LATEST ADDITIONS

Brent Butterworth  |  Jul 04, 2012

Back in the mid-1950s, there weren’t a whole lot of stereo recordings available. How, then, could an audio engineer evaluate the equipment he was designing? For Paul Klipsch, founder of Klipsch Speakers, the answer was to make his own recordings.

Scott Wilkinson  |  Jul 03, 2012
In this episode, I show you around my new podcast studio, which is also my home recording studio, and then answer questions from the chat room, including how to position speakers, the different types of 3D for commercial cinema and home, HDMI cables, the difference between THX post processing and audio codecs from Dolby and DTS, full-range speakers and subwoofers, Dolby Atmos, Disney's WOW setup disc, and much more.

Run Time: 1:02:21

Bob Ankosko  |  Jul 03, 2012
Simple, modern, elegant—the PS1 from Cue Acoustics is definitely not your father’s speaker. Think of it as a forward-looking system for discriminating listeners who crave a simple setup that’s free of wires, hulking speakers, and an ugly stack of components (like the ones collecting dust in the back of your den). Promising big sound and a vivid soundstage, the PS1 system is extremely compact and provides everything you need to pump up the volume except an audio source: a pair of speakers, each with its own built-in 150-watt digital amplifier/processor, and a wireless transmitter that streams uncompressed audio from your TV, PC, smartphone, tablet, you-name-it, to wherever you decide to put the speakers (which, by the way, must be plugged into an AC outlet). Want to grab your tablet and play impromptu DJ at a party? As long as the tablet supports the DLNA connection standard, you can stream audio wirelessly to the PS1’s iPhone-size transmitter, which runs it through a signal processor and sends it to the speakers; otherwise, you can go old school and plug a cable into the transmitter’s digital (optical S/PDIF) or analog (3.5mm stereo) input.
Steve Guttenberg  |  Jul 03, 2012
In the beginning there was "lamp cord." Speaker cable was something you bought off a spool at the local hardware store, but Noel Lee had a better idea: audiophile speaker cables. He had a day job at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories, where he worked as a laser-fusion engineer. In his spare time he played drums in an all-Asian country-rock band called Asian Wood.
Leslie Shapiro  |  Jul 03, 2012

By any measure, Disney’s enjoyable Mars epic John Carter was a fiscal fiasco, netting only $72 million in the US and $282.4 million total worldwide, barely clearing its $250 million price tag. Ouch.

Scott Wilkinson  |  Jul 02, 2012
After what has seemed like an interminable wait, Vizio's 21:9 CinemaWide LED-LCD flat-panel TV is finally available to consumers at Vizio's website. With a native pixel resolution of 2560x1080, this XVT-series set is the first ultra-widescreen flat panel available in the US that displays 2.35:1 movies without black bars above and below the image.
Geoffrey Morrison  |  Jul 02, 2012

Seriously. This thing has a laser. A blue laser that makes. . . green light?  Color me confused, and intrigued.

Sporting Casio's unique "Hybrid" light source firing at a 1,024x768 DLP, the slim $1,399 XJ-A146 is intriguing on many levels. But can it work in a home theater?

We shall see.

Jon Iverson  |  Jul 01, 2012
Register to win a ZVOX ZBASE 555 Surround Soundbar (MSRP $399.99) we are giving away.

According to ZVOX, unlike conventional home theater systems or "sound bars," the ZVOX 555 creates room-filling three-dimensional sound from a single low-profile cabinet. No external speakers or subwoofers. No speaker wires. Just place your flat panel TV on top of the ZVOX system, plug in one connecting wire -- and you're ready to go.

[This sweepstakes is now closed.]

Scott Wilkinson  |  Jun 29, 2012
Video displays rarely come out of the box looking their best. We always recommend that you select the display's Movie or Cinema picture mode and use a setup disc such as High-Definition Benchmark, Digital Video Essentials: HD Basics, or Disney's World of Wonder (WOW) to set the basic picture controls.

This typically gets you relatively close to the display's best performance, but to get even closer, you must calibrate the display's grayscale and color gamut if the necessary controls are available in the menu system. You can hire a professional to perform the calibration at a cost of several hundred dollars, or you can do it yourself if you have the required equipment, software, and training, which can cost thousands of dollars. But for those of us who want to wring every last drop of performance from our displays, it's money well spent.

Have you had your display's grayscale and color gamut fully calibrated? If so, did you hire a pro to do it, or did you do it yourself? If not, why not?

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

Is Your Display Fully Calibrated?
Scott Wilkinson  |  Jun 29, 2012
I would like to install a 70-inch or larger high-end, networked TV in a new home-theater area. Please provide a few brand recommendations as well as LED, LCD, or plasma and why. I'm also wondering about your take on the Orb Audio speakers for that "I have never in my life experienced such completely amazing sound" for a 7.1 system. Feel free to make several other speaker manufacturer suggestions, keeping in mind a small, corner ceiling-mounted speaker system.

Jeff Moline

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