LATEST ADDITIONS

Audio Video NewsNew Products
AR Wireless Speakers Double as Lights
SV Staff  |  Jan 20, 2016
Acoustic Research, a brand with a storied history dating back to the early days of home stereo, has carved out a niche out for itself in wireless speakers since Voxx International acquired the brand more than a decade ago. More specifically, Bluetooth speakers that masquerade as lights.
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Wireless Multiroom Speaker Reviews
Sonos PLAY:5 Wireless Music System Review
Darryl Wilkinson  |  Jan 19, 2016

Performance
Build Quality
Value
PRICE $499

AT A GLANCE
Plus
Auto-senses and adjusts output for vertical and horizontal orientations
Trueplay room EQ
Capacitance touch controls with audible feedback
Pure butt-kicking sound
Minus
Slight high-frequency edginess when used vertically
Tiny feet bumps are visible on sides of speaker

THE VERDICT
The Sonos PLAY:5 gets a radical makeover that adds $100 to the price but combines an amazing user experience with stunning audio performance.

Here’s the bad news: After six years, Sonos has stopped making the company’s first and, until now, best all-in-one wireless speaker system, the PLAY:5. Now for the good news: Sonos has a replacement for the PLAY:5 called…wait for it…the PLAY:5. (Confusing, I know.) At $499, though, the new PLAY:5 is $100 more than the original. For multiple reasons, the original PLAY:5 was my all-around favorite wireless speaker. Will its replacement prove worthy of its heritage—and the higher price?

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Audio Video News
Klipsch’s First Powered Speaker Boasts Bluetooth and Phono Preamp
SV Staff  |  Jan 19, 2016
Klipsch, which is celebrating its 70th anniversary, introduced its first powered monitor, the Reference Premiere R-15PM, at the CES 2016. The speaker is unusual in that it has an onboard phono preamp for direct turntable hookups along with Bluetooth wireless streaming.
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Audio Video News
Stereo Exchange to Host Vinyl Event in NYC
SV Staff  |  Jan 19, 2016
Stereo Exchange, one of New York City’s oldest audio/video and home theater retailers, is hosting a vinyl listening event/record release party and live in-store performance on Friday, January 29th at 7 p.m.
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Audio Video News
RIP: Eagles Founding Member, Guitarist Glenn Frey
SV Staff  |  Jan 18, 2016
The year has not gotten off to a good start in the world of entertainment and rock and roll. We just learned that Glenn Frey, founding member and guitarist of The Eagles, died today. He was 67.
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Audio Video News
David Bowie's Final Album Is No. 1 in the U.S.
SV Staff  |  Jan 18, 2016
David Bowie's Blackstar, the album released on January 8 just two days before his death, has made history as the artist's first album to reach No. 1 in the U.S.
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Audio Video NewsNew Products
HooToo 3-in-1 Travel Companion
SV Staff  |  Jan 18, 2016
If you travel, here’s a neat little gadget with a name you won’t forget that might be of interest.
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Audio Video News
Blipcast Sends Audio from TV to Smartphone
SV Staff  |  Jan 18, 2016
St. Louis-based startup Blipcast demonstrated a product/app of the same name at CES 2016 that lets one or more person listen to audio from their TV via headphones connected to a smartphone.

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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Monkey Kingdom
Brandon A. DuHamel  |  Jan 15, 2016
Picture
Sound
Extras
Directors Mark Linfield and Alastair Fothergill (Earth) return to Disneynature with the beautifully filmed documentary Monkey Kingdom, which follows a troop of macaques living in the ruins of a Sri Lankan temple. The story hones in on a female named Maya and her newborn son Kip. The lowborn Maya must work her way through the complex hierarchy of the macaques in her struggle to survive and feed her son.
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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
Timbuktu
Fred Kaplan  |  Jan 15, 2016
Picture
Sound
Extras
Timbuktu is a film of soaring beauty, sly humor, and urgent sorrow. An Oscar nominee for Best Foreign Film, it should have won if the actual winner, the Polish masterpiece Ida, hadn’t. Shot in Mauritania, which stands in for Mali (of which Timbuktu is capital), it unspools the tragic ways in which a peaceful village is robbed of family, tradition, and the stuff of a full life when occupied by armed jihadists bearing the black flag of ISIL. At first, the dissonance seems comical: clueless outsiders, proclaiming a ban on music, soccer, and exposed female flesh, while camels block the roads and the locals lounge indifferent.
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