Procella Audio announces a flagship subwoofer-- the V18 Bass Engine, a dual-18-inch subwoofer the company claims produces reference-quality low frequency reproduction.

Ideal for the largest screening room and home theatre environments, the V18 pushes continuous output reaching up to 137dB, with peak output of 143dB. It features a sealed box design with a unique V-Loaded driver configuration, while amplification comes from a Procella DA06-DSP power amplifier.

The V-Loaded configuration has the drivers mounted facing each other, angled at around 12 degrees to form a shape like the letter V. According to Procella such a design produces coupling and high compression loading of the drivers, resulting in lower distortion, improved transient response and reduced cone excursion at high SPL.

Autonomic announces the MMS-1e whole-house music player and the M-120e four-zone amplifier-- both featuring eAudioCast audio-over-ethernet technology allowing for high resolution connections using a single CAT5e cable.

The solid state-based MMS-1e music player is an entry-level product ideal for customers wanting to enjoy streaming content throughout the home. It can be leveraged as a low cost single stream music player utilised as a standalone solution within a control system environment, or paired with an Autonomic eSeries amp to double capacity to two independent network content streams.

It handles many popular streaming audio services, including Deezer, Pandora, SiriusXM, Tidal, Tunein, iHeartRadio and iTunes, among others, with TuneBridge technology allowing one to pick favourites from one services and transport them to another.

Bryston announces the BDP-Pi-- a digital music player successor to the BDP-1 built on the Raspberry Pi and the HifiBerry Digi+ platform, together with Bryston hardware and software.

Built in a chassis 1/3 the width of the full-size BDP-1, the BDP-Pi plays digital music ranging from MP3 to lossless 24/192 high-resolution files. It requires connection to any DAC via provided S/PDIF, Toslink, USB and HDMI connectors. Audio come through either external drive, internet radio or lossless Tidal streaming.

AudioControl launches an industry alliance in architectural speakers-- the Sound Partners Program, an initiative bringing together architectural speaker makers to create the ultimate whole-home audio platform for professional installers.

The creation of said platform involves implementing performance profiles defined by company engineers stored in the DSP onboard AudioControl Director M-Series 8- and 16-channel amplifiers.

The program already names 4 prominent architectural loudspeaker manufacturers as members-- Origin Acoustics, James Loudspeaker, Triad Speakers and Stealth Acoustics. Each company provides AudioControl with critical performance measurements, enabling the creation of tailored software profiles for storage in software form.

The Intel Developer Forum (IDF) confirms Chipzilla plans for the death of the humble 3.5mm headphone jack-- a talk dubbed "Enabling and Extending the USB Connector of the Future" describes an audio standard for USB-C.

According to company architects Rahman Ismail and Brad Saunders, the specification will "really make the USB Type-C the right connector for audio." Set for a Q3 2016 launch, it includes means to "granular" power management to lessen battery drain from USB headphones, button function definitions (such as pausing music and volume control) and device authentication.

The architects also say USB-C allows the addition of sound processing features, including audio effects or noise cancellation, without need for expensive technology from the likes of Dolby or Bose, since such functionality can be all built into the standard. Another potentially interesting feature is an incorporated video standard.

Customers wanting to combine the retro appeal of vinyl with the convenience of digital audio might be interested in the Pioneer PLX-500, a turntable able to both play LPs and convert them into digital files.

While technically aimed at DJs, the PLX-500 has a competitive enough price tag and features appealing to regular consumers. A line output allows for immediate use with powered speakers (no external amplifier required) while a high-torque deck includes all the accessories DJs require, such as cartridge, stylus and slipmat.

Digital recording comes through USB output and included Rekordbox PC software. The software is able to recognise the silence between songs to create separate files, and all recordings are saved in WAV format.