Strategy in TECH...
Making what it calls a “renewed commitment to the American market,” Hamburg, Germany-based Velodyne Acoustics announced today that it has appointed Playback Distribution as its exclusive distributor for the U.S. market. The new partnership will kick off at the upcoming CEDIA Expo in Denver, CO, on September 4-6, 2025.
GoldenEar Technology announced last week that it has earned a patent for its innovative dual-plane, inertially-balanced subwoofer technology used in its SuperSub™ line. The U.S. Patent Office awarded GoldenEar patent #9,462,39 on its technology, protecting the company from anyone copying their unique design.
Thiel Audio unexpectedly announced late today that it would show and demonstrate a new product – a powered subwoofer – at next month’s CES show in Las Vegas, Nevada. This new subwoofer, called the SmartSub™ 1.12, is the first new product introduced by Thiel in a year and appears to contain several new technologies for the company including Wi-Fi integration, app control, advanced signal processing and more.
Regular readers of Strata-gee know that we have recently covered news of layoffs and distribution changes by Velodyne – a long-time specialty industry player. Although we had made many attempts to get the company to comment prior to our posting of these stories, we were told that no company executives were available at that time.
However, the day after our second story appeared, we heard from Velodyne’s press representative who said the company’s President was now available to speak with us about what is going on at Velodyne.
The recent CEDIA Expo was, as usual, dominated by hundreds of companies engaged in a seemingly endless and often mindless rash of line extensions – effectively burying us in a sea of products of uninspiring incrementalism. This year, however, thanks to the diligent effort of many of strata-GEE.com’s and ALERT’s readers and followers that we saw at the show – we were often pointed us in direction of some hidden gems. Thanks to you, we were successful in uncovering wisps of innovation from a few new or reincarnated companies.
One such interesting start-up, whose launch we recently reported on here, with a follow-up story here, is AudioXperts. At Expo, AudioXperts showed us an interesting new product concept they call Korners.
AudioXperts
Last month, we reported on the pre-launch of a new brand…the rather boldly named AudioXperts – founded by well-known industry veteran, Eli Harary and the team of sales, marketing, engineering, and product specialists he assembled. This pre-launch announcement was then followed-up by an official launch at a press event in Manhattan on Tuesday of this week. For a lot of reasons, this was a notable event – not the least of which is that there are very few new companies launching in the current incredibly difficult industry environment. But this “birth of a brand” also – for a number of reasons – set a very high bar for expectations related to its launch, which drew a substantial press contingent.
One of the more interesting stops we made during our rounds at last month’s 2012 CEA Line Show was to see a new company with a brand new product not yet on the market…but coming soon. That company, Engage Audio Design, has announced and shown a simplified total home theater package called Unity Home Theater. If the actual shipping product adheres closely to the prototype shown at the show – they just may have a real winner on their hands!
[Read more…] about If You Want Real Unity – You’ve Got to Get Engage[d]
