New Products

Canada’s Classé built its first amplifier way back in 1980 and has been perfecting the art ever since, adding preamp/processors and other components along the way. In 2001, the company became a part of the vaunted B&W Group—a meeting of minds that made perfect sense given their shared dedication to uncompromised audio fidelity and design elegance. The Classé story continues with the introduction of the Sigma Series, which includes the $5,000 7.1-channel Sigma SSP surround preamp/processor and the companion AMP5 power amp, also $5,000. (As it turns out, naming products is not one of the company’s strong suits, but I digress.)

Just what the world needs—another Bluetooth speaker. Must be a couple thousand of them on the market by now, and from what we can tell, a good many of ’em pretty much, well, suck. But a few things about the Core caught our eye. For starters, it costs $599—pret-ty darn steep in a market dominated by sub-$100 “wireless wonders”—and it’s designed by Mass Fidelity, a Canadian startup that impressed us with its Relay Bluetooth receiver (Sound & Vision, February/March 2014).

A kick-ass, ultra-wide soundbar, add-on ambient lighting for TVs, a new Slingbox, and more.

A new 4K/Ultra HD TV, killer outdoor speakers, Bluetooth speakers from Bose, and more.

If you’re one of the six in 10 Americans who have ditched land-line phone service to become a cell-phone-only household, Jeff Eggebraaten has a proposition for you: Use the phone lines running through your walls as a cheap and simple way to spread music around the house. The founder of Intellegg devised a set of cables that make it possible to shuttle music from a computer/laptop or iPod/MP3 player in one room to existing stereo systems or powered speakers in up to five other rooms at the same time. “It’s like plugging an iPod into a stereo, but with Moxivo there’s a phone line in between,” Eggebraaten says.

It’s no secret that prolonged exposure to loud music can lead to tinnitus (constant ringing in the ears) and permanent hearing loss. Any number of famous rock musicians have acknowledged having hearing problems. Hitting closer to home, the Hearing Health Foundation reports that 50 million Americans live with hearing loss, a staggering statistic that includes one in five teens, whose hearing problems are largely attributed to listening to music through headphones—especially earbuds—at high volumes for an extended period.

In the world of home entertainment, prized possessions run the gamut from media players and perfectly calibrated HDTVs to sophisticated processors and hulking power amplifiers to AV receivers and cable boxes to speakers of different shapes and sizes—all stuff that needs a proper home. You do have a proper home for your AV treasures, don’t you? A home that provides unbending support (think sturdy shelves that don’t sag) and thoughtful features like casters, cable management, and ventilation.