LATEST ADDITIONS

Although their demos and announcements at CEDIA were aimed at dealers and installers rather than to consumers directly, Energy Squad’s “LED Diet” program is designed to assist designers and salespeople with introducing a variety of LED lighting products. Energy Squad is a “full service national distributor of environmentally-friendly residential and commercial electronics and technologies” that focuses on providing LED lighting, energy storage, and automation products.

The PSB M4U 2 and M4U 1 headphones are some of the best you can get. The M4U 2s even won our product of the year last year.

The same guy behind those headphones, Paul Barton, has designed some in-ear headphones, VISO HP20. Color me intrigued.

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.

Prominent among the Hall of Fame exhibit at CEDIA 2013 is Audio Design Associate’s (ADA) towering System 56, an expandable multi-zone AV system introduced before CEDIA even existed. Multisource/multizone capability and features such as electronic volume control and turn-on volume presets were cutting edge back 1977.