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…

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…

In the EAW demo room, I ran into Jeffrey Cox, who’s here with a brand new title and role as VP of the newly-minted Pro Audio Group, part of a larger LOUD announcement that will be detailed in a press conference at 4 p.m.

It will likely be one of the most dissected announcements of the show, not least because it brings EAW and Martin together under Cox, an arrangement that begs the obvious question (see Jeffrey’s quote on that below). more…

I talked a bit with automatic mic mixer inventor Dan Dugan, and he did a demo of his Model E-1 automatic mic mixer controller. This unit connects to any mixer that has insert patch points and turns it into an eight channel automatic mixer. The operation has gone way past the old mechanical style alogrithms of days gone by. The E-1 shows the gain it’s doing on an LED ladder and keeps a low level background sound constant so there’s no distracting pumping and jumping that you have with lesser auto mixers. Would you expect anything less from the guy who invented the whole concept? The E-1 can be connected in groups of 8 up to 64 channels and no matter if it’s one or several units working, the function is very natural, just like a real, experienced audio guy would handle it.

Once again this year, at InfoComm 08 in Las Vegas, SVC‘s editorial team fanned out to find some of the most important, leading-edge AV-related products debuting at the show, investigating if they might be deserving of our annual InfoComm Pick Hit awards. Read on at The Briefing Room

For a company that made such a huge splash at last year’s InfoComm with its new SpectraPulse audioconferencing technology, it’s no surprise that for Audio-Technica, InfoComm 2008 is going to be a relatively quiet show – at least in terms of new product introductions. The company has completely redesigned its booth and recently made an effort toward uniform branding across all the markets it serves.

Dan Montecalvo, marketing manager with A-T, says the company’s been pleased with the rate of adoption of the high-end SpectraPulse system, which runs about $24,000 retail for a seven-channel conference room system. It’s an appealing choice for businesses that value ultra-reliable security over a remote slice of the digital spectrum. more…