LATEST ADDITIONS

KLH, the iconic audio brand co-founded by audio visionary Henry Kloss in 1957, is well known for the great sounding two-and three-way acoustic-suspension speakers it designed and built in the 1960s and ’70s. All had simple names — Model Four, Model Five, etc. — and featured unassuming but nicely finished wood-veneer cabinets. What you may not know is that KLH also introduced the first full-range electrostatic speaker — the legendary Model Nine.

Heat is the enemy of electronics, including all of that audio gear crammed into your A/V cabinet. In the early days of electronic entertainment, vacuum tubes (or as our Brit friends call them, valves) were the thing—the only thing. As one of my teachers once explained, the key to vacuum tubes was the little man with a switch inside. But he must have been sweaty, as a tube device could serve well as a space heater.

Back in the day our electronic entertainment consisted of little more than a radio. The family gave no thought to what was inside until one of the tubes failed, prompting a visit to the local drug store with its tube tester and ready supply of replacements.

Then came hi-fi and an interesting thing happened. Because of the heat issue, relegated largely to the output stages of an amplifier, separates were born. The separate preamp driving an amp on a separate chassis was a popular way to go.

The divide, between separates and the integrated amplifier (or perhaps AVR), still exists today in both the 2-channel and home theater worlds. Long forgotten is its genesis, since with solid state electronics heat is no longer an issue.

Or is it?...

Legend has it that director Zack Snyder was streaming his Dawn of Justice one day and was unhappy with the color, specifically red, a shade relevant to much more than a certain Last Son of Krypton. And so, the studio took the unusual step of remastering the movie from the existing 4K video transfer and rereleasing it, with the new version addressing Snyder's crimson concerns as well as showcasing the de rigueur IMAX scenes in their full and correct 1.43:1 aspect ratio.

Yes, it had to be done. Consider it a form of spring cleaning. The “it” is in this case is a streaming service — HBO Max to be specific — that I decided to drop. My video streaming plate had become over-filled during the pandemic as I spent much of my free time at home, and now that I was vaxxed up and ready to re-engage (as much as possible) with the world, I made the decision to dump at least one service. It’s not that I wanted to lose it — in the final days of my active subscription, I of course happened upon a new original series, Mare of Easttown, that was right up my alley — but something had to give, and it was going to be HBO Max.