LATEST ADDITIONS

Bob Ankosko | Oct 08, 2012

German designer Helmut Brinkmann is on a never-ending quest for audio perfection, in this case with perhaps the most imperfect of music playback devices—the turntable. As he explains on the Brinkmann Audio Website, “Vinyl record playback is an exceedingly delicate and massively complex undertaking”—one he tackles with mastery in the flagship Balance turntable, which has undergone constant refinement since it was introduced 28 years ago. The goal is to achieve true high fidelity and come as close as possible to attaining the illusion of a live performance.

Audio Video News

TiVo Gets IP Savvy

HT Staff | Oct 08, 2012

IP-based video is finally getting the attention it deserves from America’s favorite DVR company with two new products. The TiVo Stream set-top box transcodes video from a Premiere or Premiere Q DVR, whether live or recorded, and sends it to a secondary TV, tablet, or smartphone—even outside the home. It can stream or download shows simultaneously to multiple mobile devices without interrupting the main show on the primary TV screen. There’s also an IP set-top box that works with the TiVo Premiere Q to allow access to live or recorded TV, video on demand, and broadband-delivered content on every TV in your home. In other TiVo news, TiVo Premiere XL4 is the new name of the TiVo Premiere Elite. The company says this will “alleviate consumer confusion as they shop among TiVo Premiere products.”

Remotely Possible

The Decreasing Frequency of Personality

Darryl Wilkinson | Oct 08, 2012

We lost a pioneer of the modern loudspeaker industry with the passing of William (Bill) Hecht earlier this year on September 12th at age 89. I was only five years old (and I imagine many of you reading this weren’t even born yet) in 1967 when Bill Hecht patented his signature contribution to the audio world, the soft-dome tweeter, arguably the most widely used speaker driver worldwide for the last 30 years. I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Hecht once during my career. In this age of Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and the endless onslaught of 24/7 self-promotion, Bill Hecht was a quiet, self-effacing man who seemed most comfortable behind the scenes. Indeed, throughout his career, Hecht and his company, United Speaker Systems, was known for making the speakers that made other speaker companies famous.

Tech2

Review: Amazon Kindle Fire HD 7-inch

Geoffrey Morrison | Oct 08, 2012

I’m a big fan of the Kindle Fire. So much so, I actually bought one. In article after article, I’ve extolled its virtues. There’s no question the iPad is the best tablet, but the Fire isn’t a tablet per se. It’s a content enjoyment device (CED?).

Surprising absolutely no one, Amazon has released an updated version with a higher resolution screen, some tweaks, and a bit more polish than the original Fire.

Worth an upgrade? Or at least a look?

Music Reviews

The Earl of Duke

Mike Mettler | Oct 05, 2012

Duke Ellington knew how to swing. Ellington (1899–1974) was one of the most prolific and influential songwriters of the 20th Century, a purveyor of what he liked to call American Music (he eschewed being labeled as “just” a jazz artist). You know him, even if you don’t think you know him: “Take the ‘A’ Train,” “Mood Indigo,” and “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing)” are but slivers of his deep (and deep-felt) compositional and performing catalog.

One particular set of highly attuned ears that were influenced by Ellington’s magic happen to belong to Joe Jackson. Yes, that Joe Jackson, he of the skinny-tie New Wave scene of the late ’70s who began reinventing himself at the dawn of the ’80s and never looked back. “I was always ready to move on,” Jackson, 58, said matter-of-factly over lunch in midtown Manhattan this past spring. (Well, to clarify, I had lunch; Jackson was content with “just water.”) “It never occurred to me that listeners may not have been ready to hear it. I thought the whole idea of being an artist was to do something different than everyone else.”

AV Receiver Reviews

Pioneer Elite SC-68 A/V Receiver

Mark Fleischmann | Oct 05, 2012

Audio Performance
Video Performance
Features
Ergonomics
Value

Price: $2,500 At A Glance: 32-bit asynchronous USB DAC • D3 Class D amplification • All the Apple trimmings

Like a parent who charts a child’s growth with colored pencil marks on the wall, I’ve been observing the growth of audio/video receivers since the beginning of the product category. The wall is covered with ascending marks: Here’s the first A/V receiver, with composite video switching and no surround processing. Here’s the first Dolby Surround model, the first Dolby Pro Logic model, the first Dolby Digital model—and the first with DTS, THX, lossless surround, room correction, satellite radio, HDMI, network audio, Apple everything.

Ears On

Happy Birthday Times Three

Mark Fleischmann | Oct 05, 2012

As I wandered around the floor at the recent CEDIA Expo in Indianapolis, a theme emerged. By some remarkable coincidence, three different loudspeaker manufacturers were showing special models to celebrate multiple-decade anniversaries. The brands—Paradigm, KEF, and Wharfedale—continue to be formidable ones. They have been making some of the world's best speakers for a long time, and these anniversary products are worth celebrating. They all include monitors, which are right up my alley: My reference system is based on monitors. Unfortunately, most of these models (except KEF) will be made only in limited quantities. Moreover, they are sold only per pair, so if you want to use them in a 5.1 or other odd-numbered surround configuration, an extra speaker is going to languish in a closet. Therefore I won't be able to get them in for review. However, I'd like to celebrate them here and note their passage through the history of audio.

Tech2

The Joys of PC Ownership

Geoffrey Morrison | Oct 05, 2012

It started with Guild Wars 2: Random crashes, seemingly unconnected. Then it spread to other games. After a few hours with Black Mesa, a crash to the desktop. Occasionally, the dreaded BSOD (Blue Screen of Death).

No amount of driver updates fixed the issue. On the GW 2 tech forums the problem seemed widespread. When an Arena Net employee would bother to respond to one of the many threads about the same issue, they always just said, "Check your RAM."

Yeah, right. In 20 years of fixing and building computers, not once had I ever had a problem with RAM.

So what could it be?

Other Tech SmartStream

‘Fling’ Web Videos to Your TV with Flingo

Barb Gonzalez | Oct 05, 2012

Media streamers and Smart TVs are only as good as the content they can provide. Yes, it's important to have good picture quality, but often the determination of which player you buy comes down to what you can stream to it? If you like TV shows, you want Hulu Plus. For movies make sure you have Netflix or Vudu. Beyond the big-named online streaming services, there is a plethora of special interest websites that stream short-form videos. Thanks to app publisher, Flingo, many of those channels are becoming available on media players and Smart TVs. The Flingo Queue adds the possibility of watching any video you find on the web on TV.

Custom Installation Equipment Reviews

Lutron Sivoia Motorized Shade System

Darryl Wilkinson | Oct 04, 2012

Performance
Build Quality
Value

Price: $10,000 (23 shade system) At A Glance: Up to three-year battery life • Extremely quiet operation • Simple installation

Of all the “this is the coolest damn thing I’ve ever seen” things a home theater/wholehome automation system can do, the one that is consistently the most mesmerizing, most envied, coolest “coolest damn thing” is the control of motorized window treatments. (Although it sounds like something a doctor would prescribe for sick building syndrome, window treatments is the term people in the know use for what you and I would call curtains, blinds, and shades.) If you’ve never experienced motorized shades (or drapes or blinds)—and I mean experienced in the sense that you’ve seen them in action in someone’s home and not in a too-clean-to-be-believable picture-perfect designer’s showroom or a slickly edited online video—it’s difficult to grasp the enchanted feeling and quasi-mystical pleasure that even the least gadget-savvy person can get from being in a room in which some hidden electronic sorcery conjures the shades to obediently open and close (or stop anywhere in between) on command or makes the curtains part like the Red Sea as if Moses were holding a remote control in his hand instead of a staff. Even the reticent Wizard of Oz, himself, would rush out from his hiding place behind the curtain to watch it open and close by remote control if it were motorized.

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