LATEST ADDITIONS

Throwback Thursday
Flashback 1986: The NFL Adopts Instant Replay
SV Staff  |  Mar 16, 2017
Thirty-one years ago this month, the NFL voted to adopt limited use of instant replay as an officiating aid. That first season saw an average of 1.6 reviews per game for a total of 374 plays, only 10 percent of which ended with a reversal of the ruling on the field.
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Audio Video News
Alexa Hack Creates Hilarious (Creepy?) Talking Skull
SV Staff  |  Mar 16, 2017
Amazon’s Alexa, the voice controlled personal assistant that made its first appearance in the Echo smart speaker a couple years ago, is now showing up in dozens of consumer electronics products, including more speakers, TVs, lamps, refrigerators—you name it.
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Audio Video News
Pink Floyd’s Live 8 Reunion Revisited with 3D Sound
SV Staff  |  Mar 15, 2017
Left to right, the team responsible for creating a 360-degree mix of Pink Floyd's historic Live 8 performance: Recording engineer Andy Jackson, Andreas Sennheiser, producer Simon Franglen, co-curator Aubrey Powell, producer Simon Rhodes, and Daniel Sennheiser

Sennheiser and Pink Floyd have partnered to produce a new immersive mix of “Comfortably Numb” and other songs from 2015’s Live 8 concert—the last time David Gilmour, Nick Mason, and Rick Wright played onstage with former band member Roger Waters.

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Integrated Amp Reviews
Rotel A12 Integrated Amplifier Review
Mark Fleischmann  |  Mar 15, 2017

Audio Performance
Features
Ergonomics
Value
PRICE $899

AT A GLANCE
Plus
USB inputs for PC and iOS
Premium Wolfson DAC
Bluetooth aptX
Minus
No DSD decoding
No Wi-Fi, AirPlay, or Ethernet
No streaming services

THE VERDICT
The Rotel A12 accepts direct wired input from PCs and iOS devices and gets the best out of both digital and analog sources with its great-sounding DAC and amp.

Connecting a computer to an audio system with a USB cable seems a perfectly logical idea. It’s simple, it’s direct, and it enables the computer to feed bits to the system and rely on the system’s digital-to-analog conversion. Yet this desirable feature is tantalizingly rare. AVRs and streaming amps tend to rely on wired and wireless network connections rather than on a USB port and asynchronous digital-to-analog converter (DAC) that can take over the clocking functions of the digital bit transfer and reduce the effects of jitter.

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Premiere Design
McIntosh MT5 Turntable
Bob Ankosko  |  Mar 15, 2017
Go ahead, take a few seconds to savor the radiant splendor of the McIntosh MT5. Rolling Stone dubbed it "The Turntable of the Gods." Fitting, indeed, for one of the most striking turntables you'll encounter. Beyond the hypnotic allure of its mirror finish and luminous platter—not to mention the conversation it's sure to stimulate—you'll find a precision device that treats cherished albums with the respect they deserve, while extracting the goosebump-inducing nuances that define your passion for vinyl.
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Audio Video News
How to Install a Projection Screen the Right Way
SV Staff  |  Mar 15, 2017
Dave Rodgers is on a mission to ensure owners of video projection systems, and professionals who set up these systems, get it right. As marketing manager for Garden Grove, California-based Elite Screens, he travels the world promoting the virtues of bringing the movie theater home or, as he likes to say, the larger-than-life experience that only a huge video projection screen can deliver.
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Audio Video NewsNew Products
Samsung QLED TVs Arrive, UHD Blu-ray Player to Follow
SV Staff  |  Mar 14, 2017
Samsung today announced that the 4K QLED televisions it previewed at CES 2017 are now available at Samsung.com and retailers nationwide.

The company also announced that its new UBD-M9500 Ultra HD Blu-ray player will be available in April for $399, followed by...

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Audio Video NewsNew Products
Sony Announces Pricing, Availability for 4K OLED TVs
SV Staff  |  Mar 14, 2017
Sony has announced that pre-sales of the 4K OLED TVs it previewed at CES 2017 begin today at Amazon and BestBuy.com.
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Audio Video News
Society for Information Display Traces OLED History
SV Staff  |  Mar 14, 2017
To commemorate three decades of innovation and success in OLED technology in advance of Display Week 2017, the Society for Information Display (SID) has shared an infographic that traces OLED’s evolution from early R&D through its present day status as a major display technology.
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Signals
Shhh! The IoT is Listening!
Ken C. Pohlmann  |  Mar 14, 2017
Without question, voice control is the hottest thing in audio. Tomorrow it will be something else. Today it is voice control. In particular, Amazon's Alexa is all the rage and is poised to appear in phones, cars, refrigerators, and pretty much anything else that is powered by electrons. But Alexa is really just the gateway drug to the Internet of Things.

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