new york

Subwoofer deep bass from a small speaker?

Sjofn Hi Fi of Seattle, Wash., makes an amazing little speaker, the Clue. When I heard it at the New York Audio & AV Show last week I could not believe that something that small could sound that big.

The Clue has a proprietary, made-in-Denmark 5.5-inch woofer and an 0.8-inch silk dome tweeter. The heavily braced, medium-density fiberboard cabinet is beautifully finished in real maple, cherry or piano black. The cabinet is made in China, but the rest of the speaker is assembled in Sjofn Hi Fi's garage in Seattle. The Clue measures a tidy 14 by … Read more

The best of NY Tech Day, a showcase of startups

NEW YORK -- Today, more than 200 startups, most from the Big Apple, came together for the first NY Tech Day, their chance to show off their wares to a gathering of more than 1,000 press, investors, and members of the public.

While the companies' offerings were diverse and rather uneven, there were some that stood out, and CNET did its best to pull together a list of the best that were on display:

FoundIt FoundIt is a useful service with an analog approach. The idea is to help you recover lost belongings. By signing up, you receive a sheet of stickers, each with an ID number assigned to your FoundIt account. Affix a sticker to your phone, your wallet, or anything worth recovering, and the finder can contact FoundIt via a phone number or by entering your code number on FoundIt's Web site. FoundIt then notifies the owner via text message or e-mail that the item has been located.… Read more

New York accuses Sprint of tax fraud in $300M lawsuit

Sprint Nextel: tax dodger?

That's according to New York Attorney General Eric Schniederman, who filed a lawsuit against Sprint for allegedly failing to collect and pay sales tax to the state. Schniederman claimed Sprint missed out on $100 million in taxes and he's seeking $300 million in penalty.

It's a blow to Sprint as the carrier looks to get back on its feet financially. The company continues to lose money and is undertaking several costly projects, including the massive upgrade of its wireless network, as well as the hefty subsidies paid to Apple to carry the iPhone. … Read more

The technology of the 9/11 Memorial

NEW YORK -- The new 9/11 Memorial is stunningly beautiful and extremely visitor-friendly, but the names of the 2,983 people who died in the September 11 attacks and the 1993 World Trade Center bombing aren't listed alphabetically, meaning that visitors may need help finding specific names.

Yes, there's an app for that. Two, actually.

The memorial, which opened on September 11, 2011 -- the tenth anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and the crash of Flight 93 in Pennsylvania -- has already had more than 2 million visitors, and thousands … Read more

The best of the best in high-end audio

The New York Audio & AV Show at the legendary Waldorf-Astoria Hotel is hosting the biggest collection of high-end audio products the city has seen in many years. Audiophiles and curious New Yorkers are crowding the halls and rooms, eager to see and hear some of the world's best audio products.

The New York Audio & AV Show starts today

The New York Audio & AV Show starts today at 3 p.m. and runs through Sunday at the legendary Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in midtown Manhattan.

Sony isn't a company I normally associate with high-end audio, but it will be at the show demonstrating its award-winning SS-AR1 speaker. VPI turntables will be giving away a Scout turntable worth $1,800, with a handmade Soundsmith phono cartridge. Local dealers Audio Doctor, Sound by Singer, and Innovative Audio/Video will be on hand and they are promising lots of new gear presentations.

There will also be a full slate of seminars, including &… Read more

Wowed by Woo's new 'CD player'

I've frequently raved about Woo Audio's all-tube headphone amplifiers in this blog, so I was surprised to see that the company's new WDS-1 digital-to-analog converter (DAC) is a solid-state design. Woo still offers the full line of made-in-New-York-City headphone amplifiers, with prices starting at $495.

There's also a new matching WPT-1 CD transport. Build quality is superb; these components have the sort of detailing you see on high-end gear that sells for two or three times the price of Woo's products. Each unit is 9 inches wide and 13 inches deep so they can be … Read more

Take a panoramic look back at the 2012 New York auto show

As I unpacked my luggage on the night before the 2012 New York auto show, I made a very unfortunate discovery. I'd forgotten to bring my DSLR's charger and my camera's battery was dead. This wasn't a showstopper--we tend to cover these shows with the assistance of a dedicated photographer much better than I am--but it did mean that I'd be doing a bit of solo shooting with little more than my smartphone's camera.

Now, the HTC ThunderBolt 4G's camera is nothing to write home about, but with the aid of an app … Read more

Car audio at the New York auto show

I went to the New York International Auto Show with just one thing on my mind: car audio. Like many New Yorkers, I don't own a car, so this was my chance to sample a wide range of premium car audio systems in everything from Smart cars to Rolls-Royces. For the most part, generic car audio or famous name-brand systems like Bose and Mark Levinson sounded thick and muddy. Not one was up to the standards of a decent home hi-fi system. They played loud and had lots of bass, but even the most expensive car systems at the … Read more

Car Tech Live 257: The sites and sounds of the 2012 New York auto show

On the very last episode of Car Tech Live, CNET"s Antuan Goodwin and Wayne Cunningham give you a taste of the new cars coming out at the 2012 New York auto show.

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