Recently Published AV News

Back on May 28th, Apple put out an official notice they would be buying Beats Music & Beats Electronics for the tidy sum of 3 billion dollars. Now it looks like the Cupertino based company has more news: a new headphone connector standard based on the Lightning port currently used to transfer data and charge iDevices. Apple touts several advantages of this new standard, including improved audio quality and being able to eliminate the current 3.5mm headphone jack to reclaim internal space. Surely the ability to lock out third party headphone manufacturers or charge exorbitant licensing fees never crossed their minds, right? Click to read all the details.

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The HDBaseT Alliance added a new member on April 7th, Canadian A/V distribution hardware manufacturer MuxLab Inc. For those unfamiliar with HDBaseT, it is a standard for passing HD audio / video content, Ethernet, and up to 100W of power over a single CAT5e or CAT6 cable. Joining the Alliance brings useful benefits to MuxLab, not the least of which is ensuring product compatibility with other manufacturers. Curious to know more? Click to read the whole scoop.

Unlike most cable companies, hardware seems to be an area of innovation for DISH. This week, they announced an add-on to the Hopper Whole-Home HD DVR platform which increases the tuner capacity of the Hopper experience. Specifically, the Super Joey adds two more network tuners to the Hopper’s three native tuners, allowing you to now record up to eight shows simultaneously. This, combined with the Prime Time Anywhere feature all but eliminates channel conflicts and lets you record just about anything anywhere.

DISH announced this week that its recently upgraded DISH Anywhere app can now be downloaded for free for the Kindle Fire HDX tablet. Of course the app continues to be available on Android and iOS devices, but now DISH customer have even more options for watching content when away from home.

Yamaha is pleased to announce that Spotify Connect firmware is now available for its 2013 network AV receivers and their flagship CX-A5000 AV processor. With Spotify offering superior audio sampling rates, along with Yamaha’s legendary Natural Sound, users can expect to get the highest-quality audio playback from their AV receivers.

Today, the Ninth Circuit US Court of Appeals unanimously denied Fox Broadcasting Company's petitions to re-open the issue of preventing DISH subscribers from using the PrimeTime Anytime and AutoHop features available on the company's Hopper Whole-Home HD DVR. Back in July 2013 Fox attempted to block DISH from allowing its customers to easily record primetime shows on up to each of the four broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox).

Krell announced their new iBias technology to be integrated into their amplifier line at the CES 2014 show. iBias seeks to maintain the dynamics of the Class A design while reducing the size and heat often associated with Class A. The new line includes a monoblock, two stereo, and one each three, five, and seven channel offerings. Ranging from $7500 to $11,500 (price more closely tied to the watts per channel rather than the number of channels), these are actually pretty affordable for Krell offerings. The question is whether then fans will turn off too many potential consumers.

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While some might write off Dolby Atmos as a gimmick to help drive ticket sales, a behind the scenes sneak peek from The Hunger Games: Catching Fire with director Francis Lawrence and sound designer Jeremy Peirson sheds some light on how the new format is viewed from an insider's perspective. What do these gentlemen think of the potential for this new format, and its potential for an improved movie-going experience? Keep reading (and watching) to find out!

Thonet & Vander, a German loudspeaker manufacture, has announced their plans to start selling their offerings in the U.S. We take a close look at their speaker and headphone line. All of their speakers are self-powered though don't think they are limited themselves to a desktop. They have offerings with multiple drivers, integrated iPod docks, 2.1 configurations, and even a studio monitor. While pricing on these products has yet to be released, we're excited to see how the Thonet & Vander offerings sound.

As I was flying back from a recent event, I was thinking that I had several movies and shows stored up on my DISH Hopper back home. Of course, I could stream that content using the plane's Wi-FI and my laptop, but what about people who don't already have DISH? What if they don't have a Hopper or a means of accessing something good to watch? Have you flown across the country with nothing good to watch? Ugh...boring doesn't begin to describe it.

Audio Precision announced a new Loudspeaker Production Test suite, offering a new high bar in audio test quality for loudspeaker driver production test and final QA for integrated products such as soundbars, pro-audio powered speakers, smartphones and handsfree devices. We look forward to adding this feature to our trusty APx585 Audio Analyzer to expand out measurement capabilities for loudspeakers.

While it is well known that human perception of sound wave amplitude, volume, is nonlinear, it has long been assumed that frequency and temporal information are perceived in a linear fashion. New research shows that this assumption is not true and human hearing is far more accurate than previously thought. While the golden-eared audiophile is sometimes a mocked concept, if he or she perhaps is a musician or has musical training, there may be something more to it than we currently understand. What do you think?