Thomas J. Norton

Sort By: Post Date | Title | Publish Date

Thomas J. Norton | Apr 06, 2021 | 3 comments

The big news story of last week wasn't out of Washington D.C., or about the current state of Covid, or who has just cancelled who or what, or even the new line of TVs ready to flood your local Costco, Sam's Club, Best Buy, or any number of other retailers. It involved a giant cargo ship, the Ever Given, getting stuck in the Suez canal with hundreds of other ships lined up behind it and unable to get through with their cargo. What's this have to do with home audio and video?

A/V Veteran

Are Your Ready to Build Your Own Loudspeakers?

Thomas J. Norton | Mar 23, 2021 | 3 comments

Building your own speakers from scratch Is an activity I've written about before. But that first blog is now accessible only by delving deeply into our Wayback Time Machine, so a revisit to this intriguing audio subculture is worth a follow-up here. Read on to find out if you have what it takes to take on a DIY speaker project.

A/V Veteran

Dune, Theaters, and Streaming

Thomas J. Norton | Mar 09, 2021 | 3 comments

The changes to how we watch media resulting from the closing of theaters due to the Covid-19 pandemic have been unprecedented. True, not all theaters are closed. Here in the wilds of Florida my local AMC has been open for some time. But its current slate of movies is hardly the stuff of dreams: Boogie, Chaos Walking, The Mauritanian (not The Mandalorian!), The Little Things, The Marksman, The Croods: A New Age, and Raya and the Last Dragon. The latter is the only one tempting me to break my year long hiatus from that theater's Dolby Vision and IMAX auditoriums, but not quite enough for me to do so even though I've now joined the few, the proud, and the vaccinated.

A whole spate of potential blockbusters have either been released to streaming or are being held over until the studios are confident that if they show them (in theaters) they will come.

A/V Veteran

Taming the Room Monster

Thomas J. Norton | Feb 23, 2021 | 5 comments

Anyone who has read any of my speaker reviews over the past few years knows that my current room has bass issues (the photo here is, sadly, NOT my room!!). Welcome me to the club; rooms without bass problems are few and far between. Only the obsessed worries about a peak at 30Hz, but erratic response higher in the bass, particularly in the 80 to 200Hz region, can have serious negative effects on the overall sound. To little response there can reduce a source's natural weight, particularly on large scale music or home theater effects. Too much and the bass sounds bloated.

Once you get above a certain frequency, usually between 200 and 500 Hz (known as the Schroeder frequency, after the physicist who first identified it and not the Peanuts character), the room's effect on the sound becomes less significant.

4K TV Reviews LCD TV Reviews TV Reviews

TCL 6-Series 65R635 Roku LCD Ultra HDTV Review

Thomas J. Norton | Feb 17, 2021 | 4 comments

Performance
Features
Ergonomics
Value

PRICE $1,000

AT A GLANCE
Plus
Effective, 160- zone local-dimming
App-based color calibration
Affordable price
Minus
Image quality reduced at off-center seats
Some green push with HDR content

THE VERDICT
TCL's 6-Series UHD Roku TV brings the benefits of Mini-LED backlighting to a very affordable price point.

In late 2019, TCL flew me to the company's U.S. offices in California to spend an afternoon with its new flagship, the 75Q825 8-Series UHD Roku TV, a 75-inch 4K LCD model. Not all of the set's firmware was complete, but we took advantage of the opportunity to give our readers a sneak preview. The 75Q825's signature feature was TCL's use of mini-LEDs for backlighting, and at its then price of $3,000, it was something of an outlier for a brand associated with budget TVs.

A/V Veteran

The Court Jester Comes to Blu-ray

Thomas J. Norton | Feb 09, 2021 | 0 comments

When fishing around for a film to show on a movie night with friends, before Covid-19 rudely interrupted, I recommended The Court Jester. I had it on DVD, but I knew it looked good enough to satisfy non-critical viewers who likely also wouldn't be bothered by its 1950's mono sound. We passed on it that time around, but that old DVD has now taken its last spin. A spanking new Blu-ray of the film has just been released in a video transfer nothing short of stunning.

The movie was originally shot in VistaVision, a widescreen process used (mainly by Paramount) in the 1950's and 60's. It's long-since been dropped as a release format, but is sometimes employed for in-camera special effects created for non-VistaVision productions, particularly in the pre-CGI era. It was used, for example, in the creation of the effects for some of the early Star Wars and Star Trek films when CGI wasn't yet a thing.

Power Amplifier Reviews

NAD Masters M28 Seven-Channel Power Amplifier Review

Thomas J. Norton | Jan 27, 2021 | 0 comments

Performance
Features
Ergonomics
Value

PRICE $4,999

AT A GLANCE
Plus
Exceptional performance
Exceptional build quality
Dimmable power indicator light
Minus
Pricey

THE VERDICT
It doesn’t come cheap, but NAD’s Masters M28 is a genuinely unique product designed to compete sonically with some of the highest-end amps on the market, regardless of how many channels they offer.

Whether you fall into the "all well-designed amps sound the same when used within their limits" camp or the "amp selection is critical" army of true believers, it's arguable that prior to the turn of the millennium amps designed for high-performance audio had fallen into a rut. They were so good that the advertising for them had to become increasingly creative. But a parade of skilled designers remained convinced that the new concepts they had come up with were superior, and audiophiles still lined up to buy them. The turf was always familiar: tubes remained tubes with their lovable quirkiness, and solid state was dominated by class-A/B designs as it had been since the transistor was invented.

A/V Veteran

Audio/Video Gear: When to Upgrade...or Not

Thomas J. Norton | Jan 26, 2021 | 2 comments

I recently bought a new car. It wasn't planned, though perhaps long overdue. Old Betsy...um Mazda...took it on herself to make a frontal run on a low curb at a high enough speed to rip into the oil pan and take out one of the engine mounts. No injuries to this or any other humans, nor any perceptible damage to the curb, but my insurance company decided that it was time to send my 15-year-old filly to pasture.

But, you ask, how does this apply to A/V gear. For starters, the latter tends to last a long time unless the winds blow, the ground shakes, a fire intrudes, or the crick rises.

Surround Sound System Reviews Tower Speaker Reviews

Monitor Audio Bronze 200 Surround Speaker System Review

Thomas J. Norton | Jan 20, 2021 | 2 comments

Speakers
Performance
Build Quality
Value

Subwoofer
Performance
Features
Build Quality
Value

PRICE (as tested): $4,010

AT A GLANCE
Plus
Affordable price
Detailed overall sound
Good envelopment with Atmos soundtracks
Minus
Towers have limited deep bass
Ordinary cosmetics

THE VERDICT
Monitor Audio's Bronze 6G system is a remarkable testament to how much speaker you can get today for a reasonable price.

Britain-based Monitor Audio offers a wide range of loudspeakers at prices spanning from the bargain basement up to the penthouse that are cleverly named for a variety of metals: Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze. The company must have run out of suitable metallic names when its Monitor series was introduced a few years ago— Steel or Aluminum (or Aluminium!) clearly wouldn't do. But while that budget-priced series represents the entry point to the Monitor Audio's offerings, our saga here covers the next step up: Bronze 6G, the sixth generation of the Bronze line.

A/V Veteran

Farscape Remembered

Thomas J. Norton | Jan 12, 2021 | 8 comments

If you were under 10-years old in the early twenty-aughts you might never have experienced a TV series considered by many to be one of the best, if not the best, science fiction series ever produced for television. Yes, the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica came along shortly after. Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis ran seemingly forever. And I risk permanent expulsion from the club if I don't mention everything Star Trek. There are others shows that have their fans as well. What, no love here for Lost or Game of Thrones (if we can include them in this category—sci-fi is often a big tent, to the dismay of purists). I love both of these in their own ways, but neither of them ended well.

One that did end well is my candidate for the best ever. Over the recent holidays I revisited the first season of Farscape on Blu-ray.

Search form

Thomas J. Norton

Pages