LATEST ADDITIONS

By now you've likely heard of Dolby Atmos-Enabled speakers, which include an additional driver or drivers firing out of the top at an angle to bounce Atmos' height information off your ceiling if installation of ceiling speakers is impractical--as it will be for most of us. In addition to dedicated Atmos-Enabled speakers, several add-on modules were seen at CEDIA, which are designed to sit on top of your main left and right front speakers and surrounds if you want to add Atmos but don't want to replace your entire speaker system.

The 44-DA from Atlantic technology is designed for this purpose. At $500/pair, it employs a concentric driver (a coaxial woofer-tweeter). While designed to be a perfect fit atop the company's THX-4400 L/R speakers, it can be used on any speaker with a flat top surface large enough to accommodate its approximately 8.4-inch width and 9.5-inch depth.

While Yamaha's lineup of new AVRs is heavy into support for Atmos, the company's well-reviewed Avantage pre-pro remains Atmos-free. A spokesperson for Yamaha told me that there are no immediate plans to come out with a new version that supports Atmos. It will certainly happen eventually (unless Atmos turns out to be this year's HD-DVD, and it doesn't appear that it will), but until then they're likely to loose customers to Marantz, Onkyo, and Integra, all of which offer competing pre-pros with that feature.

Motorized window treatments (shades, curtains, and other window coverings) are always super cool to watch as they magically open or close in front of a window. For some reason, I’m never able to resist pushing the button on the remote that makes a shade go up and down or a curtain open and close. It’s just so cool - and can keep your house very cool, too. QMotion Shades new motorized drapery rod is one of the coolest of all the motorized window treatment mechanisms at CEDIA to watch. QMotion says the company’s new mechanized device is “the industry’s first - and only - trackless motorized drapery rod.” The new wireless drapery rod requires no external motors or wires and is extremely quiet when in operation. Rods come in two sizes: 1.5-inches (diameter) that uses C-cell batteries; and 2-inches in diameter that uses D-cell batteries. QMotion estimates that users can expect battery life to be one to two years on average, depending on the size of the rod and how often the mechanism is used each day.

In addition to pointing out that the new product is...

Deezer, a French music streaming service with 16 million active users and 5 million paying subscribers, is coming to the U.S. with the “world’s largest” music catalog of more than 35 million tracks—all captured in the lossless FLAC format.