LATEST ADDITIONS

A new study out of London reveals what we all already knew. 70% of DVR owners say that they cannot live without their DVR. Almost 9 out of 10 Americans said they can't live without their DVR. Okay, "can't live" might be a bit of an...

The fruitful collaboration between Pioneer and speaker designer extraordinaire Andrew Jones continues with the EX Series Reference Class Architectural Loudspeakers. Demoed without sub, they produced tight, fast, strong bass with the kind of silky midrange Pioneer EX speaker fans have come to love. In fact, they are in the running for best sound of show. Murderously brilliant in-walls. Go figure. Drivers borrowed from Pioneer's more conventional EX speaker models include ceramic graphic tweeters, magnesium mids, and aramid/carbon composite woofers. Pioneer also added two receivers to the line. The more noteworthy one is the SC-07 ($2200) which uses the same digital amplification found in the top-line monster SC-09. If you'd prefer THX to digital amps, try the VSX-03TXH ($1000) which is Select2-certified. Both include HDMI jitter-reduction circuits and are shipping now.

Yesterday's photo opportunity missed a big piece of Snell news: Legendary designer Joe D'Appolito is now on staff fulltime. It's already paying dividends with three new lines, all of which repurpose the same driver array for different applications. The Signature Elegant Series comes in good-looking veneered enclosures. The Signature Hidden Series comes in plain-vanilla MDF for use in cabinetry. And the Signature Invisible is, as you'd guess, for in-wall use and supplement other non-Signature in-wall and in-ceiling models. Some of the in-ceilings got an actual 5.1-channel movie demo to demonstrate that surround can live in your ceiling. Finally, who could resist another beauty shot, this time of the $50k Illusion floorstander, a seventh-generation reiteration of the history-making Snell A Reference. It's dual 10-inch, offers bass down to 27Hz, and threatens output of 112dB. The pretty amps are from fellow D&M stablemate Marantz.

Want to send an HDMI signal over 300 feet of cable? Can't be done. But you could plug it into the Liberty Cable DigitalLinx, which converts to more robust RGBHV for the cable run, then converts back to HDMI at the other end.