CEDIA 2015 Show Report Day 4

CEDIA 2015 Show Report Day 4 Coverage

KEF had a nice offering of new personal audio products at the show. I will be requesting a pair of the Muons for review soon. They have 12-hour battery life, their rugged chassis are machined from a solid block of aluminum and they can be used individually or in pairs. 

Burmester was one High End company at the show. Their products are not inexpensive but they are made to a painstaking degree of precision and reliability. These are the kind of products that will last a lifetime and be worthy to pass down through the generations! 

Another fine company that is back on the rise is NHT. They are still making a majority of the old models from the past but they have also released a few new models such as this speaker system with Atmos aspirations! 

Now for something completely different. I used to play a little golf (before having kids!) and there were several golf and sports simulators at CEDIA again this year. So I had to check them out.

My favorite was High Definition Golf for a number of reasons. All these systems have front projectors with sensors around the room that can register the ball flight and spin. Porbably the biggest reason I like HD Golf is that their sales people are not at all pretentious and instead are very down to earth.

Take a look at the video and you can see me hitting a couple of balls. It was to a target at 150 yards and I missed both to the left though the first one hit the green, eliciting mild applause from the gallery. These standard length clubs were about 1″ shorter that I normally use and they had significant offset which promotes a shot to the left.

Two things I learned – I’m probably not going to make it on the pro circuit but, on the upside, the “smash factor” I get with an iron is 1.3 (that is apparently a good result). 

The speakers boast a sensitivity of 94 dB with a 6-ohm load so they can be driven by a wide range of amplifiers. The front controls are high frequency and ultra high frequency trims. They will be available in November 2015 with furniture-grade walnut or black walnut finishes at a SRP of $15,000/pair.

This is a very interesting player, DAC and headphone amp from Pioneer which is based on an Android phone platform. 

Pioneer was also in the Omni with a few very exciting personal audio products. 

Triad had a dedicated listening room in the adjacent Omni Hotel. This presentation is very through and I don’t have much to add other than to say the system incorporated 12 subwoofers and this was the only demo I heard where they emulated height channels from a regular 7.1 Tru HD sound track. That was way cooler than I was expecting. 

Another new product launch from Revel was the Concerta2 Loudspeaker series. Seen here in high gloss white, they will be available this November. The lineup includes six models: the F36 2.5-way floorstanding tower (1-inch tweeter, three 6.5-inch woofers), the F35 2.5-way floorstanding tower (1-inch tweeter, three 5.25-inch woofers), the M16 2-way bookshelf monitor (1-inch tweeter, 6.5-inch woofer), the C25 2.5-way center channel (1-inch tweeter, dual 5.25-inch woofers, the S16 2-way surround speaker (1-inch tweeter, 6.5-inch woofer) and theB10 powered subwoofer (10-inch woofer, built-in 800-watt amplifier). These choices cover all the bases from a small two-channel system all the way up to a full fledged surround set up. Pricing is TBA.

This video highlights Bryston’s Middle T in-wall speaker. Though I was not able to listen to these, they have similar driver complement with their free standing brethren but in a sealed enclosure. With output of up to 120 dB each, a set of these or the main channels would make for quite a nice home theater!

New from Revel are these speakers they call their “Extreme Climate Flush-Mount Loudspeakers”. They come in 8” or 6-1/2” sizes and have a mounting depth of less than 2.8”! These speakers are corrosion resistant and can be used in a marine application. They are perfect for showers, saunas, decks, porches, boats, yachts, you name it. Now you can get the famous Revel sound pretty much any place. I think I’ll mount them to a sled for my next Arctic expedition! The Revel C383XC and C363XC extreme climate flush-mount loudspeakers are covered by Revel’s Limited Lifetime Warranty in the US and Canada. They have suggested retail prices of $500/ea and $350/ea.

M & K Sound is coming back strong and they have a new line of sealed compact sub woofers. Dubbed the “V Series”, they have three sizes in the range – 8″, 10″ and 12″. The subs have newly designed drivers and conservatively rated power amps inside internally braced 1″ MDF cabinets. Available in white or black satin finishes with matching grilles. The 12″ model is THX Select2 certified.

I am most likely going to get a pair of the 10″ V10’s to review in a few months. I am looking forward to that. 

This is a working prototype of the JBL Synthesis pre-pro. HARMAN has partnered with Trinnov on this new processor that is expected to be released in the first half of 2016. Pricing TBA.

Chuck Back of Trinnov gives such a through explanation of this very exciting product that I have little else to say! But I am compelled to add that Trinnov room correction is among the best and the release of this product is a major announcement. 

I posted about B & K’s return in an earlier post. They will also be rolling out a massive 7-channel amp in the coming months as well as this stereo amp that will mate with your Sonos Connect to upgrade the sound over the amplification in the Sonos product. 

Parasound had a small booth at the show. They were primarily announcing this new line of zone amplifiers. Comprising four models, they range from the Model 250 (50 wpc stereo or 160 w mono [bridged] into 8 ohms) up to the ZoneMaster Model 1250 (12 – 50 wpc amps that can be bridged to 6 channels). Prices range from $475 up to $2,395 MSRP.

Here is the second part of the video I shot of Bill Dudleston from Legacy Audio. They (Legacy) can accommodate anything from a commercial theater to a den or bedroom system. Plus he has a great new power amp to talk about! I may want to review one of those! 

Legacy Audio had a big lineup of speakers in their booth at CEDIA this year. This is a clip of Bill Dudleston going over all the different units they brought along. The show floor is noisy and Bill is soft spoken so you may have to turn up the volume to hear everything he says. You can always message me if you want more info.

Down below is the PW Amp which they also demonstrated driving a pair of Prestige 95F towers. The sound was big, clean and extended from such a small box.

B&K was always known for making great-sounding and very reliable products. Well they are back in business now with a line up of powerful amplifiers to be released in 2016. But I wanted to show you this little 25 wpc stereo amp. It is meant to be installed in tight spaces (like behind your flat screen). That is a real pen so not sure if this is the record for the most diminutive real amplifier on the planet, but it is incredibly small!

Paradigm had the Concept 4F speaker on display outside their demo room. Unfortunately, only three of these are in existence and this one was the odd man out so we could not get a listen 🙁

This is a no-holds-barred design that features a 1″ beryllium dome tweeter, a 7″ beryllium midrange and four Ultra-High-Excursion Differential Drive 8.5″ woofers in a vibration-cancelling configuration (two front-firing, two rear-firing). Each woofer pair is powered by a separate DSP-controlled 700 W RMS amplifier for a total of 1400 W RMS. I can’t wait to hear a live demo!!!

A lot of manufacturers had low-profile soundbars at CEDIA Expo this year. One such company was Definitive Technology. Long known for their compact speakers that sound anything but compact, I believe this W Studio Micro will be a popular choice to pair with a display whenever customers may have tight spaces and/or tight budgets. 

HARMAN had one other neat product display. They are calling this their “Premium Finish Program” and it applies to the JBL DD67000 Everest and K2-S9900 loudspeakers.

These high gloss finish options are available now and require a 120-day lead time as each pair will be custom made to order. Knowledgeable readers may recognized a few exotic car colors here – British Racing Green, Rossa Corsa, Polar White, etc. Enthusiasts will be able to have their speakers as an exact match to their favorite ride!

Anthem is on their third generation of surround receivers and they have a highly anticipated pre-pro that is expected to retail under $3,000. The top two receivers and the pre-pro have Dolby Atmos included and will be upgradeable to DTS:X. All have HDMI 2.0 and HDCP 2.2 which means they are compatible with the new UHD formats. The pre-pro and the top two receivers also feature DTS Play-Fi technology.

All these products include Anthem Room Correction (ARC) which is regarded as one of the most accomplished room correction systems on the market.

The booth was bustling with energy when I was there!

All four products are projected to be on the market in January 2016. Estimated MSRP is – AVM 60: $2,999, MCA, MRX 1120: $3,499, MRX 720: $2,499 and the MRX 520: $1,399. 

This is Jim Garrett, Director of Marketing and Project Management at HARMAN. In this clip, he is discussing the all-new Mark Levinson No 536 monoblock amplifier. In usual Levinson fashion, the engineering, design and build of this bad boy is beyond reproach. I can only imagine what it would be like to have a rack full of these amps in my theater. It would be incredible I am sure!

I was fortunate enough to be able to attend a demonstration of the new Arcam AVR 850 receiver. This receiver has Doldy Atmos, is DTS:X ready and it even includes the full version of Dirac room correction which allows the user to dial in their own target response curves. I wish I could have spent more time there. The demo was very high quality and the Arcam and Sound Organisation folks are very fine people all around. Bravo!

Acurus is another company that has been resurrected. It has taken many years for them to get back up and running but they have very real (and very slick) products that are rolling out in 2015. This is Rick Santiago, CEO of acurus and aragon giving a rundown of three of the products he had at at the show. The integrated amp that he presents was being used in a number of booths around the show floor and sounded vivid and clean. They had a live demo of the SSP but in an open booth that was hard to evaluate. All the new acurus products appear to be very well made – I love their clean lines and the colorful touch screen displays.

The Aries 2.1 integrated is $2,799.99 and the Act 4 SSP will be offered at an SRP of around $8,500 when released.

Read our full coverage from CEDIA 2015