Special Features

1968 was a busy year for The Beatles. They had traveled to India to study Transcendental Meditation with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, launched their own record label, Apple, and spent months at EMI's studios at Abbey Road recording their mammoth double-album, The Beatles (aka The White Album). But even before that album was released, they were planning what would end up as their post-breakup album and film, Let It Be. That disc was recently reissued by Apple/Capitol/Universal in a super deluxe edition, remixed by Giles Martin and engineer Sam Okell, complete with previously-unreleased bonus tracks, and the film has now been given a reimagining by Oscar-winning director Peter Jackson, in the form of The Beatles: Get Back on the Disney+ streaming service.

In this first episode of Sound & Vision's podcast Pixels & Bits, Editor-in-Chief Rob Sabin and Contributing Technical Editor Steve Guttenberg discuss their roots in high-end audio; the affordable Magnepan MMGi magnetic planar speakers (4:00); the problem with "feature glut" (9:00), and whether Sonos sacrificed too much sound quality to gain simplicity with its Playbar soundbar (14:20).

Comments are welcome on these subjects, along with your suggestions for future episodes!