LATEST ADDITIONS

Tower Speaker Reviews
Aperion Intimus 6T-DB Hybrid XD Speaker System
Fred Manteghian  |  Mar 02, 2009
Price: $3,769 At A Glance: Three-way center for superior dialogue intelligibility • Awesome room-filling surrounds • Classy good looks

Life’s Too Short for Bad Shoes

Buy a pair of shoes online that don’t fit quite right, and it’s easy enough to box them back up for the round-trip refund. You wouldn’t think you could say the same about a 70-pound speaker like the Aperion Intimus 6T, but mailorder company Aperion Audio makes it almost as easy. The Portland, Oregon–based company manufactures in China and purports to pass the savings on to you. Aperion wants you to be 100-percent satisfied, so it gives you 30 days to try the speakers at home. The company will even pick up shipping costs both ways if you decide not to keep the speakers. So even if you can’t go to a store to listen to them, Aperion speakers are a no-risk purchase. Still, six boxes full of speakers worth almost $4,000 is hardly an impulse buy like a $39 pair of Converse All Star Sailor Jerry high tops on eBay, so listen up.

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Rachel Getting Married—Sony Pictures Classics (Blu-ray)
Kris Deering  |  Mar 02, 2009
Video: 4.5/5
Audio: 4/5
Extras: 3/5
When Kym returns to the Buchman family home for the wedding of her sister Rachel, she brings a long history of personal crisis, family conflict and tragedy along with her. The wedding couple's abundant party of friends and relations have gathered for a joyful weekend of feasting, music and love, but Kym - with her biting one-liners and flair for bombshell drama - is a catalyst for long-simmering tensions in the family dynamic.
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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Ronin—20th Century Fox (Blu-ray)
Kris Deering  |  Mar 02, 2009
Video: 3.5/5
Audio: 4.25/5
Extras: 1/5
When Kym returns to the Buchman family home for the wedding of her sister Rachel, she brings a long history of personal crisis, family conflict and tragedy along with her. The wedding couple's abundant party of friends and relations have gathered for a joyful weekend of feasting, music and love, but Kym - with her biting one-liners and flair for bombshell drama - is a catalyst for long-simmering tensions in the family dynamic.
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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Transporter 3—Lionsgate (Blu-ray)
Kris Deering  |  Mar 02, 2009
Video: 5/5
Audio: 3.5/5
Extras: 3.5/5
Frank Martin has been pressured into transporting Valentina, the kidnapped daughter of Leonid Vasilev, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency for the Ukraine, from Marseilles through Stuttgart and Budapest until he ends up in Odessa on the Black Sea. Along the way, with the help of Inspector Tarconi, Frank has to contend with the people who strong armed him to take the job, sent by Vasilev to intercept him, and the general non-cooperation agents of his passenger. Despite Valentina's cynical disposition and his resistance to get involved, Frank and Valentina fall for each other, while escaping from one life-threatening situation after another.
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AV Receiver Reviews
Integra DTR-9.9 A/V Receiver
Thomas J. Norton  |  Mar 02, 2009
Price: $2,600 At A Glance: Outstanding audio and video performance • All the latest Audyssey and THX Ultra2 Plus features • Uniquely flexible video calibration controls

Covering All the Bases

If you sometimes get nostalgic for the days of two-channel audio, you’re not alone. Life was simple then. You plugged in your CD player here, your turntable over there, hooked up the preamp to the power amp (unless you were a hair-shirt audiophile with an all-in-one, integrated amp), and you were done. Then you would select the source, adjust the volume, sit back, and listen.

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Audio Video News
Would You Like Sirius XM with Your DirecTV?
Mark Fleischmann  |  Mar 02, 2009
Would you like to subscribe to both satellite radio and satellite television in one convenient package? You might get a chance if Liberty Media's John Malone gets his way. He's thinking of bundling Sirius XM, in which he now owns a minority interest, with DirecTV, in which he owns a controlling interest.
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Audio Video News
Sherwood cuts the wires with Bluetooth-capable music-streaming receiver
SV Staff  |  Mar 02, 2009
Sherwood America has unveiled a new A/V receiver with a handy optional feature: Bluetooth connectivity. Thanks to the BT-R7 dongle, the new RD-7503 receiver can pull stereo audio off of any compatible Bluetooth device, from iPhones to notebook...
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Kim Wilson Blog
MondoMix Music
uavKim Wilson  |  Feb 28, 2009

If you love world music, you need to head on over to <A HREF="http://www.mp3.mondomix.com/">MondoMix</A> for a touch of Cuban rhythms, Jamaican reggae, Indian Vedic chants, or beats from the Balkins. Explore the world of music in Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas. Delve into the different genres that include Pop/Rock, Jazz, Sacred, and Hip-Hop along with the traditional sounds of the region.

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Audio Video News
Eric Clapton's Layla on the World's Smallest Radio
SV Staff  |  Feb 27, 2009
We're usually on about the biggest and best sound equipment you can buy, but in this case small is definitely cool. Some researchers at UCLA Berkeley have created a radio out of a single carbon nanotube, making it the smallest radio in the...
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Audio Video News
"Coraline," yes. 3-D, no.
SV Staff  |  Feb 27, 2009
I haven't had much use for 3-D. But with the advent of RealD — and since I am, after all, the entertainment editor of this magazine — I figured it was high time for me to check out the latest state of the 3-D art. And what better film to do...
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