CEDIA Expo 2026 is in the books and now with everybody back home from the event, it is time for the KMB Comm Tech Week in Review to look at the news that helped to fuel the annual trade event.
This week’s look at technology news will focus on the Expo and stories from leading publications such as CE Pro, Residential Systems, Sound & Video Contractor, SCN, AV Nirvana, and eCoustics.
These news items include product news, trend pieces, and opinion columns. Here is the KMB Comm Technology Week in Review for Sept. 7-11:
CEDIA Expo 2026 Dominates KMB Comm Weekly Review
Owned by Forge (formerly Emerald), the newly renamed company that also owns the Expo, CE Pro naturally covered the event quite extensively. One of the publication’s best initiatives is its Home of the Year program.
Homes of the Year from CE Pro recognizes the industry’s top home installations that covers a range of categories like home theater, MDUs, and retrofit. The publication has a rundown of the winners here.
Residential Systems covered the event extensively and this item from correspondent John Sciacca looked at 10 points of interest for show attendees. Sciacca, a former top integrator balances his enthusiasm for technology and his business sense as an integrator to cover everything from Kaleidescape news and AI to demo material, and even the pickleball tournament that he’s organized for several years.
Tackling market trends from a different perspective, Mark Pescatore from Systems Contractor News (SCN), examines the light commercial business opportunities Expo attendees could discover on the show floor.
In the story SCN notes some of the work is project-based and that residential design is starting to influence commercial projects. Moreover, categories such as audio and video walls offer some of the best opportunities for residential integrators to crossover into the light commercial market.
Moving onto some KMB Comm Tech Week in Review product news, AV Nirvana shot a video with the enthusiast AV manufacturer Magnetar on the introduction of its new flagship Ultima Reference Transport.
Taking a rarely used approach of eliminating the issue of dirty power by using batteries, the transport is a two-piece solution that is engineered to deliver the highest levels of performance.
Covering the big news from Sonos that was announced during CEDIA Expo 2026, Sound & Video Contractor is reporting on the company’s latest soundbar and headphones.
The story states the new Beam Ultra Soundbar is a 7.1.2 soundbar that delivers Dolby Atmos immersive audio, and the new Ace Ultra headphones feature new drivers. Sound & Video Contractor points out the new soundbar produces more intelligible dialog via multiple AI Speech Enhancement options, and connectivity options such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and HDMI with eARC.
Sound & Video Contractor adds the headphones utilize a new Sonos-designed 40mm driver, adaptive active noise cancelling that is powered by 10 microphones, and the story says the headphones deliver up to 35 hours of battery life.
Wrapping up the KMB Comm Tech Week in Review for the week of Sept. 7-11, is a non-CEDIA Expo 2026 item from eCoustics.
Picking up data from the RIAA Mid-Year Recorded Music Revenue Report, the website recalled recent statistics from Luminate that found that through the first six months of 2026 Americans purchased more than 16 million CDs. eCoustics says those numbers represent a growth rate of 16%, and even removing the numbers produced by the K-pop category, sales still increased by nearly 7%.
Comparing Luminate’s information to the RIAA’s, eCoustics notes the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) eCoustics employs a different method to attribute CD sales that includes just how much money record labels make from the sales of physical media. eCoustics states that RIAA figures find CD volume increased about 46% to 17.5 million units. The website also emphasizes that CD revenues grew by approximately 59% to reach the figure of just over $171 million.
For those interested, the RIAA’s figures for the sales of vinyl also increased by about 21% with 26.5 units sold to produce revenues of $543.8 million. This figure represents an increase of nearly 18%.
eCoustics later in the story asserts that, “consumers therefore do not appear to be choosing between streaming and ownership the way the industry once assumed they would. Streaming handles discovery and ubiquitous access extraordinarily well, while physical products can satisfy a different desire for collectability, permanence, and a tangible connection to favorite artists.”
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