Home theater brand Definitive Technology today is announcing a new Studio 3D Mini Sound Bar System that includes a slim sound bar and wireless subwoofer with support for Dolby Atmos, DTS:X, and AirPlay 2.
The Studio 3D Mini consists of a 4.1 channel, six-driver array with aluminum tweeters and a compact 8-inch wireless subwoofer. The system can process Dolby Atmos and DTS:X encoded movies via a single HDMI eARC connection, and it offers a number of connectivity options including 4K HDMI in, 4K HDMI with eARC out, optical in, AUX in, and a USB port for music playback.
With AirPlay 2, the Studio 3D Mini will appear in the Home app and Control Center on Apple devices to let you easily beam content from your device and sync among multiple AirPlay 2-compatible speakers, and it can all be controlled via Siri. The system also supports Alexa and Google Assistant for integrating with those ecosystems.
Beyond the usual third-party speaker ecosystems, the Studio 3D Mini is Definitive Technology's first product to include support for HEOS Built-in, which similarly allows users to easily link compatible speaker products together in multi-room audio systems and manage them while also streaming from services such as Spotify and Deezer or directly from the user's music library.
The Definitive Technology Studio 3D Mini sound bar system will be available next month and will be priced at $899.
Thursday January 23, 2025 6:41 am PST by Joe Rossignol
iOS 18.3 should be released to the public next week, following beta testing since mid-December. While the software update is a relatively minor one, it still includes a handful of new features, changes, and bug fixes for iPhones.
Below, we recap everything new in iOS 18.3.
Notification Summary Changes
Examples of inaccurate Apple Intelligence notification summaries
Apple Intelligence...
Friday January 24, 2025 1:55 am PST by Tim Hardwick
Apple is set to release iOS 18.3 next week, bringing further refinements to Apple Intelligence features, a couple of neat new capabilities to iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 devices, and bug fixes.
While not quite as packed with new features as Apple's preceding iOS 18 point releases, iOS 18.3 still introduces capabilities that aim to make your iPhone smarter and more intuitive. Below, we've...
Friday January 24, 2025 8:16 am PST by Joe Rossignol
iOS 18.3 is expected to be widely released next week, and that means the first iOS 18.4 beta for iPhones should be just around the corner.
Apple has previously implied that iOS 18.4 will be released in April, as that is when it promised to make Apple Intelligence available in even more languages.
Below, we outline what to expect from iOS 18.4 so far.
Apple Intelligence for Siri
Siri ...
Thursday January 23, 2025 7:32 am PST by Joe Rossignol
Walmart still does not accept Apple Pay or other NFC payments at its more than 4,600 stores across the U.S., and it stood firm on its reasoning for that today.
A spokesperson for Walmart today informed MacRumors that its position on contactless payments has not changed since we last reached out about the matter in 2022. The big-box retailer said it remains focused on its own convenient...
Wednesday January 22, 2025 6:01 pm PST by Joe Rossignol
A new Apple TV is expected to be released later this year. In this article, we recap rumored features and changes for the device.
The next Apple TV will be equipped with Apple's own combined Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chip, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. He said the chip supports Wi-Fi 6E, which would be an upgrade over the current Apple TV's standard Wi-Fi 6 support. Wi-Fi 6E extends the...
Tuesday January 21, 2025 4:31 pm PST by Juli Clover
Apple provided developers and public beta testers with the release candidate version of iOS 18.3 today, and with it comes release notes confirming what's new. While we knew about several of the features that are in the update, there are some lesser known tweaks and bug fixes.
The update adds new Visual Intelligence features for iPhone 16 models, it tweaks Notification summaries on all...
Friday January 24, 2025 9:09 am PST by Juli Clover
The upcoming iPhone 17 models that Apple plans to release this year will not feature a smaller Dynamic Island, Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said today.
On social media, he said that he is expecting the size of the Dynamic Island to remain "largely unchanged" across the iPhone 17 lineup. His statement is contrary to prior rumors that we've heard about planned changes for the iPhone 17 models.
...
Saturday January 25, 2025 5:07 pm PST by Joe Rossignol
Apple's retail stores will be rolling out "merchandise/floor marketing updates" next week, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.
Gurman did not explicitly say if the store updates are related to any upcoming product announcements, but he did mention that next week is around the time that Apple rolls out its annual Black Unity watch band for the Apple Watch.
In each of the past four years, ...
Thursday January 23, 2025 2:48 pm PST by Joe Rossignol
It's also time for Apple's first product announcement of the year.
Last year, Apple said it would be launching Powerbeats Pro 2 in 2025, and the wireless earbuds are expected to launch very soon.
Powerbeats Pro 2 images found in iOS 18 code
In his Power On newsletter last weekend, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman said the Powerbeats Pro 2 are "due imminently." In addition to Apple filing the...
Definitive Technology is a high end home audio company that puts Bose (and Apple acquired Beats) to shame. Next time in Best Buy, swing by their Magnolia audio store where they stock the line, rather than their regular store, and will typically have DT towers active on their listening display. Historically, one of it's original founders was earlier the founder of Polk Audio, with DT a separate high end company, however now both have been acquired but remain separate entities within their parent company.
It is great to see Apple expanding the functionality of AirPlay 2 into high end systems. Unfortunately, it is a little late for me. DT was on the short list when, along with, Denon, Bower and Wilkins among others, as looking at soundbars and musical, multi room system integration. DT's wireless system fell short and ultimately compromised on Sonus/Alexia based. DT has always had the acoustics, but with the added AirPlay 2 capability, it is a win-win for both DT and Apple.
Yeah, I see "Atmos support" mentioned more and more without any explanation. As far as I can tell, any device that is capable of taking an Atmos input and downmixing it to play through however many speakers it has can claim it 'supports' Atmos. Any actual ability to output sound over a sound stage in anyway representing the Dolby Atmos standard, be it with real or virtual speakers, doesn't seem to come into it. Just because a soundbar can take a Atmos feed and output it to achieve a degree of spatial effect does not mean that output is a Dolby Atmos environment.
It's like when we had all these 720P 'HD ready' TVs a few years ago - they were capable of taking a 1080 signal, downmixing it to 720P and outputting it on a 720P screen, maybe with some processing to make it look sharper than a normal 720P feed, but at the end of the day it wasn't 1080 HD coming out of it, 'HD ready' or not.
Great speakers and great customer service! I've had a Definitive 5:1 setup for sixteen years and they sound great - clear highs and mid-range and crisp bass. About five years ago, one of the speakers had a cone break so I contacted them for a replacement. Eleven years so it's out of warranty, right? Well, they responded quickly and told me to send the speaker back without quoting a price. Less than two weeks after sending the speaker, I received a replacement in pristine condition and an invoice that showed no balance!
