This morning, I got out of bed and made a pot of coffee. The coffee always tastes best when I make it. While the coffee brewed, I drew the white curtains and opened the old windows, smiled at the sunshine and said hello to the cool morning breeze. Soon, I would sit down on my orange couch with a cup of delicious coffee and turn on the computer. I was working from home.
Ah, working from home.
It's not all it's cracked up to be, really. There's always something: a UPS shipment gone awry, a writer who's having a bad day, a pigeon who decides to fly into your open window, an invoice to be coded and signed and sent to Los Angeles for approval and you know the mailroom doesn't pick up inter-office envelopes when you're working from home... something. Always something.
Nevertheless, I've often wondered what life is like around Exchange Place on a weekday afternoon in Jersey City, and today I found out. Onkyo held a press conference there this afternoon, at the Hyatt Regency, right on the water, with a wonderful view of lower Manhattan.
Life around Exchange Place on a weekday afternoon in Jersey City is nothing like life on a weekday afternoon in midtown. I should have known. While things around here at the
Stereophile office bustle, Jersey City continues to mosey. I doubt that Jersey City has ever bustled. It lingers and sighs, scratches its head and gazes across the water, dreamily.
Upstairs, in the Manhattan Ballroom, Onkyo unveiled seven new A/V receivers and three packaged home theater in a box (HTiB) systems. The guitar speakers were not present, I am honestly sad to say. Nevertheless, Onkyo made clear that they are working to attract a younger audience. "This is not your father's receiver," they told us. And reminded us that sound that
doesn't come from earbuds is also important. With this younger audience in mind, Onkyo's new line emphasizes ease-of-use and partnership with modern technologies. All of the receivers offer iPod compatibility and Audyssey automatic room calibration, and all but the entry-level TX-SR505 are satellite radio ready.
Besides this and more, the advertising for Onkyo's new line will feature twenty-something, urban-looking hipsters, and taglines scribbled in a font made to look like sloppy handwriting. I'd still prefer Helvetica, Arial, or Verdana. Sloppy handwriting is just sloppy handwriting. But now I'm being cheeky.
As we moseyed around the static displays, with all of lower Manhattan at our backs, Wes said to me, "It's pretty amazing what you can get for such little money in the home theater market." And that is true. The Onkyo line of receivers is chock full of features and technology, and prices start as low as $379 and go no higher than $2099. That's less than a pair of guitar speakers.
