CanJam NYC 2017 Headphone Audio Expo Report

CanJam NYC 2017 took place on February 4-5, 2017, in the fabulous Broadway Ballroom at the New York Marriott Marquis, right in the heart of Times Square. Over 2000 earphone and headphone fanatics swarmed over the 55 table-top booths (showing about 100 brands). In this brief report we have chosen to highlight some of the products, companies and technologies that caught our attention.

Like every year at this time, the world of telecom and mobile descends upon cosmopolitan Barcelona for another edition of the Mobile World Congress (MWC) promoted by the GSM Association (GSMA). As we have noted before, MWC is becoming a larger forum for cutting-edge audio technologies than other industry events: anything that's wireless audio, wearables, and IoT, and even small dedicated audio technology providers have taken notice and are attending in full force.

The 2017 edition of the Winter National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM) Show in Anaheim will be remembered for both the pouring rain that affected all of California during three of the four show days, while also confirming the reasons why it is one of the best and most vibrant events on the audio industry calendar.

Following the announcement made earlier, on December 7, 2016, the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) officially adopted Bluetooth 5 as the latest version of the Bluetooth core specification. Key updates to Bluetooth 5 include longer range, faster speed, and larger broadcast message capacity, as well as improved interoperability and coexistence with other wireless technologies.

The 141st Audio Engineering Society (AES) International Convention in Los Angeles, CA, was a great success - maybe not as vibrant as past New York editions, but probably one of the best in terms of content/topics and number of sessions. The exhibition was always well attended and exhibitors were always busy, especially those targeting studio/recording applications - sometimes it even felt a bit like the National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM) Show, with celebrities like Stevie Wonder walking around and some demos pumping the volume a little too much.

The 2016 Audio Engineering Society (AES) International Conference on Headphone Technology took place August 24-26, 2016, in Aalborg, Denmark, at the Nordkraft building - an old power station converted into a mix of community and events center near the city's new music center, Musikkens Hus. Approximately 160 registered participants had the opportunity to attend more than 40 paper and keynote presentations, while 20 companies promoted demonstrations. One of the most successful AES international conferences ever!

Google, the company that makes a business out of anything that’s Open Source, announced its new Omnitone project, a platform that they say “brings spatial audio to the web in order to provide more immersive VR experiences, using only the Web Audio API.” The platform uses all the known spatial audio, ambisonics and binaural techniques, including several existing open source efforts, now released on a set of integrated tools that enable exploring immersive audio or spatial audio directly on a web browser.

Recently I attended the excellent, The Home Entertainment (T.H.E.) Show in Newport, CA. Celebrating its 6th anniversary, and still mourning the tragic loss of its president and founder, Richard Beers, T.H.E. Show Newport exceeded its own 2015 attendance figures, with more than 10,000 attendees. I left with excellent memories of a wonderful organization, a very pleasant location (Irvine), and the motivation to return. Some excellent systems left me with enduring impressions that I thought fit to share in this space.

Did you read/hear one of the many rumor stories about the removal of the 3.5 mm audio "due to Apple's fixation on making devices slimmer?" Well, we all did, and the rumor has a reason. It's true! The only minor detail is: It wasn't just Apple on that one. To the surprise of many in the audio industry, the decision was taken in consensus among the powerful companies that decide about consumer technologies these days: the big semiconductor and IT companies and the smartphone makers, of course.

I have hardly had time to recover from another edition of Musikmesse and Prolight+Sound 2016 and catch up on all the announcements and what we have seen there - and it was plenty. So, was it worth? Indeed. But I couldn't help returning from Frankfurt with an uncomfortable feeling and the clear perception that this was the worst Musikmesse and Prolight+Sound ever. I will elaborate because there are lessons to be learned.