KEF has jumped into wireless audio with the Muo Bluetooth speaker for the U.K. market. Ross Lovegrove, who designed KEF’s flagship £140,000 per pair Muon speakers, collaborated on the mainstream wireless speaker, to create the Muo's “sculptural aesthetic,” KEF said. The company will announce the U.S. version next week for $349, a company spokeswoman told us. The Muo houses a high-performance digital-to-analog converter and drivers, including a miniaturized version of KEF’s Uni-Q driver array. Twin driver arrays are flanked by a long-throw bass radiator, the company said. A pair of Muo’s can be synchronized via Bluetooth aptX to create stereo sound, it said. The speaker packs a 3.5mm auxiliary input and can connect to Android devices via near field communication. Colors include gold, gray, silver, blue and orange. The company didn’t immediately respond to questions on plans for the U.S. market.

Developing the future of the high-res audio industry “is far more important than maintaining standard margins,” said PS Audio CEO Paul McGowan Friday, so the company is slashing the price of its entry-level Sprout integrated amplifier from $799 to $499. PS Audio bowed Sprout last year, aiming to reach under-40 consumers, “but it wasn’t a home run with the target audience,” said McGowan, saying $799 was "just too expensive." McGowan called Sprout a “leap of faith” for PS Audio that required a “major investment that we’ve repaid, paving the way to restructured partner pricing.” The $499 price is a permanent change, not promotional pricing, and took effect Friday. The amp was designed to be a “simple, elegant solution” for playing music from records, CDs and smartphones in “smaller homes,” said the company.

British startup Entotem is offering what it claims is a “unique” new hi-fi component. Its Plato bundles a high-spec hi-fi stereo amplifier, Android connectivity with touch-screen control, a 2-terabyte hard-disc drive and virtually all current analog and digital inputs and outputs into a stylish box that functions as a smart command center with storage for all home entertainment content. When connected to a signal source like a CD player, Plato rips music to the hard drive at sampling rates up to 24 bit/192 kHz, and then uses its Internet connection with Gracenote to build searchable library lists and graphics, Entotem executives said at a pre-launch briefing in London. Plato does the same with movies and music streamed online, Entotem said. When networked, Plato can share multiple streams with networked devices around the home, controlled remotely through a tablet or smartphone, it said. Designed and built in the U.K., Plato is priced at 3,600 pounds (about $5,550) and will be sold through up-market stores staffed with salespeople capable of demonstrating it for customers, it said. A modified version for the U.S. is being readied, it said.

Libre Wireless Technologies announced at IFA Tuesday a collaboration with Bullitt Group on Ministry of Sound-branded Wi-Fi and Bluetooth wireless music players. The players leverage the LibreSync media platform and include streaming links to Ministry of Sound’s nightclub in London, the band’s music stations and Spotify, Deezer and Tidal music services, said the companies. The rounded-edge speakers are available in U.K. retailers Argos, Dixons Travel, IWOOT.com, John Lewis, HMV, The Hut and Zavvi, said the website.

Former NFL wide receiver Mark Clayton is launching a Kickstarter campaign for headphones designed to stay on the head during workouts and eliminate the annoyance of tangled cords. Clayton demo'd the wireless Bluetooth headphones for us on a press tour through New York earlier this month, when he said he chose the company name Livv because he couldn’t trademark the name "live." The wireless headphones let him “live in an athletic sense,” said Clayton, CEO, who came up with the idea for the headphones after breaking a pair of Beats phones while working out. The company’s chief audio engineer, Dale Lott, has also designed headphones under the Aurisonics brand. The differentiators for Livv phones in a crowded Bluetooth headphone market are Livv’s patented SureFit headband, designed to stay in place while running or lifting, and a built-in MP3 player with 8GB storage “so you can leave your music player at home,” Clayton said. Additional features include a sweatproof and waterproof design (down to one meter immersion), 12-hour battery life, onboard controls and a built-in mic, he said. The Kickstarter campaign begins Sept. 1 at $299 with ship date of March. The company also has an in-ear headphone in the works, he said. Clayton plans to leverage professional athlete connections to raise awareness via social media for the Livv phones that will also be sold on the company website.

Via Licensing Corp. issued a call for patents essential to the practice of the MPEG-H 3D Audio standard. MPEG-H 3D, the latest set of AV compression and transmission technologies to be standardized under the guidance of the ISO/IEC Moving Picture Exports Group (MPEG), specifies the transmission and playback of audio over various speaker arrangements for broadcast and streaming in a range of use cases including home theater, automotive systems, headphones and mobile devices. “For any patent pool, the goal is to create one-stop shopping for implementers of the applicable technology,” said Roger Ross, Via Licensing president, noting the Dolby subsidiary’s success with MPEG-4 High Efficiency AAC and MPEG Surround patent pools. Via Licensing is looking to work with inventors and implementers of MPEG-H 3D Audio “to build a single source for essential MPEG-H 3D Audio patents through an efficient, consolidated offering,” Ross said Friday. Via Licensing invited persons or companies with patents or pending patent applications that they deem essential to the normative portions of ISO/IEC 23008-3 (High Efficiency Coding and Media Delivery in Heterogeneous Environments, Part 3: 3D Audio) to contact Via for information on submitting patents for “essentiality review.”

LG filled out its line of wireless audio products, pegging the arrival of the 2015 roster to the start of the football season. The Bluetooth speakers are positioned for use inside or outside the home with most of the lineup due for sale in October, said LG. The 20-watt LG Music Flow P7 ($149, available now) delivers up to 10 hours of play on a charge and can be controlled with LG’s Music Flow app. The Music Flow P5 ($99) comes in at half the power of the P7 with 8 hours’ battery life, said the company. Both speakers can be connected to a compatible LG Bluetooth-capable TV, and LG’s Multipoint features allows the speakers to link to multiple Bluetooth devices at once. Dual Play connects a mobile source device to two speakers simultaneously to boost sound output, said the company. The cylindrical SoundPop 360 (price to be announced), with 360-degree sound, offers 20 hours of battery life. Also in the audio portfolio: X-Boom Theater, combining a streaming Blu-ray Disc player, tower speakers, a subwoofer and 1,000 watts of power ($499). The X-Boom system can send audio from a CD or USB to Music Flow speakers in multi-room mode. Rounding out the lineup is the LG Cube, a 1,000-watt speaker with Multipoint Bluetooth and near-field communication pairing with smartphones and tablets. The $449 Cube has multicolor LEDs that pulse with the music, said LG.

Consumer appetite for curved CE design will be put to the test this year when LG begins shipping a curved soundbar to match its line of curved TVs. LG will ship the LG Music Flow model LAS855M ($699), a 4.1-channel, 360-watt system, to select dealers in October. The curved soundbar joins three other straight soundbars in LG’s Music Flow lineup that has Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity and a multiroom mode. Users can control the music in each room with a mobile device, selecting a playlist for every room with a Music Flow soundbar or choosing music by individual rooms, said the company.

Yamaha introduced a speaker base designed to improve the sound from TV audio. The SRT-700 ($349) sits under a flat-screen TV and includes Bluetooth connectivity for streaming audio from iOS and Android devices, Yamaha said. It’s designed for TVs 42 inches and smaller. The SRT-700 packs Yamaha’s Air Surround Xtreme virtual surround sound technology and delivers sound from two full-range speaker drivers, a pair of subwoofers and two bass-reflex ports. It can be controlled by Yamaha’s home theater controller app, the company said.

Blue Tiger has begun selling “heavy-duty” Bluetooth speakers that fit in the palm of a hand. The SoundPODS boast exceptional sound quality despite the compact size and work with laptops, tablets, smartphones or any Bluetooth device with a 3.5mm headset jack, said Blue Tiger. The speaker’s one-pound aluminum enclosure hosts a microSD memory card slot that will play MP3 and WAV files. Price is $49 for black, red or white.