Bang & Olufsen presents the BeoSound Shape-- a wireless speaker series featuring a hexagonical wall-mountable modular design customers can clip together and turn into a piece of wall art.

Each Shape panel hides a different audio component, namely a speaker, amplifier or sound-absorbing acoustic damper. Bringing all together is the final component, the BeoSound Core, a hub featuring AirPlay, ChromeCast, Spotify Connect and Bluetooth 4.1 connectivity as well as ethernet, USB-C and line-in ports. Customers can also combine the system with the BeoLink system to create a multi-room setup based on B&O and Beoplay products.

A base package includes 8 Shape tiles-- 4 speakers, 2 acoustic dampers, 1 amplifier and 1 Core-- and the system is expandable to up to 11 amplifier units, each able to support 4 speaker tiles (for a total of 44 panels). In turn, each speaker tile carries a 13.3cm woofer and a 1.9cm tweeter.

NAD announces the C 338 HybridDigital integrated amplifier-- the first amp from the company with a built-in Chromecast, allowing streaming from enabled mobile and PC apps.

One can also stream to the C 388 via Bluetooth, and it can serve as an UPnP client for streaming from a local NAS. Control comes through either NAD Remote iOS/Android app or Google Assistant when paired with a Google Home speaker or Pixel phone.

Wrensilva announces a smaller and lighter take on the record console-- the Loft, a console built out of N. American walnut able to stream records directly to Sonos speaker systems.

The Loft features modern internals inside retro stylings, with an OA2 precision Gimbal tonearm and Ortofon 2m Red cartridge paired with a 300W per channel Bang & Olufsen ICEpower classD amplifier. The turntable is fully decoupled belt-driven, while wifi connectivity allows one to push whatever vinyl is being played to a whole-home Sonos system.

ATC Loudspeakers announces the C3C Ver.3-- a centre channel speaker matched to the Hi-Fi Series SCM7 and SCM11 loudspeakers for home theatre rooms.

The C3C driver systems feature the ATC SH25-76 dual-suspension tweeter designed and built in-house. The tweeter carries a 15000 gauss (1.5 tesla) neudymium magnet with a black heat-treated top plate, something the company says dissipates heat away from the voice coil to maintain high power handling and low power compression.

A precision-machined 5.5mm rigid alloy waveguide provides optimum dispersion, a flat on-axis frequency response and resonance-free operation. The tweeter sits between two mid-bass drivers identical to those employed by the corresponding L/R main loudspaker, while the SCM11 CLD 150mm mid-bass driver incorporates a 45mm soft dome. Constrained Layer Damping reduces harmonic distortion between 300Hz and 3kHz, an extended frequency response and improved off-axis performance.

Sonos confirms a long-running rumour with the announcement of the Playbase, an all-in-one wireless speaker designed to sit under TVs.

Described by the company as "equal parts TV speaker and music speaker," the Playbase carries 10 drivers (6 midrange, 3 tweeters, 1 woofer) and 10 digital amps inside a 58mm thick. It can operate as either a standalone audio device or pair with other Sonos products for surround sound and bass, and includes one digital audio input.

Crestron starts shipping a pair of Avia multi-channel amps-- the AMP-8075 and AMP-8150, designed to work natively with Crestron Avia DSPs, with 8 channels of audio power in a single rack space.

The amplifiers offer a choice of 75 or 150W per channel, with each channel individually configurable for either low-Z (4/8 ohm) or high-Z (70 or 100V). They are networkable for configuration, monitoring and control via Avia Audio Tool software, Crestron control system or Crestron Fusion Cloud.