Bob Ankosko

Black gloss has been the default finish for speakers for ages so when I saw a home theater suite of white-gloss speakers I stopped for a closer look. Adam Professional Audio, a German company known for its studio monitors, launched the ARTist Series line of consumer speakers speakers at CEDIA Expo with five powered models: the ARTist 3 and ARTist 5 bookshelf models with 2 x 25 and 2 x 50 watts of power, the ARTist 6 mini tower with 3 x 35 watts, the ARTist 6H center speaker with 3 x 35 watts and the ARTist Sub with 140 watts driving a 7-inch woofer.

The system's sonic character is defined by Adam's smooth sounding X-ART (eXtended Accelerating Ribbon Technology) tweeter, which improves on the Heil Air Motion Transformer concept developed in the '70s. Instead of the piston motion of conventional tweeters, a pleated diaphragm produces sound by squeezing air out like the bellows of an accordion, which is said to avoid distortion and dynamic limiting. Each speaker has RCA and XLR inputs and the bookshelf models also have USB and minijack connections. The ARTist system shown (ARTist 5s are used as surrounds) sells for $5,100 and, yes, the speakers are also available in black gloss.

Cary Audio has made a distinguished contribution to the headphone craze sweeping across the consumer electronics industry with the HH-1 headphone amp. Introduced at CEDIA Expo, the amp is designed and built in the U.S. and teams a tube preamp stage with a solid-state MOSFET output stage, chosen for its tube-like sonic characteristics. Featuring Class A operation at all output levels and a 30-second muting circuit to prevent annoying turn-on pops, the amp sports a pair of RCA inputs with loop-through outputs and is designed to drive headphones with impedances between 30 and 600 ohms. Price: $1,595.

The transition from analog to digital TV opened our eyes to a world of vivid images that we now take for granted, but technology marches on, with the promise of something bigger and better always just around the corner. As consumer electronics companies lay the groundwork for a 4K television/video format that delivers four times the resolution of regular HDTV and prepare to roll out the first 4K TVs, an 8K format is already on the horizon.

Simple, modern, elegant—the PS1 from Cue Acoustics is definitely not your father’s speaker. Think of it as a forward-looking system for discriminating listeners who crave a simple setup that’s free of wires, hulking speakers, and an ugly stack of components (like the ones collecting dust in the back of your den). Promising big sound and a vivid soundstage, the PS1 system is extremely compact and provides everything you need to pump up the volume except an audio source: a pair of speakers, each with its own built-in 150-watt digital amplifier/processor, and a wireless transmitter that streams uncompressed audio from your TV, PC, smartphone, tablet, you-name-it, to wherever you decide to put the speakers (which, by the way, must be plugged into an AC outlet). Want to grab your tablet and play impromptu DJ at a party? As long as the tablet supports the DLNA connection standard, you can stream audio wirelessly to the PS1’s iPhone-size transmitter, which runs it through a signal processor and sends it to the speakers; otherwise, you can go old school and plug a cable into the transmitter’s digital (optical S/PDIF) or analog (3.5mm stereo) input.