Onkyo W800BT True Wireless In-Ear Headphones - First to Market?

Slated for release March 2016 for $299.99, in North America, the Onkyo W800BT in-ear wireless headphones were presented by Gibson Innovations at CES 2016. With Noble Audio promising a similar concept for quite some time, it will be interesting to see if Gibson/Onkyo will be the first to market with the world’s first truly autonomous Bluetooth earpieces.

B2B digital music and radio services company, 7digital announced their first content available in Master Quality Authenticated (MQA) technology, allowing the delivery of master quality audio in files small enough to stream or download. Onkyo is already working with 7digital to provide MQA files in its high resolution audio store, onkyomusic.com.

Exclusively unveiled at IFA 2015 in Berlin, the Pioneer XDP-100R Digital Audio Player becomes the industry’s first portable player to offer MQA (Master Quality Authenticated) support. Pioneer intends to be the first to bring the potential of MQA’s technology to market, and in portable player form. Meanwhile, CEDIA has named Bob Stuart, the inventor of MQA, as this year’s Lifetime Achievement Award recipient.

This year’s Munich High End show saw MQA supporter numbers soar above the one hundred mark. The music encoding and streaming format was demonstrated publicly for the first time at a show and it was confirmed that MQA is to be established as a separate business entity from Meridian Audio in order to license the technology.

The largest European exhibition for high quality consumer electronics takes place at the MOC Munich, Germany, from 14-17 May, 2015. With an expanded area of four halls and more than 500 exhibitors already confirmed, the High End Society confirmed an impressive array of performances, talks, presentations and industry events.