Noise canceling headphones are a must. A must, I say. There is no way I’m riding in a disease-riddled airliner and listening to the guy behind me hack up tuberculosis. Hells no. I sit down, don some noise canceling headphones and pray the Almighty makes it painless. Any of the following three headphones feature noise cancellation that’s more than adequate but each one fails in another aspect, resulting in three different recommendations based on the planned usage. So click through, fellow traveler. Your next pair of cans could be found after the break. → Read More
Denon is jumping into the the 3D market with both feet, bringing two new Blu-ray players to the market. Both feature 5.1 audio, BD Live, Netflix, and YouTube Streaming, and (my personal favorite) 1GB of on-board memory. → Read More
Denon just announced its 2010 lineup, which includes a crap-ton of new A/V receivers. The company totally revamped its entire lineup, releasing ten new A/V receivers at each price point from $249 to $7,500. The whole line got some fine upgrades, too. Every model now rocks 3D-friendly HDMI 1.4, audio return channel and Consumer Electronics Control support. Analog-to-HDMI conversion and HD Audio decoding from Dolby to DTS is also included, although not in $249 entry-level model. Most models will hit retailers in the coming months so it might be best to hold off your next A/V purchase until the model in your perspective price-point launches. Wouldn’t want you to get buyers remorse. → Read More
Denon has released a new set of headphones, bringing the company’s total number of headphone models to 14. These new headphones, while exciting from a metaphysical standpoint (Questions can me asked, including “Does Denon really need to sell 14 different headphone models?”), are also interesting from a practical standpoint. The two in-ear models are iPhone and iPad compatibvle while the AH-NC800 – price TBD – are noise canceling.
Click through for the press release. Because we weren’t sent images I’ve placed an image of Burt Reynolds here instead. → Read More
All-in-one solutions are nothing new. Hell, Walmart sells them, but that term is generally reserved for lower-market products, not something from a top-tier audio brands. Denon doesn’t care about that stereotype though. The companies new S-5BD is a Blu-ray player and high-end audio receiver. All-in-one! → Read More
Denon unveiled the “world’s first high-end Blu-ray player”, DVD-A1UDCI, back in December last year, saying the device supports Blu-ray discs, SACDs, CDs, audio and video DVDs. The company then said the player will hit Japanese stores in January 2009 and will be available in the US one month later. But that never happened. → Read More
Denon announced the DVD-A1UDCI, a universal player that supports Blu-ray discs, SACDs, CDs, DVD-Audio and DVD-Video, back in December for the Japanese market. The company today announced [JP] it will release the player, which was scheduled for release in Nippon this month, in March 2009. → Read More
Denon outed the amazing DVD-A1UDCI Blu-ray player – which we predicted back at CEDIA – just the other day and thankfully, us here in the States will not have to deal with the exchange rate. You see, the European model carries a MSRP of 4,000 Euros which works out to be a whopping $5,800 in US dollars. The US-bound model, however, will sell for only (LOL) $3,800 which works out to be 1,000 Euro less. Ouch. All the universal goodies remain so chances are this player will become the de-facto reference player when it drops in February ’09. Ecoustics via EngHD → Read More
And you wonder why people are still uncommitted to Blu-ray. Denon, by no means a cheap brand, mind you, has said that they’ll begin shipping its “low” priced DVD-1800BD this October, for $749. Denon hasn’t even released its full specs yet, so it’s impossible to evaluate if this is even worth the money. Once again, I think I speak for most of the gang here: if you’re thinking about going Blu-ray, especially in time for the holiday season, your best best is to go with the PS3. Not only is it future-proof, but, eventually, it’ll have some decent games on it, with apologies to MGS 4. → Read More
Denon, purveyor of reasonably-priced Ethernet cables, will be releasing its natural wood and mahogany AH-D7000 headphones in mid-September. You can currently grab the lesser AH-D5000 headphones for about $700. The AH-D7000 cans will have an MSRP of 800 Euro, which is just under $1,200 USD – roughly 1/3 of what my first car cost. It was a 1990 Mitsubishi Mirage. [Press Release (translated) via Akihabara] → Read More
Reviews for that $500 Ethernet cable being sold by Denon are in full swing on the Amazon.com product page, located here. Here are a couple of choice tidbits… “A caution to people buying these: if you do not follow the ‘directional markings’ on the cables, your music will play backwards. Please check that before mentioning it in your reviews.” “I installed one of these cables between my gigabit ethernet switch and my Canon Pixma 6700 color printer. I know it’s not a sanctioned use, but I was looking for the ultimate in speed and color fidelity. I’m freaky that way. The first time I downloaded a picture to the printer over this cable, the bits moved so fast the printer collapsed into a naked singularity, right there in my office.” “Marked down 1 star because it still won’t let you do the Kessel run in less than 12 parsecs.” “Like a fool, I bought these cables on a whim because of the low price. However, I got what I paid for when I installed them in my TARDIS. Before long it shorted out my chameleon circuit and Amazon refuses to pay for repairs! I guess it’ll be stuck looking like a 1963 police call box until I can somehow get enough money for a replacement.” "I accidentally dropped one end of my Denon cable into a glass of Tuscan whole milk I was drinking. Later when I finished my milk (yeah, I still drank it; should I not have done that?), my right arm (lost in an accident in 1987) spontaneously grew back. Is that normal?" "I used 6 of them to connect up my time machine to my Starship. But now my cell phone won’t work. Must be interference from the planet being out of phase with my blue tooth headset. On the bright side…it negated the affects of the Aurora Borealis over my house." Customer Reviews: Denon AKDL1 Dedicated Link Cable [Amazon] via Newsvine → Read More
If you’re the kind of DJ who likes to dual-wield iPods or keep your vinyl on your MacBook, maybe you should take a look at this thing. It’s got a huge amount of features, ports for USB stuff, and space for you to put your own 2.5″ drive in. It has to be PATA, formatted for FAT32, but whatever. Judging from the sheer number of buttons, dials, and toggles on the top of the thing, you can do just about anything to your mp3 or wave files. It’s also got a tight little LCD screen and a proprietary music management program. Actually, I could do without that last one. Denon DJ DN-HS5500 → Read More
This week: Computers, set-top boxes (like AppleTV), and AV receivers are battling to be your household hub, streaming music and movies back and forth across your pad until you become sterile and glow in the dark. All this gear is versatile, but it’s hard to know which one to pick — especially when hefty sums of money are involved. Sonos and now Denon seem to have the most promising solutions, but life is passing their equipment by while gadgets like the iPhone and Archos’s 605 WiFi threaten to swoop in and take all. → Read More
Amid a slew of new releases yesterday at the Hyatt in Jersey City, Denon introduced a WiFi iPod dock, the ASD-3W. It looks like a hockey puck with a dock and an antenna, but it’s much more: It actually lets you network most AV components like receivers, TVs, and some speakers, whether they’re from Denon or not. It lets you stream music, photos, and that precious but beleaguered Internet radio to those components from anywhere on your network — your PC, NAS, or an iPod that’s sitting in the dock on top. Best of all, it gives you a TV-screen interface and remote to work with, so you can see what’s going where, and you get metadata and album art on songs that are playing off your iPod. Not bad for $229.99 (available in September), though if you don’t need the WiFi, you can pick up the non-wireless ASD-3N for $179.99 (available in August). Both models have Ethernet ports, RCA outputs, and S-Video outputs on the back. → Read More
Boston Acoustics and Denon Electronics today announced a collaborative contest that will give one extremely lucky person an extreme home theater makeover featuring electronics, furniture and installation worth more than $17,000. The criteria of the contest are thus: → Read More
