Okay, cool. The other thing that Ankiya was showing was called the Icon Series. These are two-channel hi-fi components and these are like separate components, which is kind of interesting. The P80 is a two-channel network preamp with Dirac live room correction, which is pretty good HDMI, arc, wi-fi, airplay 2, chromecast, bluetooth, rune, so it'll stream a bunch of stuff. Separate phono stage.

15:11 - Mike Heiss (Guest)
Is that that big round black things?

15:13 - Scott Wilkinso (Host)
Yeah, those are called knobs.

15:15 - Mike Heiss (Guest)
No, no, no, I'm talking about the phono things.

15:19 - Scott Wilkinso (Host)
Oh yes, the really big black round things are called phonograph records. They're made out of vinyl. Oh, I remember those. Yeah, those of us who are old enough might remember. In fact, youngsters are now getting back into vinyl, as you know.

15:39 - Mike Heiss (Guest)
Vinyl is the new streaming.

15:40 - Scott Wilkinso (Host)
It's the new streaming. That's right. This thing has a built-in Spotify title Qobuz Amazon Music TuneIn. It's $2,000.

15:52 - Mike Heiss (Guest)
Oh, but it's got a cute front panel with the faux LEDs.

15:55 - Scott Wilkinso (Host)
Yeah, true enough.

15:56 - Mike Heiss (Guest)
Faux, VU meters I mean.

15:59 - Scott Wilkinso (Host)
Combined with that is the M80 two-channel power amp, 200 watts per channel into 4 ohms or 150 into 8 ohms. It's a symmetrical class AB amp.

16:15
It's not even a class D amp which is rare in this kind of product, rare in this kind of product, same high-end build quality, another $2,000. And then, finally, they showed the A50 integrated amp 180 watts per channel into 4 ohms, 140 into eight ohms. Same capabilities really as the, as the p80, but it has a preamp and a power amp built in 1499, 1500 bucks I wish them luck with this, because there still is a market for two channel products.

16:47 - Mike Heiss (Guest)
Yeah, and it'll be. It will be good to see them, uh, succeed with this. I mean, there was some technique stuff in the Panasonic booth given that Panasonic is, you know, reentering all parts of the consumer market. Yeah, so you know, they have been and are to some extent a competitor to some things that I do. But I wish them a lot of luck because if they have luck with this, then it's good for the market, it's good for you, it's with this, then it's good for the market, it's good for you, it's good for me, it's good for the consumer.

17:17 - Scott Wilkinso (Host)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

17:18 - Mike Heiss (Guest)
I mean, if you make that music, somebody's got to listen to it, that's right.

17:22 - Scott Wilkinso (Host)
And hopefully they'll listen to on some equipment that makes it sound good.

17:25 - Mike Heiss (Guest)
Well, one would hope maybe this stuff, or if they can't hear it, then they go to that next thing we want to talk about. Right, exactly.

17:33 - Scott Wilkinso (Host)
Which is hearing aids. Now, this is not exactly. I mean sure it would apply to home theater geeks who have hearing loss, and this year or last year, I think some government agency said, you can sell hearing aids over the counter, you don't have to go to an audiologist. And so there's a slew of them, and there were a bunch at CES, right.

18:00 - Mike Heiss (Guest)
There were a bunch, a bunch of them and to some extent it's good for the consumer. But to some extent, okay, fine, I know that if I go to a hearing specialist and get tested and fitted if the person is good, the odds are that I'm going to get, you know, a decent pair of hearing aids. I may pay for it, but I know they're going to be good because they'll be done by a licensed professional.

18:27 - Scott Wilkinso (Host)
Yeah, exactly.

18:28 - Mike Heiss (Guest)
As you know personally, it's a real thing. Then there is OTC that says, well, we'll do it on a line, okay, fine, and there's a market for that because that stuff is cheaper. But then the thing that I'm concerned about is Joe Namath selling headphone, otc hearing aids for $99 on late night TV.

18:51
God bless, joe Namath, but I ain't buying a $99. Fortunately I can afford something more than that, but you wonder if that's really an improvement in it. If you read the disclaimers, they're very specific because they have to be about the level of improvement. But what I saw at CES the brand that you want to mention is one of them is this mid-range sort of $299, $399, $499 OTC hearing aids and they're pretty good and in fact they're going to send me some and I'll see if they make a difference.

19:31 - Scott Wilkinso (Host)
I really look forward to hearing your report. This is a company called Elehear E-L-E-H-E-A-R and they have had an OTC hearing aid called Beyond and this at CES, they introduced Beyond Pro.

19:46 - Mike Heiss (Guest)
And I. Obviously they didn't let me try them on, or actually they wanted me to, but I didn't want to do it.

19:53
I don't try on hearing aids no, no, no you don't know who had them last exactly, but in terms of form factor they're a little bit better than the recons or Philips that you would see from a hearing specialist or a Costco, where they are specialists also. It's a little bigger, but not much. But if you're on a budget and people are these days if those are $399 and they're pretty good, that makes a difference in your life, I'm all for it and these. The real reason whether I have any hearing issues or not is these have built in a oh ai trick.

20:38 - Scott Wilkinso (Host)
come on, keith ai translation yeah, right, ai real-time language translation. So and and I he's talking to you in Swahili.

20:53 - Mike Heiss (Guest)
Well, no, no, no, no, no. In fairness to one of the discussions we had in part two, this is on device, so there's a limit to the number. Is just like with your phone and you want to do Google Translate or Microsoft Translate, whatever it is. There's a limit to how much they can store on device.

21:09 - Scott Wilkinso (Host)
That's true.

21:10 - Mike Heiss (Guest)
But I've become addicted to Korean K-dramas.

21:14 - Scott Wilkinso (Host)
No kidding, and I love them.

21:17 - Mike Heiss (Guest)
They're like Spanish novellas or good old-fashioned soap operas, but they're in Korean and it's an acquired taste. But I love them and you read the subtitles. So I want to get one of these to test out the AI translation to the subtitles, because that's how a lot of the subtitles are being generated by AI. Or when I'm in a meeting with one of my Chinese vendors for my other businesses and they start saying, excuse me, we need to talk to each other. I want to be able to know what they're really saying. And for those of you who are students of history, Chou En-wai, who is Mao's second in command in Red China, spoke perfect English. Mao's second in command in Red China spoke perfect English and when Nixon went over, he waited for the translator because he was using that time, because he knew what was going on. So if I have hearing aids to do live translation, I don't have to wait until the other person tells me what's going on. So I'm all in for these, hearing or not.

22:29 - Scott Wilkinso (Host)
Yeah, I would love that too. The other really cool things that these particular hearing aids, or what are called hearing wearables, do is they offer what are called tinnitus, masking sounds. So if you have tinnitus, it's ringing in the ears and you can ameliorate the effect to some degree by playing masking sounds, noises of one sort or another, and these hearing wearables will do it.

23:04 - Mike Heiss (Guest)
It's like an ANC kind of thing.

23:07 - Scott Wilkinso (Host)
Yes, and they also do noise cancellation I would ask your your better half.

23:12 - Mike Heiss (Guest)
I believe that there is no cure for tintinitis is that I know this for a fact right, well, you know, you ask the man who, who knows, somebody who knows?

23:21 - Scott Wilkinso (Host)
yeah, exactly right, I know, I know for a fact because I in fact suffer from tinnitus.

23:26 - Mike Heiss (Guest)
Wow, it was all those it was all those loud rock bands in college and hanging around with all them damn tubas well, that too, uh.

23:34 - Scott Wilkinso (Host)
So I I do suffer from it and I have asked ent's and all sorts of audiologists is there any cure for it? No, there is. There is not. There's only retraining and sort of adaptive technologies like masking sounds. Wow.

23:55 - Mike Heiss (Guest)
Well, I spoke to those people and they were very good and I think that it would be interesting especially if you mention connection to a hearing professional that I bet you that they would that they might send you a review sample and I'll be really curious to hear what you and your expert have to say.

24:17 - Scott Wilkinso (Host)
Yes, well, I intend to ask them Absolutely, absolutely. Well, this has been a short, you know, episode compared to the others with audio. Uh, with video we only had a little bit of audio to talk about, but, you know, still interesting stuff.

24:36 - Mike Heiss (Guest)
Yeah, I mean it was I usually at this show I'd always say here was the doofy gadget that I saw. And I didn't get to see any of the doofy gadgets, with the exception of the spoon that makes your soup taste saltier without putting salt in it.

24:59 - Scott Wilkinso (Host)
Yes, it has some sort of electric current in it that makes your food taste saltier.

25:07 - Mike Heiss (Guest)
I don't get it. I mean, I bet my cardiologist would want me to get one of those. You know none of that Morton imitation soup, right, right. But yeah, I should have asked for a review sample of that one. Yeah, no kidding, what else did they have of any? You know the, I think, the crazy gadget stuff. There wasn't as much really silly, wacky, crazy gadget stuff this year because everybody was into ai, ai and and some of the applications like these hearing aids we just spoke about. I mean, there's clearly some ai going on in there.

25:50 - Scott Wilkinso (Host)
No question.

25:51 - Mike Heiss (Guest)
Particularly for the tendonitis stuff but, also for For the translation. For translation and for clarity and ANC. So I mean, I make fun of it because that's what I do, but there is some value to it, even when it's applied to goofy stuff, right right.

26:13 - Scott Wilkinso (Host)
So while it may make you puke to hear the term, it's with us. It's with us to stay.

26:19 - Mike Heiss (Guest)
And it ain't going away.

26:20 - Scott Wilkinso (Host)
It ain't going away and there is some good that can come of it.

26:27 - Mike Heiss (Guest)
Oh, to be sure. And you know not to get serious, you know, heaven forbid that I would do that. You know, but where this is going to lead, you know, is it going to be nobody. You know you can't underestimate the Borg. I don't know, I'm just an analog soul in a digital world. And for one of the chat people, I got this at NAB.

26:53 - Scott Wilkinso (Host)
National Association of Broadcasters the show-.

26:56 - Mike Heiss (Guest)
Which is a world where AI is really both puzzling and something that's great and helps and something that they're scared out of their brains about.

27:11 - Scott Wilkinso (Host)
Well, it'll sure be an interesting year to see what happens.

27:14 - Mike Heiss (Guest)
Yep, yep, but you know, an interesting, you know, fire is notwithstanding, an interesting way to start the year Yep, and hopefully it'll be a good one.

27:24 - Scott Wilkinso (Host)
Hopefully so, and may you stay safe.

27:27 - Mike Heiss (Guest)
Thank you and all of us, and all. Thank you and all of us.

27:30 - Scott Wilkinso (Host)
And all of us, everyone in LA, our hearts are really out to you and really hoping that you can stay safe and, if you had a problem, that you can recover well, to be sure. Yeah, so, mike, where can folks find your stuff?

27:47 - Mike Heiss (Guest)
Okay, so you can find me in Residential Tech Today RezTechTodaycom, or Hidden Wires wwwhiddenwires. One word, couk. Both available in print and online. Perish the thought.

28:04 - Scott Wilkinso (Host)
Perish the thought you can actually get it.

28:05 - Mike Heiss (Guest)
That paper stuff. What's that paper? Yeah?

28:08 - Scott Wilkinso (Host)
really.

28:13 - Mike Heiss (Guest)
Is that related to that vinyl thing I'm going?

28:23 - Scott Wilkinso (Host)
to listen to something on my turntable in my stereo receiver while I'm reading a print magazine.

28:27 - Mike Heiss (Guest)
You're just an analog soul in a digital world. My friend.

28:28 - Scott Wilkinso (Host)
Yeah, I guess so Well. Thanks so much for being here. I really appreciate all the time you've spent with us. It's always a hoot to have you on and I look forward to the next time.

28:37 - Mike Heiss (Guest)
Thanks, I do too. Thank you very much, all right.

28:41 - Scott Wilkinso (Host)
So that's it for our CES coverage. Hope you enjoyed it. If you have a question for me, please send it along to htg at twittv and I will answer as many of those questions as I can right here on the show. And, as always, we thank you for your support of the Twit Network. With your membership in Club Twit, let you come into the Discord channel and chat up with other like-minded geeks. Until next time, geek out.

29:15 - Leo Laporte (Announcement)
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