CEDIA 2013

Walking into the GoldenEar Technology demo room at CEDIA 2013 was like stepping into an intimate jazz club. The mellifluous voice of Jane Monheit accompanied by guitarist extraordinaire John Pizzarelli filled the room. I immediately thought, Wow, those new tower speakers sound damn good. Little did I know until the demo ended that I was actually listening to Invisa HTR 7000 speakers—mounted in the ceiling. As GoldenEar founder Sandy Gross explained, “That’s the idea.” A mind blowing experience.

When it comes to audio system design, the importance of room acoustics is overlooked all too often. You can put thousands of dollars worth of speakers and electronics in a room with bad acoustics and it’s going to sound like…well, crap. “It’s not about creating an acoustically perfect environment, it’s about getting the right amount of acoustic treatment in the room,” said Primacoustic’s James Wright in an impromptu interview at CEDIA 2013. “You want to get the right amount of absorption into the space, which means treating 20-25 percent of the room.”

It was impossible to miss the neon burst of color as I walked past the Able Planet booth at CEDIA 2013. Choose between a variety of brilliant colors with NC180 headphones ($70) or opt for the True Fidelity BT400B compact, foldable Bluetooth headphones, featuring an on-ear microphone and controls ($90), or the True Fidelity IR310TM wireless headphones, featuring a 60-foot range and 40-hour battery life ($110).

In-wall or in-ceiling speakers require there to be a minimum depth to mount into, but if you have a narrow cavity you can be out-of-luck. Or worse, out-of-luck AND with a big hole in your wall or ceiling. Fortunately, Revel has just the speaker, the new low-profile version of its 2-series in-wall/in-ceiling speaker. Designed to fit in a depts. Of only 2.8-inches these speakers will fit where others won’t. Fortunately, you won’t be skimping on sound just because you are going shallow, and you can choose between a 6 ½-inch or 8-inch woofers. Both models feature high-quality drivers including aluminum cone woofers and 1-inch aluminum-dome tweeters. They include the popular micro-bezel design and use multiple neodymium magnets to securely hold the grills in place.

Paradigm Simplifies In-Ceiling Installations Everyone talks about how speakers sound, but if you’ve ever been on top of a ladder, balancing a speaker in one hand and a drill in the other, then you’ll also care about how they install. Paradigm has redesigned its CS series – v.3 – and has made some design improvements to make the speaker easier on the installer. The new CS speakers features a new Glass-Reinforced ABS Baffle (GRAB) that have high-strength ABC clamps replacing the polymer brackets on the previous series. To further easy install, the dog-ear mounting system is angled to better bite into drywall and the speaker has a deeper set-screw which helps to hold the drill steady. The new series also has a bezel-less design and features a magnetic grille. The new series also features more robust binding posts, and some new crossover components and other sound tweaks.

Knoll Systems used CEDIA 2013 to introduce the Q450 digital multiroom amplifier that accommodates four sources and uses fully balanced input plates to combat noise and interference for music sources in distant rooms. The 4 x 50-watt amp comes in two versions: one with simple keypad control and one based on RS232 that can be controlled by iOS and Android smart devices and whole-home controllers. A four-zone kit with in-wall keypads will be available in October for $1,200.

Planar showed an 84-inch UHD set available in a variety of configurations: a straight display, a somewhat brighter straight display, a display with a writable surface (shown here) and more. It can also show four standard HD programs at the same time in opposing quadrants of the screen. Pricing was a little confusing, but plan on at least $20,000 and up, depending on the version you choose.

Planar is the company that bought out Runco a few years back, but if they are still making projectors they weren't showing them this year. The passing of Runco as a distinct entity is notable in the annals of CEDIA EXPO. That company nearly always had one of the largest booths at the show.

ADDENDA: In scoping out the Wisdom Audio demo (discussed elsewhere here) I noted that it was using a 3-chip Runco DLP projector. Under Planar, Runco projectors are indeed still available.