The sleek, silver LST-3410A offers an attractive combination of performance, functionality, and features, including both ATSC and NTSC OTA tuners; a QAM tuner for unencrypted cable channels (not tested); a 160GB hard-disk recorder; and the easy-to-navigate, feature-packed TV Guide On Screen program grid.
Even before you listen, you can see that the Linn AV 51 has an attitude. It stares back at you with a smirk. It's not a defiant Robert DeNiro "You talkin' to <I>me</I>?" but more of a Jack Nicholson "Wait'll you get a load of this."
Linn picks fanciful names for its products, almost all of which incorporate the letter <I>k</I>: Klimax, Sondek, Akurate, Ittok, Kinos, Komri, etc. To hang a Linn speaker on the wall, you use a Brakit. To integrate multiroom/multisource systems, Linn offers the Knekt.
The war of the high-resolution audio formats has ended in an unofficial truce, with both sides declaring face-saving victories. Not everyone has won. Consumers who took sides and bought either a DVD-Audio or SACD player lost big time, because they're left unable to access all of the great software available in the other format.
Price: $2,700 At A Glance: Receiver priced, separates performance and power • Next-gen Internet connectivity and versatility • Sophisticated sonics, simplified setup
Everybody’s Been Burned
Are you weighed down by a boat anchor of an expensive, powerful, but obsolete A/V receiver that doesn’t have HDMI inputs or processing for the latest lossless audio formats? You’re not alone. Everybody’s been burned by fast-moving technological change. You could unload your boat anchor for a few hundred dollars on eBay or AudiogoN and start over. But should you? Consider that today’s cost-conscious race-to-the-bottom A/V receivers and even some separates seem to be getting cheaper but worse sounding, not better. But if Marantz’s AV7005 surround processor and MM7055 amplifier are as good as the hype suggests, this could be the way to go. And in case of future obsolescence, at least now you’re into separates, which makes upgrades a less pricey proposition.
With flagship A/V receivers approaching apartment building size and black-hole heft, there’s a great deal to be said about separating the brains of the operation from the brawn. If you choose separates, it means you never have to borrow a construction crane to hoist a feature-laden, mega-watt seven- or eight-channel receiver onto a tall equipment rack.
Imagine that General Motors or Ford or DaimlerChrysler held a patent on the internal-combustion engine, of which only one model was available to vehicle manufacturers worldwide. That's similar to the situation faced by projector manufacturers who wish to use that most wondrous of Texas Instruments technologies, Digital Light Processing (DLP), which packs more than a million micromirrors onto a Digital Micromirror Device (DMD) chip approximately the size of a 35mm slide. (If you're unfamiliar with DMD, be sure to read "From Cathode Ray to Digital Micromirror: A History of Electronic Projection Display," at <A HREF="http://www.dlp.com/dlp/resources/whitepapers/pdf/titj03.pdf">www.dlp.com....)
Back when surround sound meant Dolby Pro-Logic, most informed enthusiasts preferred dipole or bipole surround speakers. Since Pro-Logic was an analog matrix system that derived four channels from two, resulting in a monophonic surround channel, the idea was to create as diffuse a surround sound field as possible to avoid "localizing" the position of the speakers and to prevent the creation of a "phantom" center channel for those sitting midway between the surrounds.
Back when surround sound meant Dolby Pro-Logic, most informed enthusiasts preferred dipole or bipole surround speakers. Since Pro-Logic was an analog matrix system that derived four channels from two, resulting in a monophonic surround channel, the idea was to create as diffuse a surround sound field as possible to avoid "localizing" the position of the speakers and to prevent the creation of a "phantom" center channel for those sitting midway between the surrounds.
It starts with the box. These components are packaged in boxes that appear to be built with greater precision and care than most of the mainstream home theater <I>electronics</I> you're likely to encounter. A miniature homeless person's mansion, I imagined, lifting these two solid jewels from their form fitting enclosures.