Darryl Wilkinson

High-end speaker maker Burmester, US introduced a trio of slim speakers at CEDIA. All three speakers – the B30, B25, and B20 – are three-way, full-range, floorstanding models. Each uses a new air motion transformer (with a frequency range of 2,700 – 45,000 Hz) that's mounted in a small horn. This high-frequency driver design is said to be highly efficient and highly dynamic. The speakers also share a similarly engineered side-firing oval woofer with a powerful Ferrite magnet system. The oval shape helps maximize the cone's surface area while making it possible to construct a narrow speaker cabinet.

Nuvo's new Essentia NV-E6G system is a six-zone, six-source system that's packaged with six Control Pads (each with a 1" OLED display). It's expandable up to 12 zones, and is plug-and-play compatible with Nuvo's M3 Music Server, T2 Dual Tuners, and NuVoDocks for iPod. At $2,299 - less than $400 per room - that's a pretty smokin' deal for six rooms of music.

Looking to the future of lifestyle sound, Sonance showed a preview of possible upcoming products, one of which was a ceramic hanging thing that looked pretty cool. It wasn't playing, so we couldn't tell how it sounded. No pricing or estimated availability was given, but it's pretty certain that you can expect to see something like this -and other exotic speakers - from Sonance in the near future.

After handing out a pair of boxer shorts with the slogan, "We've got your bottom end covered.", honcho John Miller showed off the newest, smallest Velodyne subwoofer. Called the MicroVee, it uses one 6.5" active driver, two 6.5" passive drivers, each with 5" piston diameters. The active driver has a 2" dual-layer voice coil and a 64 ounce magnet structure. Velodyne rates the Energy Recovery System amplifier at 2,000 watts of Dynamic Power. The cabinet is made of ribbed (no snide comments, please) extruded aluminum, which makes the sub cool - both in terms of heat dissipation and looks. The sub is only 9" x 9" x 9.6" (HWD), and Miller says it kicks butt. (What else was he going to say?) Oh, yeah, the MSRP is $999, but you could very likely see it on sale for $799 when it arrives in October.