Santa’s coming in a couple weeks. Is your holiday shopping list complete? And let’s not forget about your own personal wish list. Here we present Part 1 of our 2019 Holiday Gift Guide, featuring gear that grabbed our attention for one reason or another. Unless otherwise noted, we haven’t done hands-on testing, so be sure to check return policies and, if possible, take items of interest for a test drive.
The Beatles were, for all intents and purposes, over. While new, original music would follow in May 1970 with the release of Let It Be, the balance of the recording sessions for what ultimately became September 1969's Abbey Road is generally acknowledged as the in-studio swan song for those four Liverpool moptops who forever defined, if not outright created, the popular music artform in the 1960s.
Q I use an Oppo UDP-203 Ultra HD Blu-ray player and an Apple TV as sources, with the signals fed through a Marantz SR7011 AV receiver to an Epson Home Cinema 5050UB projector. From what I understand, the player, projector and receiver can all upconvert standard- and high-def signals to 4K. Which one should I let do the upconversion? —Michael Antoniello, via email
AT A GLANCE Plus
Rich, detailed sound
Solid bass
Elegant fit and finish
Light and comfortable
Minus
A little pricey
THE VERDICT
The 99 Classics check all the right boxes: They’re light and comfortable, beautifully built, and sound great.
Endless fascination. That’s the best way to describe my recent obsession with the 50-year-old Beatles classic Abbey Road. I’ve listened to the album hundreds of times over the years on a variety of formats, starting with the original vinyl pressing, yet listening to Giles Martin’s tasteful and, ultimately, reverential remix is like hearing this magnificent collection of songs for the first time.
Of course, a good bit of the credit goes to Meze Audio’s stylish 99 Classics...
Subwoofer Performance Features Build Quality Value
PRICE $2,546 (as tested)
AT A GLANCE Plus
Balanced sound with effortless treble
Solid bass extension
Impressive performance from compact subwoofer
Minus
Center speaker can sound slightly chesty when listening off-axis
THE VERDICT
DALI joins the pantheon of excellent compact, affordable 5.1 speaker packages with this system based around the overachieving Oberon 1.
Over the past 25 years, the Danish Audiophile Loudspeaker Industries company has grown from a small and relatively obscure maker (in the U.S. market, at least) to a much more major player in the world's crowded loudspeaker arena. The Danes' latest move toward the broader marketplace is the Oberon series, an affordable range consisting of two towers, two bookshelf/standmount models, one on-wall, and one center- channel—all two-way, vented- enclosure designs.
The time has come to not only celebrate the holidays, but also our favorite movies and TV shows, in high- or ultra high-definition, with Atmos sound (where available), and with extras galore. Once again, we invite you to sit back and peruse our picks of the year's most exciting boxed sets to give and to receive.
Denon today introduced a $249 all-in-one soundbar featuring DTS Virtual:X processing, which simulates a DTS:X-like immersive sound field without using up-firing height speakers.