CES home audio wrap-up

Going digital, inch by inch

CES 2006 is officially history, which means it's time for the inevitable postmortem. In the home-theater arena, all the excitement was focused squarely on the forthcoming battle between HD-DVD and Blu-ray, which ratcheted into high gear at the show (see the CES home video wrap-up for more). As we predicted, the home-audio front was decidedly more tranquil. That's not surprising, given the institutionally conservative roots of the audiophile community, many of whom continue to embrace vacuum tubes and turntables. But for mainstream consumers eager to take on digital technologies, there were a few trends worth noting.

Function, meet form
There were plenty of luxury high-end companies haunting the Alexis Park pavilion, with the more consumer-oriented brands (Yamaha, Harman Kardon, Denon, Polk Audio) in the convention hall proper. Numerous boxy black or silver receivers and black or cherry speaker pillars still dominate the mid- to high-end brands, but there are signs, slowly but surely, that considerations for style and design are beginning to creep into the manufacturers' consciousness. The AVR 740 receiver continues Harman Kardon's stately silver-and-black look, the Klipsch RT-12d brought a unique triangular design to the subwoofer, and the new Infinity Cascade speakers introduced a fresh new look to the line. In the broader consumer market, a cool design and easy setup are even more important, which is why the all-in-one home-theater systems from mass-market companies such as Panasonic, Sony, Sharp, and Samsung continue to look sleeker with each passing year.

Digital radio sounding better than ever
Satellite radio continues to gobble up subscribers at an impressive rate. In addition to touting its new cash cow, Howard Stern, Sirius announced an architecture for future "Sirius ready" products from third-party manufacturers. But that merely underlined how far the company's technology continues to lag that of rival XM. XM's similar Connect-and-Play functionality, which debuted in 2005, will be found on even more products this year--everything from Denon A/V receivers to Onkyo minisystems. Moreover, XM is introducing the Passport, a minireceiver that's little more than the size of a credit card, which you can slide in and out of compatible products--say, a home stereo and a car stereo--so that you can listen on multiple devices with the same $13-per-month account. XM also announced the forthcoming availability of some 5.1-surround channels in 2006, matching some 5.1 offerings currently available on Sirius. And to cap it off, the company introduced the Pioneer Inno, a truly portable MP3 player that can receive live XM broadcasts. So while XM is granting listeners increased flexibility and choices, Sirius has some serious catching up to do on the hardware side, Howard or no Howard.

Terrestrial digital radio was on the upswing as well. iBiquity Digital, the godfather of HD Radio, highlighted its digital multicast plan: more subchannels with a greater diversity of programming, many of which will be commercial-free in the short term.

Networking and HDMI
Whether you call them network media devices or digital audio receivers, the industry has been awash in products that can stream your digital audio from your PC to your home stereo for the past several years. New standards such as DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) will let users stream directly from networked storage devices such as the Buffalo TeraStation Home Server and the D-Link MediaLounge NSE-1701 and NSE-2151 to compatible networked audio devices (the Denon AVR-4306 A/V receiver, for example) without a PC. And at least two inexpensive add-ons--the Logitech Wireless Music System for PC and the Linksys Wireless-G Music System--let you stream music from your PC to your home stereo, regardless of any DRM entanglements. Of course, the requisite contingent of straightforward network audio and media streamers, including the Buffalo LinkTheater Mini and the D-Link DSM-120 MediaLounge, looked to improve on their predecessors. And our favorite network audio device, the Sonos Digital Music System, added a new ampless base station, the ZP80. But the most exciting use of networking technology we saw was with speakers: the Oyster wireless networked speakers from Avega Systems and wired in-wall LC265i-IP speakers from Polk Audio are the first loudspeakers we've seen that use IP networking to transmit audio.

While it's primarily thought of as a video connection, it was hard to find A/V products without HDMI (High Definition Multimedia Interface) at CES. The single-cable connection can carry both high-definition video and multichannel digital audio and can even control signals between A/V sources, receivers, and displays; it also allows upscaling of DVD video to high-def resolutions. Once a high-end option, it's now de rigueur for all but entry-level gear, as evidenced by affordable HDMI home-theater bundles from Philips, Panasonic, and Samsung, among others. Because HDMI is digital-only, however, it can cause headaches with legacy analog devices. Thankfully, the scattershot HDMI implementation in early-generation receivers is finally disappearing, with better analog-to-digital options becoming standard, as in Denon's promising AVR-2807, our pick for the best home-audio product of the show.

iPod-ization continues, unabated
Of course, there were plenty of all-white boomboxes, speaker systems, and accessories for the iPod. And while January's Macworld didn't include any major iPod announcements (save an overdue FM tuner accessory), it won't be long before Apple debuts some new iPod/iTunes/iMedia Server products that will excite the masses more than anything we saw at CES.