LATEST ADDITIONS

JVC developed LCoS (Liquid Crystal on Silicon) technology for television years ago so it should be no surprise that JVC's considerable experience with this technology, which they call D-ILA or Direct-drive Image Light Amplifier, has recently produced a product with few peers. Last year the first JVC 1080p LCoS RPTV came out, and JVC has since taken to calling these sets "HD-ILA." Whatever the name, last year's JVC 1080p set was widely considered one of the top two available. Sony's SXRD rear projectors (different name, same basic technology) probably offered the stiffest competition.

"The Cube" is the first stop in testing a B&O loudspeaker. At 12x12x13 meters it is the world's largest privately owned sound test room. It is not an anechoic chamber. Instead, B&O built a space large enough to use MLS measurements to a high degree of precision. MLS measures the speaker's response to an impulse. This result is then gated to eliminate the effect of the sound reflected off the walls. The reproduced and filtered impulse is then converted back to a frequency response (techies will recognize this as a Fourier transformation). The two walls of the chamber are damped, not to eliminate reflections but to speed up the time between impulses (a number of impulses are averaged for greater precision). The support structure shown here holds the loudspeaker (in the photo it's one of B&O's very tall, pencil-thin designs). The mike is visible in the distance. Measurements are made in 140 different directions.

Speakers for cordless phones, another B&O product category, must be tiny. Looks like it also might make an interesting tweeter, though probably not, as the frequency response of telephone drivers is band limited by design.