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"  &amp;quot;The Monster Squad,&amp;quot; from Left to Right: Drew Brees, Xzibit, EA&amp;#039;s Chris Erb, Nick Cannon, Tyson Beckford, Sugar Ray Leonard, and Sheila E. Monster CEO Noel Lee rolled into the second day of pre-CES presentations on a Segway, promising to unveil new pieces of the &amp;quot;pure Monster sound.&amp;quot; But for all the glitz and celebrities of varying relevance, Lee&amp;#039;s company\u2014still trying to recover from the loss of Beats by Dre, which didn&amp;#039;t renew its contract with Monster at the end of 2012\u2014didn&amp;#039;t have much to show by way of actual audio quality. Apart from Lee&amp;#039;s two-wheeled agility and some strikingly bedazzled headphones, the excitement of the show was mostly its guests, including Sugar Ray Leonard, who spoke a few sentences of endorsement; Xhibit, who said nothing; Sheila E, who appeared to be transported to the show in a time capsule from the 80s; and Nickelodeon favorite Nick Cannon, who praised Monster&amp;#039;s line of Ncredible headphones for fitting with his &amp;quot;youth empowerment brand.&amp;quot; The play for star power shouldn&amp;#039;t be too surprising. As PM noted at CES 2012, gadget hardware makers are turning increasingly to branding as innovation stalls. And as Monster tries to recover from the loss of Beats, Lee is trying to keep the good times going by pushing headphones as far into the non-headphone world as possible. Monster is partnering with Tumi, for instance, with a new line of headphones, and teaming up with Viacom for a series of (vague) marketing endeavors. Most of the news at the Monster presentation wasn&amp;#039;t, in fact, new. Lee lauded his company&amp;#039;s success with Inspiration headbands, a collection of magnet attachments\u2014some with feathers, other with jewels\u2014for Monster&amp;#039;s Inspiration headphones. He also bragged about Monster&amp;#039;s newfound foray into women&amp;#039;s fashion with its Diamond Tears line. Models wearing these ridiculous cans strutted from the stage through the audience. About the only mention of audio (as opposed to fashion) came from Lee&amp;#039;s brief mention of the tweeters in another new product he announced today, the Katana dock. The multi-room streaming wireless speaker is pretty, sure. But as with other Monster headphones and speakers, whether it makes anything besides Britney Spears sound good is doubtful.      "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/audio/a8579/monster-offers-celebs-but-not-much-sound-at-ces-14950200/>