While the best Dolby Atmos systems arguably feature speakers placed in or on the ceiling over the listening position, sometimes that isn’t possible. Whether it is due to wiring issues or ceiling construction, if you can’t place speakers over your listening position, that doesn’t mean that you are out of luck when it comes to enjoying Dolby Atmos. And for MartinLogan speaker owners, the new Motion AFX Atmos Enabled Speaker lets them simply place the module on top of their existing speakers to still enjoy the benefits of this next generation, immersive surround audio format.
While MartinLogan is definitely known for its large, electrostatic speaker panels, they also make some wonderful sounding in-wall and in-ceiling speakers. The Stealth Series uses a 60% larger version of the company’s Folded Motion XT tweeter than that found in the lower-end ElectroMotion series. The tweeter can also be easily rotated to insure that it is always correctly positioned – vertically – whether the speaker is being used horizontally or vertically. The Vanquish – being held in the photo – is the in-ceiling version and features a unique selector switch that allows the installer to optimize the speaker for either left, center, or right and front or rear use, ensuring that it will minimize interactions with the nearest wall.
Many people care about the look of their homes, their furniture, and the accessories they buy, but even though audio components are shrinking, most speakers still look like large, decorator-unfriendly, black and grey boxes. In-ceiling speakers may look more discreet but they can be difficult an expensive to install. ClearView Audio’s CEO Stefan Bokamper claimed, “We wanted to design something that was as invisible to the casual observer as an in-ceiling speaker. When a friend walks into your house they wouldn’t know where the music was coming from.”
I’ll be honest, when I first heard about Husqvarna’s Automower robotic lawnmower, my first thought was, “Well, that’s stupid.” I mean, why would someone need a Roomba for their lawn? Dumb.
Then I thought about it a little longer and started to weight the cost of the Automower versus my personal time and cost of cutting the grass or what I have been paying someone else to do it, and how nice it would be to come home and always have a perfectly groomed lawn, and Automower started to make a lot more sense. Then when I started to think about all the grief I get from my lawn guy – broken sprinkler heads, not coming for weeks at a time, yearly price increases – I started getting really excited about the prospect of letting a robot cut my grass.
There were no shortage of startups in the smart-home category at CES, but cruising up and down the aisles of Eureka Park in the Sands Expo Convention Center, I stumbled across Oval, a new all-in-one sensor that makes it an exciting entry into the crowded DIY smart-home sector.
Likely no audio company exhibiting at CEDIA is as well known for digital audio as Meridian. The company pioneered and was built-on the idea of maintaining an digital signal path; keeping the signal in the digital domain from source to speaker and at every step in between. And while this is terrific in an all Meridian system, it doesn’t work so well when trying to integrate with other products.
Now Meridian is releasing the new 258 eight-channel power amplifier that will allow people to enjoy Meridian’s terrific sound quality with any speaker of their choice. The new high-performance, cool-running Class D amplifier comes in a svelte 1U rack mountable chassis and is rated to deliver 100-watts per channel into 4 ohms or 70-watts per channel into 8 ohms.
While you’ve probably heard that all HDMI cables are created equal, and that you either get perfect picture and sound or you don’t, that’s only true to a point as we enter the ultra-high-bandwidth world of Ultra HD signal transmission.
In the real world, I’ve found many cables struggle to deliver the full 18 Gbps signal between source and display when you start pushing the 6 meter cable length. This is especially true when using a source capable of delivering 4K/60 such as the Kaleidescape cover art GUI on the Strato movie player. Sure, this isn’t an issue when you’re talking about a connection to your wall-mounted flat panel display, but if you have your electronics remotely located in another area (say an equipment rack in the back of the room) or you are wiring to a video projector, then a short 3-4 meter cable probably ain’t gonna cut. So, what do you do if you have a cable run inside your walls and you connect that fancy new 4K source to your TV and you get the dreaded “No Signal”? You might just turn to Metra Home Theater’s Gigabit Accelerator.
You may consider Jim Carrey to be many things - comedic genius, overpaid goofball - but technological futurist probably isn't one of them. However, his prediction in the 1996 movie The Cable Guy has proved to be surprisingly accurate: "The future is now!
What do you do if you want to have a terrific sound system, the low bass impact of a subwoofer, access to all the modern sources, full control and power management, and see absolutely nothing except the video display on the wall? The answer very well may be, “You use Millson Custom Solutions’ new CinemaFrame.”
Monitor Audio has released the new Controlled Performance – CP – Trimless range of speakers with ten new models, delivering high performance across a range of budgets and sizes. The line-up includes eight two-way models in three performance levels and two three-way designs. All models in the line-up will features the company’s signature 1-inch Gold C-CAM dome tweeter, a Ceramic-Coated Aluminium/Magnesium material originally developed by the aerospace industry for use as blades in jet engines. In a speaker, it results in increased clarity and reduced distortion. The speakers also integrate fully-sealed back boxes, meaning they are not going to be affected by the unknown acoustics elements of an open wall or ceiling cavity and offer better acoustic isolation from adjoining rooms. The trimless bezels offer a much more discreet and clean design aesthetic.