It was just a short time ago that I was talking about Pioneer's decision to halt plasma manufacturing. This past week they showed their wares at the trendy (I’m told) Gramercy Park Hotel in New York City.

While one might expect some reduction in their products after such a huge announcement, they went the other way. They actually seem to be expanding their lines across the board with several new displays, Blu-ray players, and receivers.

Starting in July, Denon is launching 10 new receivers… though admittedly five are just different (somewhat de-contented) versions for different retail chains.

The coolest feature in all of these new receivers is the inclusion of Audyssy's MultEQ, DynamicEQ, and Dynamic Volume. Other Denon receivers have had MultiEQ, but they were more expensive.

At an invitation-only event in New York City, Boston Acoustics unveiled (literally, complete with white sheets) the full line of high-value step-up loudspeakers in their new Vista series.

Definitely upscale in terms of design and performance, the Vista line has been several years in development, with four of the models available now or by the end of the summer.

Wadia is now shipping the world's first digital iPod dock.

You read that right, the worlds first. Other iPod docks are only outputting the iPod's analog signal. With the 170iTransport, you can output a digital signal to your receiver or pre-amp/processor via coax.

Why would you want to do this with just MP3s? Easy, don't use MP3s. Many audiophiles are using the iPod as a storage device of lossless audio from CD, or in some cases, digitally encoded records. This way, the iPod becomes a high-end portable music server.

12 Channels and HDMI 1.3

After two years of design work, Krell is shipping their Evolution 707 preamplifier/processor. The 707 has no less than twelve output channels, in an 8.4 configuration. You read that right, four subwoofer channels, and dual center-channels.

Perhaps most notable, is HDMI 1.3.

Composite, s-video, and component can all be transcoded to HDMI, and/or upconverted to 1080p. Dolby TrueHD and DTS HD Master Audio are both supported.

Two integrated amps, a tube amp, a center speaker, and an SACD player

That storied audio brand McIntosh has released five new products. They, of course, share the greenish blue color of the McIntosh family. Two of the new amps have an updated look that is both stylish and modern, while still paying homage to one of the longest running industrial designs in the industry. It still works, why mess with it?

New LCDs and some tiny, tiny speakers

June 5th in New York, Sony unveiled seven new LCD TVs in their XBR line. Sizes range from 32-inches to 70-inches, and all are 1080p.

In addition, a new home-theater-in-a-box system, the HT-IS 100 was designed to go with the flat panels, and sport some of the smallest speakers every put in an HTIB.

Classe Audio has just released the SSP-800 preamp/processor. At its center is a 64-bit TI chip that handles all of the signal processing. This chip is built into a replaceable module, so that it can be upgraded to, for example, decode the new audio formats internally.

Coming from a high-end audio company, it is not surprising that the "pre-amp" portion hasn't been forgotten. In true audiophile fashion, two-channel analog sources can bypass the entire digital portion of the pre-amp.