It’s fall, and a young man’s fancy (and we hope a woman’s as well) turns to thoughts of evenings by a roaring fire listening to music or watching a movie or two on that new flat screen UHD TV (hopefully not mounted above said fireplace!). There have been so many interesting posts to the S&V website recently that I can’t resist the temptation to offer a few thoughts on some of them. Some commenters to these individual posts have beaten me to the punch, but I’ll press on.
Paradigm Concept
I’ll soon be finishing up a review of the Paradigm Prestige 95F loudspeaker for our sister publication Stereophile. No sneak peeks here, but it has certainly grabbed my attention.
So I was intrigued when I read about the prototype Paradigm Concept 4F.
It's not easy being a corporation. Take Volkswagen, for example. Right about now, they are probably wishing that Ferdinand Porsche had never stuffed an air-cooled engine in the back of a Beetle-shaped car. Along similar lines, Toshiba probably wishes it had hired more ethical accountants. In particular, it recently announced that it had overstated its profits by $1.3 billion over seven years. Oops. Not exactly a rounding error.
That’s right. Earphones made of brass—the same brass used to make trumpets to be specific. If you’re going to introduce a headphone in a market flooded with tens of thousands of models, you better be creative.
The digital wizards at Wadia have announced that their latest digital audio decoder, the di322, supports the playback of DSD64, DSD128 and DSD256 music files via its USB input along with PCM files with sampling rates up to 32-bit/384kHz, including DXD 352.8kHz and DXD 384kHz formats.
Owners of Mitsubishi LaserVue rear-projection TVs who experienced problems and paid to have work done may be entitled to a refund, according to the terms of a recently settled class-action lawsuit brought by consumers over picture problems that appeared after 8,000 to 10,000 hours of use.
Q Is there an add-on processor, either available now or forthcoming, that will add Dolby Atmos decoding capability to an existing preamp/processor or receiver? —D. Lockett
Good things come to those who wait, as the saying goes. But when it comes to finally getting producer/engineer James Guthrie’s long-awaited 96kHz/24-bit mix of Roger Waters’ 1992 solo album Amused to Death in 5.1 on Blu-ray in hand, well… the word “good” isn’t quite good enough. “Great” is certainly a step up, but I’m going to have to go with a superlative along the lines of “stellar,” “outstanding,” and/or “stunning,” for Guthrie’s surround-sound treatment of Amused catapults an oft-overlooked entry in Waters’ storied canon of work into a new sonic stratosphere. Recently, Guthrie and I spent a fair amount of time going over his goals for bringing Amused into the surround universe and sharing his favorite moments from The Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here in 5.1, plus he reveals exclusively what Floyd-related project he’ll next tackle in 5.1. It’s a miracle — another miracle.
Major TV manufacturers are collaborating in field tests that would bring a new ATSC 3.0 television broadcast standard, which would include a new IP-based Ultra HD video standard and a broadcast- and streaming-friendly surround standard.