Leslie Shapiro

It’s quite tragic; a Stradivarius violin creates arguably the most beautiful musical sounds created by man, but it’s only a limited time before the instrument goes to sleep, to be silenced forever. After producing brilliant sounds and melodies for centuries, the tone of the violin changes and it becomes too fragile and delicate to play; effectively the instrument is silenced in deep slumber. Fortunately, phase one of an ambitious project has just wrapped up in an attempt to save the sound of a precious few of these string instruments for generations to come.

PRICE $179

AT A GLANCE
Plus
Audio playback from connected USB drive
Portable with optional external battery
Solid bass performance
Minus
Narrow soundstage at close range
Treble could be more transparent

THE VERDICT
The Concert is an affordable, feature-packed smart speaker with natural, warm sound.

The first smart speakers were cute little gadgets; no one mistook them for serious audio playback devices. Soon, they started getting bigger and somewhat better, with more attention paid to sound quality. Riva, a company known for multi-room speakers, just introduced the Concert, a compact smart speaker that combines the convenience of voice control with sound that can be taken seriously. Finally, a smart speaker worth listening to.

It’s kind of rare for a demo to really make an impression on me. Not that I’m jaded, but I’ve “been there, done that” with so much of today’s tech. Yet today at CES, Creative’s demonstration of their updated Super X-Fi holographic imagery for headphones pretty much blew me away.

Audio icon Klipsch made an impressive showing at CES 2019 with an exciting new lineup of soundbars that harken back to the brand's horn-loaded speaker technology, along with new WiSA wireless speakers, and a new lineup of headphone and in-ear earphones.