NAD introduced an amplifier with a digital-to-analog converter (DAC) and one with a BluOS-D module, with availability for both expected in time for the holiday season, it emailed Tuesday. The $1,999 C 399 has the company’s HybridDigital nCore amplification, previously available only in the Master Series amps. It’s built around a 32-bit/384-kHz ESS Sabre DAC and is the first NAD amp to incorporate the company’s Modular Design Construction technology, MDC2, which lets users add modules that provide functions such as BluOS hi-res multiroom streaming and Dirac Live room correction. The MDC2 BluOS-D module is $549.

Nortek launched new rock and planter speakers in the SpeakerCraft line, the company said Thursday. The RS6 and RS8i speakers are available in granite, speckled granite, sandstone and shale finishes. The PS6Si planter speaker has a weathered concrete finish and is designed for use with live plants, it said. The planter speaker's movable tweeter assembly adjusts the sound dispersion from 180° for placement in open areas to 90° for corners. Both speakers come with a five-year warranty.

LG, which promoted gaming-friendly features such as low latency in recent TVs, launched a $499 speaker for gamers. The UltraGear GP9 is designed to "free users from headphones" in response to feedback saying headphones can be inconvenient and uncomfortable in marathon gaming sessions. LG's 3D Gaming Sound technology uses a head-related transfer function algorithm to tailor a game’s audio according to genre, providing a virtual surround sound with “realistic sense of space, position and directionality," it said.

LG launched a $399 Bluetooth speaker with omnidirectional audio and mood lighting. The reflector structure of the speaker’s woofer and tweeter is designed to deliver 360-degree sound with minimal distortion, said the company Thursday. The mood lighting includes three presets themed ambient, nature and party, plus customizable options. A DJ effect allows for sound effects and mixing music samples, said the company. Battery life is 10 hours, it said.

Sony bowed the 5.1.2-channel HT-A5000 sound bar with support for Dolby Atmos and DTS:X featuring the company's vertical surround engine. The sound bar's front speakers and up-firing speakers, combined with Sony signal processing, can position sound in a vertical space, said the company Thursday. Due in early fall, the $899 5.1.2 sound bar uses sound field processing technology to broaden the horizontal sound field, said the company, and built-in mics optimize sound to the room's physical layout, it said.

Thinksound is taking preorders for over-ear ov21 wired headphones that use 40% bioplastic content derived from sustainably harvested trees, emailed the company Wednesday. The $319 headphones, using an Eastman Treva biobased polymer, are due to ship next month. The company is also developing two wireless headphones, it said.

Sound quality remains a top purchase driver for headphones and speakers with features such as high-definition and high-resolution audio increasingly important as differentiators, said a September Qualcomm state of sound report. Sound quality tied with battery life as consumers’ top purchase driver for true wireless earbuds and wireless headphones for 51% of respondents, followed by price at 48% and comfort, 45%. Some 58% of respondents said they are likely to subscribe to an HD streaming service; 5% currently subscribe. Seventy percent of respondents said performance of audio accessories has an impact on their overall smartphone experience. Active noise cancellation was the highest ranked “rich audio” feature, while mobile gaming has accelerated in popularity, with 42% using true wireless earbuds for gaming across PCs, consoles and mobile devices. Gaming provides an opportunity for manufacturers to highlight very low latency and other gaming-related benefits in future products, it said. The most in-demand personal electronics devices are smartphones, smartwatches and true wireless earbuds, which may offer opportunities for hardware makers to create new consumer experiences as the use cases of the three devices converge, said the report, based on a May survey of 6,000 smartphone users ages 18-64 in the U.S., U.K., Germany, China, India and Japan.

True wireless stereo (TWS) headphone shipment growth narrowed in Q2 on a 25.7% drop in Apple AirPod shipments, reported Canalys Friday. The category may be reaching a peak, with worldwide Q2 shipments growing 6.4% to 58.3 million, Canalys said. The global smart personal audio market grew by 4.7% overall, reaching 99.8 million units in the quarter. Apple still leads the true wireless category, but its share fell below 30%, with its “steep decline” partly due to a tough comparison to the year-ago quarter, said Canalys analyst Jason Low. “Despite the ups and downs, Apple’s key advantage is clear -- it has a user ecosystem that is heavily faithful to its products,” Low said. A new AirPod release this fall should “prop the category up again, but the growing saturation of its iOS and macOS installed base could be a cause of worry.” Samsung is “catching up” with 8.8% share, up 41% year on year to 5.2 million units, by bolstering self-branded and sub-branded true wireless offerings “especially with JBL under the Harman subsidiary,” said the analyst. Skullcandy had 285% growth in the quarter, for 7% global share, on 4.1 million shipments. Skullcandy’s success came from its “aggressive pivot to an affordable and cheerful TWS lineup such as Dime, Jib and Sesh,” which target a younger demographic than Samsung or Apple, Low said. Partnering with Bragi, Skullcandy “claims to offer a better handsfree experience, but it will be crucial to ensure the user experience lives up to expectations, and not marketing hype,” he said. The other two categories in the smart personal audio market, wireless headphones and wireless earphones, had 3% and 2.1% growth, reaching 15 million and 26.5 million units.

Sound United's resources and scalability allowed the high-end Bowers & Wilkins brand to lean in further in the custom installation space, James Krakowski, vice president-commercial operations, Americas, told us at the ProSource summer conference in San Antonio this month, in a product demonstration embargoed until Wednesday. B&W, which joined the Sound United portfolio of brands last year, previewed at ProSource the newest upgrade in the flagship Bowers & Wilkins 800 Series Diamond lineup that's due to ship Sept. 1. The latest iteration, six years in the making, includes new styling and technology, led by an elongated on-top tweeter with a tube-loading system said to deliver a more open sound for high frequencies. “We wanted to add as much strength and rigidity to this cabinet as we could,” said Sound United’s Seth Snyder, regional brand activator, citing Bowers’ history as a transducer company that produces its own drivers. A primary goal in B&W speaker design is “to get the cabinet to stay out of the way as much as possible,” he said. All models in the 800 series have more metal bracing to keep the cabinet more inert, he said. The 805 D4 and 804 D4 now feature the reverse wrap speaker cabinet used in the previous 800 series’ larger floor-standing models. The structural rigidity of the design allows mounting the crossover in its own compartment in the back of the speaker, away from magnets, to lower the noise floor, Snyder said. The three-way models have new technology, what the company calls biomimetic suspension, that replaces a conventional fabric spider with a composite suspension system that improves midrange cone performance by reducing unwanted air pressure produced by a conventional fabric spider. A new walnut finish joins the white, black and rosenut options. Stereo pairs are the 805 D4 ($8,000), 804 D4 ($12,500), 803 D4 ($20,000), 802 D4 ($26,000) and 801 D4 ($35,000). Center-channel speakers are the HTM82 D4 ($5,500 each) and HTM81 D4 center-channel ($7,500 each).

Audio-Technica bowed wireless headphones for gaming and music, said the company Wednesday. The over-ear ATH-S220BTs ($59) have cushioned earpads, up to 60-hour battery life and can be charged up to 3.5 hours on a 10-minute rapid charge, said the company. The Bluetooth headphones also come with a 3.9-foot cable for wired listening. Controls are compatible with Siri and Google Assistant for access to voice recognition, messages and map navigation; a voice guidance function can be used for notifications about battery level and pairing status, it said.