Editor’s Note: Welcome to NewBay’s inaugural edition of Need to Know, where we explain complex topics and demonstrate how they apply to each industry we serve. Need to Know stories appear on our websites and in our magazines. Keep coming back for future topics, to include 5G, ...read more

Today is Valentine's Day. I'm sure you've thought of this idea many times, but this is a reminder. Concert tickets. Theater tickets. Grungy local band at the local pub tickets. Your local philharmonic, music festival, jazz nightclub.... Something in the future, something ...read more

Net neutrality is often misunderstood as effecting internet service speeds for consumers—much the way some users experienced throttling or other forms of sluggish service to their devices. But there is something much, much more important at stake, for all of us as citizens, and ...read more

I’ve never done this before but this month I’m going to go personal and local. Especially since many of you have seen my Out of Office messages these past two weeks as I struggled to meet our deadlines while evacuating first one fire near my home, and then managing the evacuation ...read more

This month, the biggest industry news is InfoComm’s debut as AVIXA. It’s a large scale reimagining of the association (the trade shows will remain InfoComm. though in my particular imagination I can see how that too could change in time).First the initials. AV is for AV, IX is ...read more

One of the most important products in the AV industry turned 10 last month. I don’t have to tell you what that product was or why it has mattered so very much. The tech press went overboard with paeans and fun stories about using a 2007 iPhone in 2017. David Pogue wrote about the ...read more

This month I took a field trip to the offices of DLR Group in a downtown LA highrise. I’d been reading about new workplace thinking, especially as it relates to collaboration. I wanted to come to InfoComm with a better sense of context, especially for schools and workplaces. So ...read more

Master & Dynamic has made a name for itself with headphones that combine style, premium materials, and good sound. For its first wireless speaker, the company is going all in on style. Thirty-five pounds worth, to be exact.The new $1,800 MA770 speaker is unlike most other ...read more

Below are three songs, each presented in three different versions: a lossless version at 1,411 kbps, a “premium” version at 320 kbps, and standard version at 160 kbps. Try and see if you can pick the lossless audio out of the three.MORE@TheVerge ...read more

The theme this month is education. In my travels I came across an education story that I really liked. I wrote about it on page 37 of the print issue. It struck me because it captures the changing user dynamic as younger people grow up with devices, taking signal quality for ...read more

Apple admitted that its flashy 2013 Mac Pro redesign was a mistake, and executives indicated that Apple intends to better support its professional users in the future. “I think we designed ourselves into a bit of a thermal corner, if you will,” one of Apple’s top executives ...read more

Life’s a little quieter when I’m wearing the Here Ones, a new pair of earbuds from Doppler Labs. These $300 buds are headphones and then some. They put a volume knob on the real world, letting you control what you hear and what you tune out. I’ve been wearing them on planes, in ...read more

THE AES/EBU PIPELINE In the early days of digital audio we lacked a reliable means of passing signals between devices in digital form. An error in the handoff is a show-stopper (literally). Compatibility issues, format wars and bleeding edge implementations made the ...read more

What at you see before you are the Final Audio Piano Forte X in-ear headphones, which cost a spectacular $2,199 and look, in the merciless words of a friend of mine, "like mini...[censored]. Not only are they expensive and garish, they aren’t even all that impressive technically. ...read more