Audio Video News

Harman, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Samsung Electronics Co., today announced the acquisition of Roon, the company behind the subscription-based music management and streaming platform embraced by music enthusiasts.

The world is abuzz with excitement — plus a healthy dose of skepticism and anxiety — over the potential for artificial intelligence (AI) to reshape just everything, including how we interact with our phones and other electronics devices. Qualcomm’s CEO provides some insight.

xMEMS Labs, the Santa Clara-based company that has set out to replace century-old speaker technology with silicon-based microspeakers, has announced a radically different kind of solid-state driver for wireless earbuds that uses ultrasonic technology to accurately reproduce music.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but if you don’t have good speakers, you don’t have a good sound system. Period. The speakers you use (or choose) have a disproportionate impact on how your music sounds — more so than the source, amp and preamp, or any other component or accessory in the audio chain. Simply put, your speakers define the character of the sound, which is why they are so important and why we’ve compiled capsule reviews of our Top Picks in speakers so far this year. With prices that range from $250 for a simple smart speaker to more than $9,000 for a topnotch home theater ensemble and lots of interesting choices in between, there is something for everyone.

In his new post, “Breaking Up Is Easy to Do,” Ken Pohlmann decries Netflix’s recent decision to dust out the cobwebs and render older TVs, Blu-ray players and other streaming devices useless — at least when it comes to watching movies and shows on Netflix. The list includes Roku, which has 73.5 million active accounts worldwide and commands an amazing 43% share of smart TVs sold in the U.S.

HDR10+ Technologies LLC, the industry group that supports the HDR10+ high dynamic range (HDR) standard with over 150 adopters and more than 8,000 supported devices, today announced a new HDR10+ Gaming plug-in for game developers who use Epic Games’ Unreal Engine (a.k.a. UE).