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Headphone Reviews
Review: Velodyne vPulse
Brent Butterworth  |  Jun 25, 2012

Subwoofer specialist company Velodyne surprised everyone when it entered the headphone business last year. But while you might expect Velodyne’s headphones to incorporate ginormous drivers, passive radiators, high-powered digital amps, and the like, the vPulse is pretty ordinary-looking.

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Headphone Reviews
Review: Altec Lansing Muzx Ultra MZX606
Brent Butterworth  |  Jun 25, 2012

With so many companies slapping their brand on generic IEMS, what’s an easy way to tell who’s serious about sound? Look to the guys selling IEMs with balanced armatures. Most IEMs use dynamic drivers, tiny versions of the drivers in box speakers, but a balanced armature is more like a little motorized teeter-totter that drives a diaphragm.

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Tech2
Popcornflix: Free Streaming Movies
 |  Jun 25, 2012

The annoying thing about Internet-connected smart TVs? Accessing the smarts usually costs you bucks. Probably 95% of the streaming Internet video I watch on my Samsung flat-panel is Netflix ($7.99 a month) or Vudu (usually $4.99 per movie for 720p high-def).

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Will You See Brave in a Dolby Atmos Theater?
Scott Wilkinson  |  Jun 22, 2012
Brave is the new animated feature from Disney and Pixar that opens today across the country. Of course, any new Pixar movie is cause for excitement, but this one is doubly so as the first movie with a soundtrack mixed for the Dolby Atmos cinema sound system, which places speakers all around the audience as well as overhead, creating a truly 3-dimensional soundfield. (For more on Dolby Atmos, click here; for my coverage of the world premier of Brave, click here.)

With any new technology, the only way to gauge its importance is to experience it for yourself. On the other hand, new technologies are often not widely available at first—Atmos has been installed in only 14 theaters around the country—making it difficult for most moviegoers to hear it firsthand. But for those who live near one of these theaters, this is an opportunity to hear what could be the next generation in movie sound.

Do you live near an Atmos theater? (Click here for a list of theaters and locations.) If so, will you make an effort to see Brave there? How far are you willing to go? HT reader Jarod and his wife are driving four hours! Or do you plan to skip the movie altogether? If you do see it in an Atmos theater, let us know your impressions of the system in the comments.

Vote to see the results and leave a comment about your choice.

Will You See Brave in a Dolby Atmos Theater?
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Ask S&V
Bass Management in Blu-ray Player
Scott Wilkinson  |  Jun 22, 2012
I am contemplating a 4.0 setup with two subs in the left and right front speakers using just the bass management of an Oppo BDP-95 Blu-ray player. If I set the left and right front speakers to Large, is the LFE channel redirected and divided between the left and right front channels? Can the center channel be totally re-directed and divided between left and right front? If the surround and back left and right speakers are set to Small, can the low frequencies from those channels be re-directed to the left and right front? Finally, can all these conditions be met simultaneously?

Michael Soderback

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Tech2
Microsoft Surface: to iPad or not to iPad, that is the Question
Geoffrey Morrison  |  Jun 22, 2012

To a surprising amount of excitement, Microsoft announced the a pair of new tablets this week. Web reactions to the new Surface — as you’d expect — were split down party lines: “It’s not an iPad! It’s stupid!” and “It’s not an iPad! It’s the second coming!”

Reality, as usual, is somewhere in the middle. It’s possible the Surface is a worthy iPad competitor something that, so far, we have not seen.

It all comes down to one, seemingly simple, thing...

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Ask S&V
Balanced Output to Unbalanced Input
Scott Wilkinson  |  Jun 21, 2012
I am very close to pulling the trigger on an Oppo BDP-95 Blu-ray player. Is there any benefit to using the XLR stereo outputs even though my Marantz SR7005 A/V receiver does not have such inputs? Is it worth buying XLR-to-RCA cables to take advantage of those connections?

Emmanuel Margetic

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The Connected Life
The Last Big Bite
John Sciacca  |  Jun 21, 2012

This is the tale of two companies whose products you likely interact with on a daily basis. Two companies that aim to capture the Holy Grail of the consumer electronics world: your living room. One company has had great success with its mission, while the other one has repeatedly failed.

The companies are Apple and Microsoft.

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Audio Video NewsThe Big Picture
Dolby Atmos Theater Locations
Scott Wilkinson  |  Jun 20, 2012
As I recount in my coverage of the world premier of Brave, it's the first movie with a soundtrack mixed for the Dolby Atmos sound system, which envelops the audience much more than conventional 5.1 or 7.1. But as a brand new technology, Atmos is currently installed in only 14 theaters around the country.

Do you live near one of them? If so, I strongly recommend seeing Brave there so you can experience the next generation of cinema sound. Here's a list of theaters with Dolby Atmos:

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Subwoofer Reviews
Review: Sonos Sub
Brent Butterworth  |  Jun 20, 2012

Since my first lengthy experience with Sonos products, I've been recommending them as a simpler, lower-cost alternative to traditional multiroom audio systems. It's just so much easier. Plug in a Sonos component, go through a simple config, and you have great-sounding music and Internet radio in any room (or many rooms) in a matter of minutes, all controlled by your smartphone or computer.

But there's one thing a Sonos system doesn't deliver: bass. Now that's fixed.

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