The BoogieBox houses two 70mm speakers in its toolbox body and includes protective bumpers in case your sweaty paw can’t keep a grip on its handle.

It has a stereo mini-jack plug so you can play music from whatever device you’ve got with you and claims a 10 hour battery life. If you’re using the BoogieBox to provide a soundtrack for your day at the beach, you’ll probably want to turn in for the day before it does.

The BoogieBox can be had for $US160 at AudioCubes [AudioCubes via Uncrate]

The Hifiman was designed with audiophiles in mind, so it comes with features such as user removable headphone amplifier circuitboard/module, a Burr-Brown PCM1704U digital-to-analogue converter, and Burr-Brown OPA627 Op-Amp. Instead of a hard drive or flash memory, the player uses 32GB SDHC – meaning that capacity is only as limited as your tolerance for carrying around spare SD cards.

Many of us might not care about some of the finer details of the Hifiman, but what we should care about is this: It sounds amazing. According to CNET, this particular player is one of the very few which will actually take full advantage of everything your high-end headphones are capable of. [CNET]

All six HDMI 1.4 inputs are capable of passing 3D video and upscale to 1080p if needed – with one of the inputs handily located on the front. All HD audio formats are able to be decoded, and it uses 192kHz/24-bit Burr-Brown DACs. Dual subwoofer outputs and 7 x 160W output is a definite upgrade over the previous TX-SR607 model, which had just 90 watts per channel.

Both Onkyo’s UP-DPT1 DAB/DAB+ peripheral and UP-A1 iPod Dock are compatible with the receiver, which can also manage an analogue RGB input for connecting to PCs. The Onkyo TX-SR608 will cost $US599 when it hits next month, but take a look at the press release below for the full line-up of products. [Onkyo]

Onkyo USA has announced March deliveries of its first 3D-Ready home theatre receivers and home theatre in a box (HTiB) systems. The new models consist of three A/V receivers and three HTiB systems ranging in price from $US299 to $US599, and all of them support the new HDMI v1.4 connectivity standard for new 3D video displays and Audio Return Channel capabilities. All are exceptionally well equipped to provide a superior music, home theatre sound and video experience, with high build-quality and offering excellent value.

For Onkyo, a name that translates roughly to ’sound harmony’ in Japanese, sound quality is preeminent. All these new receivers and HTiBs now decode lossless Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio bitstreams, and include new 192-kHz/24-bit Burr-Brown PCM1690 DAC’s that are highly resistant to clock jitter and provide a remarkable 113-dB dynamic range. The lineup includes Onkyo’s new easy-to-setup overlaid onscreen graphical display that lets the user watch the program in the background while using the function menus. Additionally, all 2010 HDMI v1.4 models include a new feature call HDMI Thru. HDMI Thru allows content to pass through to the TV when the receiver is in a standby state.

The new TX-SR608 7.2-channel THX-Select2 Plus certified receiver has new power amplifier section that uses three-stage inverted Darlington output topology, and a power boost from 90 to 100 watts. Audyssey DSX dimensional sound processing has been added to its predecessor’s Dolby PLIIz capabilities. Additionally, all video sources, including those using the new PC input, and regardless of source resolution, can be upscaled to big and beautiful 1080p via HDMI and Faroudja DCDi Cinema™. The TX-SR608 will also include a front HDMI input, a feature first introduced by Onkyo in 2009. The TX-SR608 will be available in April at an MSRP of $US599.

The 5.1-channel TX-SR308 and 7.1-channel TX-SR508 round out this initial announcement of A/V Receivers from Onkyo. The TX-SR308 will be available in March with an MSRP of $US299, a followed by the TX-SR508 in April for $US399.

The HTiB package systems, which each consist of a receiver, speakers and a subwoofer, are the 5.1-channel HT-S3300 and 7.1-channel HT-S5300; the latter also includes an iPod dock. Thanks to the HDMI interface and the use of advanced Dolby and DTS codecs, all of these receivers and systems are also capable of decoding lossless Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio. The HT-S3300 will ship in March with an MSRP of $US379, followed by the HT-S5300 in April for $US599.

A third packaged system departs from the traditional HTiB form factor and uses a combination subwoofer and 3D Ready A/V receiver plus two front speakers. It uses Onkyo’s own Theater-Dimensional processor to create an immersive and convincing surround effect through just 2.1 channels. The HTX-22HDX has three HDMI v1.4 inputs, handles HD audio formats from DTS and Dolby; offers four distinct audio modes for gaming; and outputs for additional speakers. The HTX-22HDX will ship in May with a $US349 MSRP.

“Onkyo’s 2010 entry-level product line represents a significant jump over last year’s line,” said Paul Wasek, Onkyo USA’s marketing manager. “We are excited to deliver this first wave of 3D capable products. By upgrading to 1.4, even on the least expensive HTiB, we have eliminated all HDMI pass-through products and allowed HD audio formats to be used across the line. The fact that consumers can now buy a THX-Certified receiver with 1080p upscaling, Burr-Brown DACs, PC input and more for under $US600 shows Onkyo’s clear commitment to delivering performance and value to consumers.”

All of Onkyo’s receivers offer exceptional connectivity options with as many as six HDMI inputs, plus component and composite video, numerous stereo input jacks, optical/coaxial digital inputs, and the popular front-panel connections on many models. Two models include Sirius Radio connections, and all these receivers incorporate Onkyo’s proprietary Universal Port (U-Port) connector which simplifies connections to optional HD Radio tuners and iPod Docks (included with the HT-S5300).

After admitting they were – understandably – sceptical about what the dongle would do to a laptop’s audio, the Windows-only peripheral comes with DTS headphones, an installation CD and detachable USB port.

Akihabara News says the dongle is “stylish and well-built”, but “you won’t get a sound like that produced by a real tube headphone amp since it’s not a real vacuum tube”. While the dongle may’ve gone down well with the site, the headphones were derided as being “cheap” (though with the whole bundle costing the equivalent of $US45 it’s not surprising really), so they used their own headphones instead.

After installing the software, you have to set the surround effects for either music or movies, with both formats working well – “the result is far from being bad”, though it’s “more of an amplification of the sound than a surrounding simulation”.

It may only be available in Japan so far, but with Akihabara News saying it “may be the best alternative to your laptop built-in audio system”, I can already sense all the Japanese export sites buying up stock. [Akihabara News]

[Byteside]

Also on the panel are CNet’s Ty Pendlebury and Mac The Mag’s Matthew Powell. And there’s also a really cool set of Sennheiser headphones up for grabs for people who RSVP, so if you’re in Sydney you should head over to Hotel CBD from 6pm and check it out.

[Byteside]

Because they’re inspired by trees! Haha. I kill me.

Anyway, really, designer Marcos Ignacio Madia must have gone all Sigourney Weaver in the jungle from Gorillas in the Mist on us, because he just went and designed a line of speakers that look and grow (by stacking) like trees. There’s a woofer, midrange and tweeters, all of which you can stack and…hrm…grow as you expand the collection.

You can even, theoretically, turn the speakers to face different directions as you experiment with sound. Which is just like regular speakers except birds won’t accidentally nest in those.

It’s just a design for now though, so you audiophiles will just have to put those woodies away for now. [Home Tone Coolest Gadgets via DVICE]

The researchers at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in Kowloon have made their noise-canceling strides with the simplest of materials: latex and plastic.

The latex is stretched over a grid of plastic squares that’s only 3mm thick, with a small piece of plastic in the middle of each square. Depending on the weight of that plastic button, the panel can be tuned to cancel out a different frequency. Five of these panels stacked together effectively canceled 70 to 550 hertz and was still only as thick as a ceramic tile.

Technological progress results in a lot of noise—think stereos, airplanes, trucks, and the rest—so it’s good to hear that some researchers are hard at work developing technologies that offer an increasingly rare commodity: silence. [PopSci]

You’ve got the big screen flat panel, you’ve thrown that cheap HTIB system in the garbage, and you’ve picked out an awesome speaker system. You just need one more component to tie it all together: a surround receiver with enough muscle for Aliens vs Transformers, and enough ports to handle your Blu-ray player, Xbox and/or PS3, and all of the other black boxes in your living room.

Spending $US500 to $US600 will get you a receiver that will use a microphone to listen to itself, configuring and equalising up to seven speakers and a subwoofer. It will switch between at least four HDMI sources and a lot more analogue devices, and send everything off to the TV upconverted to HD resolution through a single HDMI cable. The feature sets of competing models are so similar that it can be tough to tell them apart, so I called in the four best in this price range – from Denon, Onkyo, Pioneer and Yamaha – to help you make your decision. As it turns out, the decision was easy.

A side note, before we continue: None of the tested receivers – and no receiver currently shipping – features the HDMI 1.4 required to pass 3D video signal to a 3D TV. If 3D is a must-have feature for you, you’ll have to stay tuned, as all of the major electronics makers announce and eventually ship their 2010 models. But a new crop of models may actually mean better deals on the receivers reviewed here, and don’t forget, even if you’re a big enough spender to get a first-gen 3D TV, you can always route video directly from 3D Blu-ray player to 3D TV, using the receiver for audio alone.

I tested each model in my 7.1 channel theatre – a $US5300 Mirage OM Design system which has the resolving power to highlight minute differences in sound between amplifiers. This also gave me the chance to test each model’s two-channel music and multi-channel film soundtrack performance against my reference Pioneer Elite 49TXi – Pioneer’s $US4500 flagship from 2005 – a yardstick to hold up in order to see how far mid-priced receivers have come since then.

In addition to sonic prowess, I also judged each model in the areas of design and build quality, ease of use, and video conversion/scaling ability. Here are the full results of my tests:

The Onkyo, with superior sound quality and a multitude of HDMI inputs, put up a very tough fight against the Pioneer. But ultimately the Pioneer’s class-leading user interface, superb auto calibration system and built-in USB and iPod/iPhone support gave it the win.

Pioneer VSX-1019AH-K: First Place

At first I wasn’t sold. The Pioneer’s music performance without EQ engaged was disappointingly dull and flat. Switching on EQ really kicked the amp into life, though, bringing detail and staging into proper focus. I found that the default curve was overemphasising the upper midrange and treble, but fortunately the 9-band EQ is user configurable, and with a few adjustments I was able to dial in a nicely balanced sound that was fairly close to my reference, save for a persistent artificial colouration in the mids and highs. The Pioneer includes a technology called “Advanced Sound Retriever” which claims to restore compressed music files to near CD quality. (It may not surprise you that the others also feature similar abilities.) To test this, I loaded an iPod Touch with tracks encoded at moderate bitrates. ASR definitely did its job, as every track I tried sounded significantly more lifelike and enjoyable with ASR engaged. I connected the iPod to my more expensive reference system with a mini-jack cable and felt it still had the edge, but ASR made the difference between $US4500 receiver and $US500 receiver considerably smaller.

Movie audio performance with EQ was very good, with realistic portrayals of the cannons in Master and Commander and the drum sequence in House of Flying Daggers. Analogue video scaling from my DVE test disc was decent, though the Pioneer struggled a bit in the jaggies test.

The VSX-1019AH-K is $US100 less than the model that it replaced, and it appears that Pioneer was able to hit the $US499 price point by chopping out 10 lbs. of power supply and much of the multi-channel analogue connectivity. From bench tests that I’ve seen, being the shortest and lightest of the group has not affected the Pioneer’s ability to compete in terms of horsepower. While it can no longer serve as a surround preamp – the Yamaha is the only one of this group that can – the Pioneer’s user interface is simply in a different class than the competition at this level. Combine that with the forward thinking built-in USB and iPhone connectivity, and you’ve got a winner.

Onkyo TX-SR607: Second Place

The Onkyo loses in the looks department with its blocky styling and ancient pale green display, but give it some music to play and things turn around rather quickly. Without EQ engaged, the Onkyo produced the best, most transparent sound of the group, with realistic soundstaging and natural timbre that was surprisingly close to my reference. Switching on EQ mostly made everything sound artificially forward and aggressive, so I left it off for the majority of my music listening. Onkyo’s “Music Optimiser” with the iPod just about equalled my reference, which shows just how effective this technology is.

The Onkyo also did very well with movie sound, though without EQ the bottom end was not quite as strong and impactful as the Pioneer in the cannon and drum sequences. Only five bands are available in the EQ, but this was enough to improve the bass response for action sequences without throwing off the rest of the range. I tested several movies in both the Onkyo-exclusive Dolby Pro-Logic IIz “height speakers” mode and with my speakers in their regular back surround configuration. (The Onkyo is not a 9.1 receiver, so your choice is either one or the other.) I preferred the standard configuration, as I mostly couldn’t tell whether the height speakers were even on. A few weather effects perhaps sounded slightly more realistic, but I certainly wouldn’t go to the trouble of permanently mounting and wiring extra speakers high on the front wall for a bit of rain or wind.

The Onkyo firmly embraces digital audio and video with a total of six HDMI inputs, and completely ignores multi-channel analogue connectivity. analogue video scaling was by far the weakest of the group, with poor results in DVE’s resolution, jaggies, and 2:3 pull-down tests. The front panel HDMI input is great, but the Onkyo really needs a USB port and a full GUI to put it over the top.

Denon AVR-1910: Third Place

The Denon’s performance with music was solid, besting the Pioneer but not quite matching the Onkyo. Without EQ its sound was a bit leaner than the Onkyo’s and slightly dry, with mids lacking a bit in body and warmth. As with the Onkyo, the default EQ curve just pumped everything up without any finesse. The Denon offers nine bands of EQ to play with, and by applying much more mild adjustments than the default curve, I was able to achieve a sound close to the Onkyo’s un-EQed performance. As with the Pioneer and Onkyo, Denon’s “Compressed Audio Restorer” significantly improved its performance with the iPod, though not enough to best the Onkyo or my reference.

Movie performance let the Denon down a bit. The cannons in Master and Commander had a distinct lack of impact compared with the Pioneer, even with EQ engaged, and the Flying Daggers drum sequence sounded a bit flat, particularly when I turned off the subwoofer and let the main channels run full range. Things picked up for the Denon with analogue video scaling, where it aced all of my DVE tests.

The Denon was the most stylish of the group, but the plastic front panel and controls did not have the precision and quality feel of the others. The front panel display was also the smallest and hardest to read from across the room. The Denon’s biggest problem though is that it just doesn’t seem to have changed much compared to its predecessor, the AVR-1909. One more HDMI input and one less component video input seem to be the extent of the major changes. The user interface is functional, but still looks 15 years old. With the Pioneer now offering a full GUI at the $US500 level, Denon needs to do the same.

Yamaha RX-V765: Fourth Place

Music from the Yamaha sounded much like Denon without EQ. It titled quite a bit towards the lean and dry side, with forward and slightly grainy highs that became tiring at higher volume levels. Two EQ curves are available, and the “natural” curve was able to tame some of the excessive brightness. I also tried adjusting the 7-band EQ, but I was never able to get the Yamaha to sound as good as the Onkyo or Denon.

Yamaha’s “Compressed Music Enhancer” brought similar improvements from the iPod as the other receivers, but couldn’t overcome the Yamaha’s inherent weaknesses with music. It did perform one trick that the others can’t: I was able to stream Last FM from my Nokia via the Bluetooth dock.

The Yamaha fared better with movies. It delivered a realistic amount of punch to the cannon and drum sequences, though I still preferred the Onkyo’s more neutral tonal balance. Analogue video scaling performance was average, with poor results in the jaggies and 2:3 pull-down tests.

The Yamaha shares nearly all of its chassis components with the $US900 RX-V1065, and due to that its build quality is a considerable notch above the rest of the group. It looks and feels like a $US900 receiver, which is why it’s such a shame that the terrible UI completely lets it down. Setting up the Yamaha was aggravating; partly due to the un-assignable inputs, the badly designed remote and the cryptic way that Yamaha labels most functions, but mostly due to the UI. The four “Scene modes” are an attempt to replicate the Activities function of a Harmony remote, but they don’t really work in practice. Unless all of your components are made by Yamaha and support the Scene control ability, pressing a Scene button can do little more than switch the receiver to an input and select a sound mode, which the others can do just as easily with their own source buttons. In the end you’re going to end up using a universal remote anyway, making the Scene abilities completely unnecessary. The optional Bluetooth streaming support is great for many people who use their mobile phone as an audio source, but the Yamaha is just too much of an incomplete product to recommend.

And Now For Something Completely Different…

The Onkyo produces surprisingly decent stereo sound for a mid-priced receiver, but what if stereo is all you are interested in? What if you don’t need HDMI switching, or Dolby Pro-Logic IIz, or Audyssey equalisation, or any of the other stuff crammed in to a modern receiver? Can you do better for $US500? Indeed you can, with something called an integrated amplifier.

Integrated amplifiers are a stereo preamp and amplifier combined into one component, and they offer maximum sound quality for the dollar as they basically only have one function. The NAD C-326BEE and Cambridge Azur 550A integrated amps both cost around $US500, and both will outperform any of these receivers in stereo. Since there’s no need to worry about having the latest sound mode or HDMI version number, you can stretch your dollar even further by looking on the second-hand market. A range of $US500 to $US700 can buy a Musical Fidelity, Primare or Arcam on audio trading sites like Audiogon that will be able to challenge $US2500 AV receivers in stereo mode. Add a second hand pair of bookshelf speakers from PSB or Monitor Audio – or maybe even a pair of Magnepan 1.6s if you’re feeling adventurous – and you’ve got truly high-end sound for around $US1500.

David Kay is a veteran home-theatre enthusiast, tech writer and all-around audio fanatic. He is currently Senior Editor of the audio news and feature blog Audio Junkies, and is on a never-ending quest to build the ultimate sound system, wallet be damned.