Shortly after Sony unveiled its newly revamped ES lineup of AV receivers, along comes Yamaha with a powerful new duo of its own. The RX-V3800 (140-watt x 7) and RX-V1800 (130-watt x 7) each support lossless Dolby Digital TrueHD / DTS-HD and feature Yamaha's Cinema DSP processing engine, video upscaling to 1080p, HDMI 1.3a, and an Ethernet connection that enables consumers to "access internet radio stations, music files stored on a PC, and the company's MusicCAST audio system server." Furthermore, the units are also compatible with your iPod and XM radio via optional adapters, include Burr-Brown 192kHz/24bit DACs, and will be on display at next month's CEDIA expo. As expected, neither of these devices can be classified as cheap, as the less powerful RX-V1800 will demand $1,299.95, while the higher-end RX-V3800 rings up at $1,699.95.

Pioneer just announced that Blu-ray Disc player with "HD audio bitstream output" they alluded to with the launch of their BDP-LX70. In what appears to be an industry first for BD players, the new BDP-LX80 supports bitstream output of both Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD high resolution audio output over HDMI 1.3. Sorry, no DTS-HD Master Audio this time. Still, a worthy update from the LX70 assuming your home theater gear is properly matched to decode that signal. Something you'll want to check, and double-check, before dropping the tax inclusive roll of ¥210,000 or about $1,768. We could be wrong, but the move from the LX70 to LX80 appears to be a firmware change only so why all the fuss with a new model Pioneer? If true, then don't be surprised to find a hacked version of the firmware for the LX70 on the Internets soon enough. No word on a global launch -- Japan-only for now with a local release scheduled for October.

[Via Impress]

Audiophiles hoping to get a bit more clarity out of those Bluetooth cans can officially get excited, as Open Interface North America (OINA) has just announced plans to introduce a new lossless codec for stereo audio known as SOUNDabout Lossless. Unsurprisingly, the firm is keeping its secrets on the DL for now, but recent demonstrations showed that it will have a latency as low as two-milliseconds and never exceed ten-milliseconds. Additionally, power consumption was intentionally kept low in order to preserve that precious battery life, and just in case you couldn't guess, it'll only stream properly with Bluetooth 2.0 gizmos. Sadly, there's no firm dates to mark on your calendar just yet, but the company is currently estimating that the codec will be ready to rock in detail never before heard over BT "as early as 2008."

For fans of Jack and Meg, it's probably a long-standing dream of yours to purchase the Icky Thump album on limited edition thumb drives complete with cartoon renditions of the rockers, but even if it that understandably bizarre scenario never actually crossed your mind, you can still make it a reality. Apparently, the White Stripes are offering up their latest album on two fairly rare USB drives, each sporting 512MB of internal space, an artistic rendition of one of the band mates, and thirteen rockin' tracks in Apple Lossless format. Only 3,333 of each will be created, and while just one will run you a whopping $57.50, you may as well grab the duo for a discounted $99. Of course, we're still not entirely certain if these things are actually licensed by the band, but it's safe to assume that a seven nation army of fans will have these bought up before the legal teams can even get their case together.

[Via BoingBoing]

Emulation-packed PMPs are becoming a dime a dozen these days, but Ainol's V1000 manages to add a few impressive touches to the media-playing side of this two-faced device. The landscape oriented unit sports a sleek, silver enclosure with a simple five button control layout, and boasts a 2.5-inch QVGA display, 400MHz ADI Blackfin processor, and the ability to give every retro gamer his / her fill of NES emulation. Aside from the obvious Mario love, it supports AVI / MP4 video playback at 30 frames per second, and plays nice with MP3, WMA, and FLAC audio formats on the musical side. Handling all those audiophile-approved lossless files is the 512MB / 1GB of internal storage, while the addition of an SD slot ensures room for that bulging ROM collection. Although details concerning battery life, availability, connectivity, and price aren't yet available, we're sure these handy all-in-ones will be popping up in China's gadget shops real soon.

[Via The MP3 Players]

If you've got $12,000 burning a hole in your pocket and really need a new audio "system," then you may want to consider the new Sooloos music server. This 1TB ultra-quiet RAID (optionally up to 3TB) server apparently comes with all of your music pre-ripped in lossless format, although short of you sending a truckload of CDs to the company's headquarters in New York, we're not sure how the initial transfer from your CD library to your Sooloos server will work. Sooloos comes with a 17-inch centralized touchscreen display (there are 7-inch auxiliary displays) that shows all of your album art and liner notes, and will let you order tracks off of the Sooloos Music Shop, which purports to be coming soon. Of course, if you want to go for a less expensive media server alternative, you might consider a $5,000 competitor, or perhaps the $400 80GB rival, hrm?

[Via Slashgear]

While seeing a flashy looking new DAP roll out of China happens more times than we care to count, every so often a player hits the market with a feature that's actually quite remarkable. While the overall specs aren't revolutionary, the Gemei X-21 offers support for an audio format that few other players do, and is sure to catch the discerning ears of audiophiles everywhere. The focal point on this otherwise average unit is its ability to play back APE audio files, more appropriately known as Monkey's Audio, which is a lossless format (similar to FLAC) that supposedly suffers no loss in quality from the original regardless of how many times it's uncompressed and re-encoded. Unfortunately, you won't stuff too many of those hefty APE jams onto the 512 MB of internal storage, since APE encoding reportedly only decreases file size by about 55 percent. Nevertheless, the "aluminum cased" DAP sports a fairly nice looking design, and the bold 2.0-inch screen apparently uses all 208 x 176 pixels to display photos, but gives no love to video clips. Aside from your basic track / volume controls, USB 2.0 connectivity, and obligatory white headphones, the unit supports the aforementioned APE, MP3, Ogg Vorbis, and WMA (no word on WMA-DRM). While it does toss in an FM tuner, the real downer here isn't the lack of pricing or availability, but rather the apparent omission of an expansion slot to load up tunes via memory card -- and honestly, you can't exactly go ape wild with just 512MB.

[Via DAPreview]

A recent upgrade to the iTunes Producer software used by studios to encode tracks for iTMS distribution may be a good sign for the discriminating audiophile community, as Apple has included the necessary tools to create lossless AAC content that could presumably be uploaded to the online store. While the simple availability of this option certainly doesn't mean that higher-quality downloads are on the way -- for one thing, the so-called Apple Lossless Encoder still lacks the required FairPlay support -- Ars Technica points out that Cupertino and Hollywood could both potentially benefit from a less lossy option. Since tracks encoded in this format can be almost ten times as big as equivalent MP3s, widespread availability of lossless music may convince consumers to step up to higher capacity iPods, which would seem to be in Apple's best interest. As for the music studios, these high-fidelity tracks could presumably fetch more than the 99 cents that 128Kbps files go for, opening a door for the tiered pricing structures that content providers so desire. For now, though, these crystal-clear downloads are still merely speculation, so hardcore audio snobs enthusiasts will have to continue buying and ripping their own CDs for the foreseeable future.

[Via Ars Technica]

Certainly not the the first solution for streaming HD programming around your house, a new product called the AircordAV promises to dumb down the whole process into what would appear to be a 5-minute-install, and supports that sweet 1,080p resolution to boot. Instead of asking your existing router to do all the hard work, AircordAV comes with a base unit that hooks up to any of your home theater gear using HDMI, DVI, component, S-video, composite, or SCART connections, and creates its own 802.11g network with up to eight clients feeding any or all of your video displays. Aircord claims the product is capable of lossless streaming, and uses a proprietary technology to encode and decode your video signals, although the company's lack of a website or actual product shots makes us a bit wary of the whole thing. We'll find out in December if this clever idea can be turned into a working device -- that's when the AircordAV will supposedly be released -- and if it can, expect to cough up at least $500 to start cutting those cords.