Just a few of the new product launches and events.

​While a broken hotel lift conspired to make the exhibitor’s workload that much tougher, working through the night on the day before, by the opening on Friday 19th pretty much all was in place, up and running. For the three days there were queues round the block to get in at the opening despite the unusually chilly weather, fortunately rain and snow free.

Crowds of familiar attendees turned up for NAS 2015, not so many to form large queues, but sufficient to keep most demonstration rooms and stands well occupied. The industry trade group Clarity appointed judges to rate the quality of exhibits and demonstrations and DCS scored first prize for the second year.

HIFICRITIC will be exhibiting at the National Audio Show 2015. Please come and see us. Meet the editors, get your recent missing back numbers at 30% discount, and even more discount for older issues. Ask for advice on Hi Fi equipment and systems. Let us know what you would like to see covered in future issues.

This luxury venue was booked for the annual Clarity Conference and AGM. Clarity is the UK Hi Fi dealer and manufacturer trade association tasked with publicising our industry, communicating with purchasers and improving training for better informed sales, install and customer backup.

Industry presentations were led by Venkat Venkateshwaran of Dolby explaining and showcasing the Dolby Atmos higher performance multi-speaker Home Theatre standard, at their in-house 36 JBL speaker (26 dedicated to the surround channels) 68 seat movie theatre installation, and very loud and impressive it was. Forget Blumlien and phase, this is precision intensity pan potting directed from a sound effects control surface. The translation to the home theatre scene was outlined, noting compatibility with existing 7.1 multi-channel arrangements, bar the additional decoder function to the extra height feeds for the overhead effects. Venkat explained the success of the new format with 900 cinemas now equipped worldwide and some 250 films produced. Home speaker makers are finding new solutions to delivering the new height and directional information.