The return of the KLH was big news at 2018 CES. Industry pundits and audio enthusiasts looked on with great interest and a little skepticism. Could the iconic brand cofounded by hi-fi pioneer Henry Kloss in 1957 be resurrected in a way that would pay homage to its founder? We recently caught up with David P. Kelley, who acquired the brand in 2017, to learn more about what the new KLH has accomplished since then and to get a preview of what’s on the horizon. Indeed, the future is bright as Kelley reveals plans for a new speaker built around the acoustic-suspension principles Henry Kloss made famous.
David Crosby spoke extensively with music editor Mike Mettler just a few months before he sadly passed away at age 81 on January 18. The voice of a generation, Croz discusses his knack for recognizing the chemistry he had with certain musicians, how the song “Compass” helped recalibrate his songwriting acumen, what album of his he’d like most to be listened to a half-century into the future, and much more.
Consumer electronics in general but TVs in particular have a decades-long history of providing amazing value. Except for an unprecedented and short-lived Covid-driven spike in 2020-2021, retail TV prices have been relatively immune to inflation over the past four decades while the cost of almost everything crept up. (Lately, of course, inflationary pressures have caused the price of everything to spike up.) So if you’re thinking about updating your TV, now is a great time to do it. But don’t just take our word for it. We checked in with Robert (Bob) O’Brien, TV expert and co-founder of Display Supply Chain Consultants (DSCC), to get his take on TV pricing as we head into the holiday season.
The Beatles’ Revolver further solidified the creative validity of the rock album format when it was released in August 1966. Seeing how Revolver’s Super Deluxe Edition multidisc LP/CD box set incarnations have been officially released via Apple/UMG today, October 28—not to mention the inherently excellent Revolver Atmos mix by producer Giles Martin concurrently being made available digitally—I had to find out why I needed to get that Atmos mix into my listening life. Therefore, Martin and I got on Zoom together recently to discuss exactly that. He also shared with me what his late father, original Beatles producer George Martin, thought of his multichannel mixing skills. These are all perfect topics for this month’s Spatial Audio File (he said he said), so read on, read on. . .
Ambitious, original, yet largely underappreciated, the first Star Trek film stands alone. Rushed into theaters in December 1979 with unfinished special effects and a studio-mandated runtime of only 130 minutes, it was not the version director Robert Wise intended.
15 Minutes with Bill Mandel, Co-Manager at HDR10+ Technologies, LLC
Sound & Vision talks high dynamic range and the evolution of HDR10+ with Bill Mandel, head of the Visual Solutions Lab at Samsung Research America and co-manager of HDR10+ Technologies, LLC.
15 Minutes with Robert (Bob) O’Brien, Co-Founder, Display Supply Chain Consultants (DSCC)
Advances in TV technology are coming fast and from many directions these days, giving consumers — and home theater enthusiasts, in particular — more reasons than ever to consider upgrading to a new set. Whether we’re talking Mini-LED, MicroLED, or QD-OLED, a new take on OLED technology, there’s a lot to keep up with. We tracked down industry insider Robert (Bob) O’Brien to get his take on what has become a very dynamic space.
"I'm just very grateful we're allowed to, by grace, manifest some really, really high-standard, quality music. We do not have to be victims of static."
That's rock legend Carlos Santana, succinctly summarizing two things at once: a) the fine art of making music worth listening to, and b) being able to hear that music as clearly as the artist intended. (To that end, Carlos and I wound up switching phone lines during the front end of our conversation in order to hear each other with a much better-sounding connection, but that's another story.)
When the original NTSC broadcast system gave way to high-definition television at the end of the 20th century it was the first major upgrade in almost 50 years, so it was a huge deal. A dozen or so years later, TV makers rolled out the first 4K Ultra HDTVs, which accounted for three-quarters of the 45 million TVs shipped in the U.S. last year, and, now, 8K beckons. But when will the next-gen TV format actually start to take off? To get a handle on how things are progressing in the world of 8K, we decided to check in with Chris Chinnock, executive director of the 8K Association (8KA).
Ian Anderson has never taken his foot off the creative gas when it comes to both producing new music and harvesting the wealth of catalog material from Jethro Tull, the groundbreaking prog/folk hybrid band he co-founded in 1967. That said, considering just how active an artist Anderson has been over the past six-plus decades, it might surprise you to learn the stalwart British collective's latest release, The Zealot Gene (InsideOut Music) is in fact the first new Tull studio album in more than 19 years.
A conversation with Jeff Clark, Director of Software Engineering, Audyssey Laboratories
Dealing with the effects of room acoustics is one of the biggest challenges in getting a movie or music system to sound “right.” Even the best speakers can sound awful — muted and boomy or bright and anemic — in an acoustically difficult environment. For the past 18 years, Audyssey Labs has shown a relentless dedication to delivering and continually refining technology that improves sound quality without the listener having to intervene. We sat down with Jeff Clark, director of software engineering, to discuss Audyssey’s past and present efforts to “push any listening scenario as close to a reference listening experience as possible.”
Like many of the great bands from the classic rock era of the latter half of the 20th century, British hard-rock stalwarts Deep Purple cut their teeth with an uncanny ability to turn cover songs into original statements. If it pleases the aural court, may we present the Rod Evans/Ritchie Blackmore era of the band's trippy, deeply shaded 1968 bookend renditions of Joe South's "Hush" and Neil Diamond's "Kentucky Woman" as prime evidence? (Case closed.)
"I heard a bunch of things in it I had never heard before."
That's Rob Baker, guitarist of Canada's still-favorite sons The Tragically Hip, recounting the feelings he experienced upon hearing the recent, fully completed Dolby Atmos mix of his band's seminal February 1991 release, Road Apples for the very first time.
A conversation with Tony Ostrom, president of the Wireless Speaker & Audio Association.
We’ve tracked the progress of the Wireless Speaker & Audio Association (WiSA) since its humble beginnings many years ago. A lot has changed since those early days when the Association showed up in a CES hotel room to demonstrate a home theater system devoid of speaker cables. It was a remarkable demo, not just because it worked, but because the enabling technology made it possible to send uncompressed 24-bit/96-kHz audio signals through the air from an AV receiver to seven speakers and a subwoofer. Today, wireless music is everywhere and better than ever but in those days transmitting hi-res audio wirelessly was a daunting task. It’s been a few years since we checked in with the Association so we caught up with WiSA president Tony Ostrom to get an update on the technology and the products it enables.
Bob Clearmountain knows how to move mountains with his mixes. Ok, ok, maybe I'm exaggerating just a little bit here—but the fact is, Clearmountain has been a go-to mixer/engineer/producer for A-list musicians for decades, having shepherded the sound of landmark albums by artists like Bruce Springsteen, The Rolling Stones, Simple Minds, Bryan Adams, and Roxy Music. (And that barely scratches the surface of his top-shelf mixing C.V., btw.)