Audio News for June 6, 2014

by | Jun 6, 2014 | Audio News

HiFi House Liquidates – A large three-store AV specialist and home-automation integrator, with two stores in PA and one in DE, has been forced to close its doors after its bank forced the company to begin liquidation proceedings. Its president said the closure “is not a reflection of our industry nor HTSA in general but rather just another one of the unfortunate stories that has occurred a few too many times over the past five years.”

Clarion Car Electronics Launches Car Restoration Project –  In an effort to promote people falling back in love with cars, Clarion is teaming up with other automotive-oriented firms to restore iconic vehicles thru their program, called Clarion Builds. So far they have teamed up with Hitachi, SiriusXM, Ireland Engineering and Toyo Tires. A spokesman said “…chances are that we’ll rediscover why they are such an important part of our culture and why we cannot simply treat them as just transportation devices.”

New Bluetooth Speakers from TDK Life on Record – The brand is part of Imation, and has a selection of new portable speakers, including two water- and dust-resistant models with NFC. The Trek Max is stereo and $199, while the Trek Micro is mono and $79, and two of them may be paired for stereo. Their $249 water-resistant speaker is cube-shaped and delivers 360-degree sound. It features AAC streaming over Bluetooth, a full-range driver on each side and a subwoofer. It has a 3.5mm aux input and its rechargeable battery last up to six hours.

Polk Launches Their First Active Speaker – Their two-piece $399 Hampden is biamplified with a total of 80 watts, all-wood cabinets and angled-up baffle. It is equipped with Bluetooth AptX and USB audio input, and has its own built-in DAC with DSP. Each bass-reflex speaker has a 1-inch soft-dome silk/polymer tweeter, 4.5-inch polypropylene woofer and down- firing port. Each driver is powered by its own amplifier, and a four-pin cable connects the two speakers together.

Yamaha Adds Two Stereo Components – Using elements of their flagship counterparts, the new two-channel components are a $3999 integrated amp and a $3499 CD/SACD deck. The amp has a 32-bit ESS DAC and USB DAC with playback of 192K/24-bit audio files and DSD files. Its phono preamp supports both MM and MC cartridges, and its headphone amp has a fully discrete configuration. The SACD/CD deck has the same drive mechanism as Yamaha’s flagship unit, for high-precision disc reading.

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