Elac announced the Debut 2.0 line of speakers and subwoofers, designed by longtime audio industry engineer Andrew Jones. The second-gen speaker lineup includes new drivers, networks, waveguides and cabinets, said Jones, vice president-engineering. Prices for speakers range from $249 a pair to $400 each for bookshelf and floor-standing speakers and $199-$279 for center-channel speakers. Dolby Atmos and on-wall speakers are $249 each, and a 400-watt powered subwoofer is $450, said the company. Availability is March 15.

Bang & Olufsen teamed with HiFiBerry to launch an open-source do-it-yourself product that will add wireless capability to traditional passive loudspeakers, it said Thursday. The $189 Beocreate 4 four-channel amplifier, created with HiFiBerry, has a digital-to-analog converter and digital signal processor (DSP) with up to 180 watts of output power. A YouTube video shows a young woman removing the back from a Bang & Olufsen speaker and plugging the module onto a circuit board. A Raspberry Pi computer, which can also be plugged into a speaker’s Beocreate board, is required for programming the DSP, said B&O. Anders Buchmann, B&O chief intrapreneur, said a lot of vintage speakers are stored away, not used, or discarded and the company “wanted to change that.” The effort with HiFiBerry is about “empowering our customers to bring those products back to life themselves with modern-day features.”

A teardown by electronic repair company iFixit said the “bulletproof” HomePod was built to withstand “intense vibration and minimize buzzing components.” The speaker’s threaded ring and gasket suggests that at some point the HomePod was able to be unscrewed to separate the woofer and power supply unit. “Did someone change their mind about HomePod’s design last minute?” said iFixit, which called the speaker, from drivers to power supply, “super dense, elegant and efficiently packed.” The “built for bass” smart speaker has a large voice coil to move air, despite its small diameter, and vents on the sides of the voice coil bobbin -- and four holes at the rear of the tweeter -- prevent air pressure from building up and causing music to distort, it said.

Early reviews of Apple’s long-awaited Siri-powered HomePod, due Friday, were long on praise for sound quality but critical about the smart speaker’s limited reach and $349 price tag. TechCrunch created a chart showing the pluses and minuses in an article answering the question of whether consumers should buy what it called “easily the best-sounding mainstream smart speaker ever.” The answer was yes to consumers who have $350 to plunk down on a speaker, own at least one iOS device, have an Apple Music subscription, use a smart assistant and use Siri (we thought the last two should be combined as one). But TechCrunch reviewer Matthew Panzarino saw Siri as a caveat. He credited HomePod as “vastly outstripping” other smart speakers in the ability to hear users trying to trigger a command at a distance and while music is playing, “but its overall flexibility is stymied by the limited command sets that the Siri protocol offers.” The Verge’s Nilay Patel said HomePod “sounds amazing” but “is that enough?” He’s never described a tech product as “lonely” before, but HomePod “demands that you live entirely inside Apple’s ecosystem in a way that even Apple’s other products do not.” The question for consumers is: “Is beautiful sound quality worth locking yourself even more tightly into a walled garden?” Patel said. The Wall Street Journal’s Joanna Stern tweeted the HomePod "sounds incredible -- and not just for its size. But Siri is like that sesame bagel on the bottom while Google and Amazon are the everythings.” CNET said in a review: “The HomePod has great sound, but it's trapped in Apple's world.” CNET reviewer Ry Crist ran a price check, listing a string of gear consumers could get for the price of an iPhone 64 GB X and HomePod ($1,350). "Here's what else $1,350 will buy you: 64GB Google Pixel 2; Google Daydream VR headset; Amazon Echo (2nd gen); Amazon Echo Dot; 55" 4K TCL Roku TV; 4-bulb Philips Hue White Kit," he said.

Lenbrook and classical music streaming service Primephonic announced a deal for streaming on the BluOS operating system this spring in the U.K. and the U.S. Listeners will be able to stream 16-bit FLAC-quality music across one or multiple devices, they said. Primephonic subscriptions are $14.99 per month.

Bryston is collaborating with French audio company StormAudio to leverage each company’s design and manufacturing expertise in new products. Bryston will unveil an SP4 surround processor and StormAudio will leverage Bryston’s Cubed Series technology in two- and four-channel amplifiers, they said. Bryston has had similar relationships with Harman, PMC and Axiom, it said.

Direct Sound used Super Bowl week to launch its Fanstereo over-ear headphones and speakers created by former Seattle Seahawks safety Walter Thurmond and branding expert Jay Leopardi. Products include the Studio43 headphones ($139) and Nubump ($99) and Nubump Plus ($119) portable speakers, which allow users to charge their phone and listen to music simultaneously.

DTS said Tuesday that whole-home TV audio streaming is available for select sound bars and all-in-one speakers via a free software update. The update, just in time for the Super Bowl, allows users to send audio from any connected source -- such as a TV, DTS said -- to other DTS Play-Fi speakers in the home. The whole-home TV audio feature synchronizes speakers to each other and to the video source, creating “lip-synch accurate multi-room playback without an echo,” said the company. The audio technology firm made “substantial improvements to the DTS Play-Fi protocol that improve transmission quality and robustness,” said Dannie Lau, general manager, Xperi’s DTS Play-Fi. Sending audio through “non-deterministic networks such as Wi-Fi has inherent latency issues causing problems with audio/video synchronization,” Lau said, calling it a “common complaint with Bluetooth.” Other Wi-Fi technologies such as Cast and Airplay don't support this feature, he said, and others that do offer such a feature “compromise audio video synchronization to do so.” Not all Play-Fi products can handle TV audio streaming with the update because they don’t have the ability to rebroadcast from an external input, which Lau called a hardware limitation that will be addressed in future firmware updates from manufacturers. The update is currently available for the Klipsch Gate receiver, PowerGate amplifier, RSB-8 sound bar, RSB-14 sound bar, RW-1 speaker and Capitol Three speaker; McIntosh MB50 streaming audio player; the Onkyo Smart Speaker G3; Paradigm PW Link preamplifier; Phorus PS10 speaker; Pioneer Elite Smart Speaker F4; and Polk S6 speaker, said the company. Additional DTS Play-Fi partners will incorporate the technology into their products later this year, said Lau. The full Play-Fi ecosystem includes more than 200 speakers.

Apple’s much-heralded HomePod introduction will land the company 10 percent market share this year, said Strategy Analytics in a Wednesday report. Apple is hoping its “music-first” approach will help HomePod make “inroads into Amazon and Google's early market lead,” it said. But Apple “starts a long way behind its rivals in the smart speaker market and faces a significant challenge when it comes to taking consumer mindshare away from Amazon and Google,” it said. “Amazon and Google are rapidly building their presence in the home thanks to their collaborative and open-source approach. Apple risks either missing out completely on the lucrative connected home market or at best becoming a niche player unless it urgently refocuses investment on improving its AI [artificial intelligence] assistant capabilities and significantly broadens its HomeKit ecosystem."

Sonos announced its 8.3 software for Android and iOS apps Tuesday. Among the changes are the addition of tabs to the Now Playing screen to help with navigation, a return to a black Now Playing screen for readability and a higher density experience on the Rooms tab for convenience, blogged a principal product manager identified as Oliver. Comments were generally positive, but users also posted unrelated gripes and wish lists. Jeffrey Myers asked for Siri integration “since most of your users are probably iPhone users. Alexa is buggy, not as user friendly, talks out at random times at night, and requires extra hardware.” Community Manager Ryan S. said Sonos is working with Apple to bring Airplay2 to Sonos. “It won't be Siri on the Sonos One, but you'd be able to ask Siri using an iOS device to play on a selection of Sonos players. The Sonos One will be able to receive Airplay2 streams,” he said. JDM also had a complaint about Alexa: “Anyone know if the software for Sonos One has been updated to silence the Wake chime and control the volume of Alexa's voice? Very annoying!” Reganowen wanted to know when a Trueplay room analyzer update would be available for iPhone X users; Ryan replied that Sonos is working on certifying the iPhone X for Trueplay. Audible is coming soon, too, he said. Branedamig wasn’t impressed by the importance level of the update. “Adding Airplay2, Google Home, Bluetooth, playing directly from a music app, etc... those are major updates,” said the user.