We all know what acoustic panels look like, right? Pretty.

On the other hand, this is Auralex‘s Sonic Print. What you can’t see in the picture is the way they feel—they are not screen prints where the ink sits on top of the acoustic fabric—these fabrics feel like fabric, touchable texture,rich and saturated colors. Managing Director Dave Paxton calls them “lifestyle panels.” That’s because interior decorators like them for home theaters, home gyms, even kitchens and dining rooms. As well of course in the range of commercial installations. more…

At a press conference late today, Powersoft, the Italian supplier of lightweight space- and energy-efficient power amplifiers for the pro audio market, announced the release of Audio Suite control software for its Powersoft Amps. Available now, the visual software provides PC-based control for parameters on the current range of amplifiers (all K series and remote Q, D, and QTU series amps) and represents the control protocol for other current and future products. It will be downloadable free from the Powersoft website (it’s not there yet as of Thursday morning).

Also at the press conference co-founder Carlo Lastrucci and John Lee, President of Powersoft USA pressed their success in the U.S., most recently at the New Orleans Jazz festival (some 120 amps).

Wireworks held a little birthday celebration at the booth this afternoon, celebrating 35 years of cabling the world—including most of Broadway, the White House, the BeeGees White Tour, the Pope’s tour, churches, theme parks, and more. Of course most famous for introducing the world to colored cable, Wireworks also introduced removeable multipin cables and a host of other innovations we now take for granted. President Gerald “Jerry” Krulewicz is a charming host, and it was short and sweet—no agenda, just an acknowledgement. For more see a story by Linda Said Frembes.

Wireworks is having a 35th birthday. So is Ashly Audio. Birthday sounds good for 35. But what if you’re 75? Atlas Sound is going with anniversary. Actually they’re not going with anything, Andy Dixon just mentioned it on the booth, just as he mentioned that the booth next door (IED) was also now an Atlas sibling in the MiTek family.

More to the point, when you have a 75-year track record, you have to keep moving and changing. For Atlas Sound that lately means focusing the Atlas brand beyond sound. For example, while the core Atlas products including speaker and amps continue apace, if you had never been to an Atlas booth in past 75 years, you might not think you were at a speaker company. You would notice the new power products: conditioners, sequencers, supressors, etc. more…

OK, it’s not a great picture. The Infocomm Innovation Award statuette looks very nice in person. The important thing to Andy Fliss is that Aurora got one, for the first time, for the V-Tune Pro HD, a kind of universal tuner that supports NSTC, ATSC/QAM, and is also LAN addressable and IPTV ready (decodes MPEG2, MPEG4, and H.264). It means that every source is simply a channel whether you got it out of the air, from the Internet, or over a network. You can use the V-Tune alone or ganged. You can simultaneously support RF and IP. (On the booth it was interfacing with a virtual server in the cloud, hence the dropouts and artifacts?). This is the kind of product you should really not leave InfoComm without seeing. It’s simple, it’s purpose-built to solve an annoying problem, and if it’s right for your install you could save yourself a lot of headaches.

It’s a legitimate question. And yet Shure decided to have a go at building a better headphone. “It’s so personal,” Shure’s Chris Lyons offers. “People are looking for subtleties of sound and comfort, and they need reliability … ” he trails off, but I’m distracted by all the people lined up at the listening station on the booth. People seem to be shopping for headphones. And XLR to USB convertors (more on that in a minute).

Shure never made headphones before, but felt qualified to try. In another twist on the theme, Shure has also returned to the ribbon microphone business, a business they had long ago left behind. more…

Yes, yes, we’re all going online. I’m online right now. I’ve cancelled my Los Angeles Times subscription. But not my Architectural Digest subscription. We’ve all got things we like to own in print. Print possessions. Here’s one you might like to have (and it’s free, though it looks like it should be expensive).

Steve Savanyu is proud of Audio Technica‘s 2009/10 catalog coffee table book (the Installed Sound Resource Book), in part because he helped write a lot of it.
Half the content is like the Audubon book of birds–a page dedicated to each of Audio Technica’s products with a nice picture and a detailed description, with a few clues about how you might see the product in the wild. The other half of the content is schematics and tutorials. They looked like good templates and starting points. (And they’re fun to look at for those of us who like that sort of thing).

Savanyu said it could be ordered on the Audio Technica website. I tried and couldn’t figure it out. I’ll work on getting a link and update when I do.

First let me say: Bosch is a PA company (well they make them among other things) and yet amplification was conspicuously absent from their booth press conference this morning. So I’ll be candid—I couldn’t hear a lot of it. Certainly visually it was fairly dramatic for a tradeshow—with a backdrop of the Midas Mixers, how could it not be?

Normally I would just wait until I could check up on everything, but I got the impression this was an important and timely announcement so I’ll just share what I can. (update: our reporter Dan Daley has better hearing so get more from him here).

John Oakley, the UK-based managing director of Midas Consoles (and Klark Teknik) stood next to Lynn Martin, of Canada-based JAM Industries. This little bit of theater represents the alliance of two class operations to form Midas Consoles North America (and I could have heard the name wrong). Point being, the formidable Midas will now be distributed in North America by the formidable JAM.

Busy news show for EAW (and if you’re here you should go to room 202A to see the Mackie HD speakers) but here are a few quick new product hits:

-DX1208 DSP Matrix Mixer. Next generation DSP, 12-in, 8-out 1RU matrix mixer.

-MicroWedge Series MicroSub. Stage monitor, particularly ideal for drummers (says EAW). Projects on a 45-degree angle and can stand on it’s side (points at the drummer not the drums).

And also in room 202A you can learn more about the custom product work EAW did for installations including the Orioles, the Eagles, the Met’s Citi Field, and others. This is the work of EAWs Strategic Engineering Group out of Whitinsville, Mass.

With its newest product (it’s on the booth at 6141) Audio-Technica adds a unique twist on the ubiquitous IR conferencing paradigm.

The new wireless ATCS-60 introduces “automatic mode”, which accepts up to 50 microphone units, running through a “smart” mixer; the mixer turns the mic on and off, depending on whether the person is speaking or not. The mixer allows from one to five people to talk simultaneously, so this obviously makes for a more casual and interactive discussion environment. more…