CES has kicked off in Las Vegas and we're covering the show this year to bring an ID perspective to the usual fan boy tech banter. One project we have been tracking to its debut at CES this week is Definitive Technology's Sound Cylinder. You may not have heard of Definitive, but these guys have been making audiophile gear since 1990, including the recently released SoloCinema XTR, a killer sound bar for your living room housed in an aluminum extrusion. Building off the learnings of the SoloCinema, Definitive brings us the Sound Cylinder, a sound bar designed for your iPad and Macbook. The Cylinder has a perffed aluminum housing with an injection magnesium kickstand and grip mechanism.

Side-firing driver on the Definitive Cylinder handles the bass

As nice as the minimal aesthetic is to look at, where this thing really shines is when you crank it up. We had an opportunity to test run a prototype here at the office in December and were pretty impressed. There are no shortage of bluetooth speakers out there, but most of them don't play very loud, or the low end frequency starts to drop out when the volume is pushed. The Cylinder has two forward firing 32mm drivers that give great reproduction of the mid and high range, and a 43mm side firing driver that handles all the low end frequency. What that means is you get crazy bass from a small package even when you are 20 yards away. Playing video games and watching Mad Men on our iPad just got way more interesting. The digital signal processing on this thing is intense. The same engineers that design the acoustics on Definitives $6,000 systems developed the Cylinder and it shows. 20+ years of audio engineering definitely pays off.

Bluetooth means you can easily connect it to just about any laptop, tablet, or phone, and there is a 3.5mm aux in just in case. The silicone blades open wide enough to grab an iPad even with a case on it, and grip it snugly enough that we couldn't easily shake an iPad out. The front blade has a little jog to dodge the camera on the top of for laptop or tablet which we thought was a nice detail. The pop out kickstand is great when you want to watch a full length movie, or stream some audio. The Cylinder is $199 and will be available next month. Check it out in person at the iLounge at CES and be sure to follow Rain Noe's live posts from the show this week!