CEDIA 2010

The custom speaker giant showed the FloBox and FloBox Mini personal music systems, which include iPod/iPhone/iPad docks, and a CD slot in the larger model. The Vital receiver line is being expanded to include the Vital 250 stereo integrated amp, also with iThing (our term) dock. We were also intrigued by Roots, the company's first box speakers, including three satellite models and two subs in five colors. The subs have boundary compensation, notch filters, and other useful adjustments. The company continues to be a major power in custom install speakers, including the BoomTomb, an outdoor subwoofer that can be buried, emitting bass through a port that communicates with ground level. All products ship by year-end. In his discussion of the economic climate, Jeremy Burkhardt said 15 percent of the company's dealers had gone out of business, but there was virtually no bad debt among the ones who remained. He urged the press to tell dealers that they need to transcend old ways of thinking if they want to survive even tougher times ahead.

I've seen plenty of integrated amps with iPod docks, but the Vital 250 from SpeakerCraft is the first I've seen with an iPad dock. It provides 50Wpc and a Cirrus Logic upconversion chip intended to improve the sound of compressed MP3 files for $700.

Stewart Filmscreen is well known in our industry as a pre-eminent provider of projection screens, but its name recognition does not extend as far into the design community and even less into the general public. So Stewart has teamed up with Swarovski, a world-renowned supplier of decorative glass crystal, to create the Couture Collection of fixed screen frames in which tiny Swarovski crystals are embedded.

Triad is an in-room/wall/ceiling speaker company that specializes in making solutions for problems that real people often run into when putting together anything other than the standard, run-of-the-mill home theater system. For example, the company’s in-room speakers are voiced to identically match the in-wall versions (both the 4-inch and 6-inch deep versions), which also happen to perfectly match the in-ceiling versions. That way you could, if you had to, use in-room speakers for the left and right with an in-wall center channel and a pair of in-ceiling rears – and all the speakers would respond as if you’d used the same model all the way around. At CEDIA, Triad was showing off a prototype of another solution, a subwoofer that can be hidden away with the bass output routed into the room via a large diameter tube that terminates in a standard wall vent cover. No pricing available yet.

Uncompressed wireless high-definition audio transmission along with a super-easy setup routine – and the ability to instantly realign the soundfield to accommodate changes in seating position are the hallmarks of Summit Wireless’ technology. After lots of development work, the technology is finally coming to a home theater near you. The first products to incorporate it will be the Aperion Audio Intimus 4T 5.1-channel ($2,499) and 7.1-channel ($2,999) systems. Pre-orders will be available beginning October 15th, with shipping beginning in December. Of all the wireless technology I’ve seen at the last couple of CEDIA and CES shindigs, Summit Wireless is the most exciting – and we can’t wait to get our hands on the first system to come from Aperion Audio. We’ll keep you posted…

No, it’s not made by Victorinox, it’s made by Cirago – but it has so many features it could well be considered the Swiss Army knife of multimedia centers. For $249, the Cirago CMC3000 starts off as a 1 TB NAS drive with a 1080p HDMI 1.3 output with built-in LAN networking, analog video recording, internet radio station access, and a slew of supported video formats (including H.264, divx, wmv, mkv, and mov). You can also watch Hulu, Netflix, and YouTube video using PlayOn (the box includes a $20 off coupon) or TVersity. It even comes with a real, adult-size remote control instead of one of those cheap tiny things you usually get with these types of devices. Pretty cool.