Yamaha released the MusicCast-compatible R-N602 network hi-fi receiver at $599. The connected receiver streams content from Yamaha MusicCast-enabled products, plus PCs, network attached storage devices and TVs, said the company. The R-N602 is one of 20 Yamaha MusicCast products due by year end, it said. The receiver has a 24-bit digital-to-analog converter and is hi-res audio-compatible for decoding of 5.6 MHz DSD (Direct-Stream Digital), AIFF 192 kHz/24-bit, WAV/FLAC (up to 192 kHz/24-bit) and Apple Lossless (up to 96 kHz/24-bit) content, it said. The R-N602 supports Pandora, Rhapsody, SiriusXM Internet Radio and Spotify, and streams content via Bluetooth and AirPlay, Yamaha said.

Riva Audio contracted with Affirm to offer financing for purchases made at its e-commerce site, www.rivaaudio.com. Approval decisions are returned “within seconds” after shoppers provide requested information at checkout, said Riva. Annual interest rates range from 10 percent to 30 percent based on the applicant’s credit history. Riva launched its second Bluetooth speaker in time for the holiday season last month. Riva S ($249) battery life is 13 hours at 73 dB output and five hours at 94 dB, said the company. The Riva S has three 40mm ADX drivers and four custom dual-piston bass radiators with a 20-watt amplifier. A dual-mic speakerphone has noise and echo cancellation processing for conference calls and a USB charging output recharges mobile devices, it said. Riva S is also available at Amazon and Crutchfield.

Monster announced availability of its first line of sub-$100 headphones. The ClarityHD earbuds were designed as replacement models for the free earbuds that are bundled with smartphones and portable devices, Monster said Tuesday. The earbuds are available in wired ($49.95) and wireless ($89.95) versions. The wired ClarityHD’s flat cables are tangle-resistant, and attach to low-profile right-angle connectors designed to provide a secure fit in the ear, said Monster. The ClarityHD Bluetooth earbuds have a dual battery design to extend battery life, Monster said. The in-line mic was positioned at an angle suited for optimum voice pick-up, said the company.

Sennheiser announced a successor Orpheus reference two-piece electrostatic headphone system set for mid-2016 release at 50,000 euros ($54,715 at Tuesday’s exchange rate). The next-generation Orpheus incorporates eight vacuum tubes in a new amplifier design class Sennheiser has dubbed Cool Class A. Cool Class A provides Class A power at any volume, and in the high- and ultra-high-frequency ranges, the amplifier switches from Class A to the usual Class AB operation, said the company. Vacuum tubes offer “superior impulse processing,” said Axel Grell, Sennheiser’s portfolio manager-audiophile, but they're sensitive to airborne noise so Sennheiser designed a housing made from Carrara marble to reduce structure-borne noise to a minimum, said Grell. Orpheus comprises more than 6,000 individual components chosen for their acoustic characteristics, including gold-vaporized ceramic electrodes and platinum-vaporized diaphragms, said the company. Production of the hand-assembled system, to be manufactured in Germany, is 250 per year, a spokesman told us. The original Orpheus had a 300-unit production run, he said.

Adobe released a security update for its Shockwave Player Tuesday that addresses a vulnerability that could allow an attacker to take control of an affected system, a U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team alert said.

Bose announced at the CEDIA show API integrations for its SoundTouch wireless music system that work with whole-home control systems from AMX, Control4, Crestron, Elan and URC. The SoundTouch systems have Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, enabling instant listening from a smartphone along with multiroom play via the home network, said the company. New for the integrator channel are the SoundTouch SA-5 amplifier with three auxiliary inputs that can be selected from the SoundTouch app. The 100-watt-per-channel amp can power two sets of speakers, said Bose. The company also took the wraps off in-ceiling and in-wall speakers in its Virtually Invisible line. Both speakers have a “near bezel-less design,” said the company, along with Bose Stereo Everywhere that's said to deliver balanced stereo evenly across a room.

Denon’s Heos 5 wireless speaker was an Amazon Deal of the Day Tuesday at $199, down from $399. The speaker rated 3.5 stars out of 5 from 27 user reviews. Reviewers were generally effusive over the system's sound quality but slammed the Heos app as being difficult to set up and execute. One user, who chose the Heos over a Definitive Technology’s Play-Fi speaker on sound quality, gave the Denon speaker a single star because of the inability to stream music from existing playlists on Android phones and tablets. The reviewer called that oversight a “dealbreaker.” Denon responded that it forwarded the review to its app development team, which said it could add playback of local playlists in a future update. “Based on your feedback this function will be added for Android users,” Denon said. The company also said it is “working diligently to improve the user experience” with the Heos app and that with each software update, Denon hears “less and less complaints about stability." Since the review posted, the company released two updates "which should put almost all stability issues to rest,” it said. Denon offered to troubleshoot with the customer by phone if problems persist. Sometimes Wi-Fi connectivity problems in a network can appear to be a problem with the app or speaker, the company said.

Apple’s Beats by Dr. Dre brand bowed the Beats Pill+ Bluetooth speaker Wednesday. The portable speaker was designed to be small enough for travel but powerful enough to deliver the emotion of the music, said Beats President Luke Wood. The speaker is slightly larger than the Beats Pill, whose sales have topped 1 million units since launch in 2012, said the company. Beats Pill+, with an active two-way crossover system, has a 12-hour battery life tracked by a “fuel gauge” and can be charged in three hours using a Lightning cable and power supply. Two Pill+ speakers can be synched for stereo playback, said the company. The $229 speaker is due in stores next month.

British AV supplier Roberts Radio has been making conventional tabletop radios and portables for 80 years, and has a "royal warrant" to supply products to Queen Elizabeth II, but decided it's now time to rethink the future, executives said at a London briefing. Roberts used the briefing to showcase its radically new R-Line, which is due for launch in early 2016. New R-Line 2.1 radios and speakers can be networked for multiroom listening to different sources, or dotted around the same room to provide a balanced sound field from a single source with no single unit playing too loud, the company said. “We are not chasing the young iPhone market,” said CEO Owen Watters Thursday. “We are going for our existing faithful customers, who are mostly in the ‘middle age to dead’ bracket. They want good sound and easy use. So we are giving them easy networking.” For Roberts, the “benchmark in this area” is Sonos multiroom audio, Watters said. “We are not challenging Sonos. But if we can’t offer something as good as or better than Sonos, there is no point in going into the market.” The “main difference” between R-Line and Sonos is that R-Line will be an “open system,” he said. “It can natively stream radio, including digital radio, in stereo and we are offering portable devices with the option of an extra rechargeable battery pack that clips on the bottom and gives 12 hours play.” Sonos representatives didn’t comment. Some R-Line devices will come with color touch displays, some without, the company said. All can be controlled through iOS or Android mobile apps, it said. Inputs are conventional physical sockets, and also Bluetooth for the tech-savvy, it said. Wi-Fi streaming uses chipsets supplied by Frontier Silicon, which deliver stereo without latency or phase discrepancy by a simple trick, it said. The transmitted stream is always stereo and the speakers have a physical left/right switch that lets the user decide which channel to hear, depending on where the unit is placed, it said. Bluetooth pairing includes a near field communication option, it said. The R-Line range also will include a TV soundbar with built-in subwoofer, the company said. The soundbar will have analog and digital connections, but not HDMI, because “it just costs too much money to join the HDMI party,” Watters said. The R-Line is slated to go on sale in the U.K. first, beginning in April, with prices from 150 to 600 pounds ($228 to $911), with the soundbar at around 400 pounds ($607), the company said. "Currently there are no plans for any distribution in the U.S.," spokeswoman Ale Holland emailed us Monday. "However, that might change with time."

Linn bowed several new products that include applications for its Space Optimisation system, the high-end Scottish hi-fi company said at a recent London briefing for dealers and media. Since 2007, Space Optimisation has used digital signal processing techniques to match Linn speakers or those from selected other makers to the room and positioning where they are used, the company said. Linn’s new Series 5 Exakt speakers come covered with thick designer fabrics that would normally damp the sound, but Space Optimisation DSP molds the sound to compensate, Linn said. Space Optimisation now also can be used to integrate any subwoofer, or multiple subs, into a Linn active speaker system, the company said. The fabric covers slip over the speakers like a tight-fitting dress and are secured with zip and hook and loop fasteners, it said. Each cover has an ID tag with a code that the owner enters into the Space Optimisation software for promoting best use of the active speaker electronics, it said. The electronics then adjust the sound to make good the high frequencies damped by the fabric weave, it said. Linn envisions offering one-off fabric designs specified by the customer, along with new design collections, all with the required ID tag codes embedded. As for the decision to use Space Optimisation to integrate subwoofers into a Linn system, “people add a sub to get big bass, but it’s bad musically because you are also adding phase distortion,” Linn Technical Director Keith Robertson told us at the London briefing. “With live concert sound, all the tones and overtones from a musical instrument are arriving from the same source and in phase,” he said. “With a speaker system, they are coming from different speaker drivers at different places, so arrive at the listener’s ears out of phase.” Linn can now use Space Optimisation “to align the phase and time of arrival from different drivers,” all the way down to 0 Hz, Robertson said. “So the sub becomes part of the whole system, regardless of where it is placed.” Linn refuses to use a mic to measure and correct for room acoustics, and instead requires the user or dealer to enter room details in the Space Optimisation software, Robertson said: “With a microphone, you are dealing with the response of the room, the speaker and the microphone. It’s incredibly difficult to unpick them and optimize for the room only. There are too many known unknowns. It’s an intractable problem.”