LATEST ADDITIONS

Advance ticket buyers also receive digital HD version of the movie

Regal Entertainment announced that Super Tickets go on sale today for director Peter Jackson’s highly anticipated The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, which opens in theaters on December 13.

In a recent Ask S&V column, I answered a reader question about North American-made audio: Does anybody make audio gear over here anymore? One name I listed in my response was Canadian speaker-maker Paradigm, a company that manufacturers a wide range of speaker models, subwoofers, and audio electronics in a 225,000 square-foot facility located in Mississaugua, Ontario. Sound & Vision has rarely met a Paradigm speaker or electronics component from Paradigm’s sister-brand Anthem that it didn’t like, so the company is obviously doing something right. To get an overview of just what is happening under the roof of that 225,000-square foot facility, Paradigm’s marketing dept. invited me up for a day to check things out. Ready for a tour? Let’s go!

For last week’s SV Poll we asked you to pick your ultimate AVR Deal breaker from a list of nine choices. The number one deal breaker? “Not enough power,” which claimed more than a third of the votes. Finishing strong in the number two and three spots were “ineffective room correction/EQ” and “overly complicated operation” with 21 and 18 percent, respectively. Combine low power and lackluster room correction/EQ with complicated operation and you have three super AVR dealbreakers that together account for three quarters of the votes. Trailing at number four and five were “too few features” and “too many features.” Wireless features such as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth were met with a shrug. Here’s the complete breakdown…

PRICE $699

AT A GLANCE
Plus
Supports lossless formats
Great-sounding headphone out
May be used as standalone DAC with a PC
Minus
Rudimentary touchscreen DAC use limited to 96-kHz or lesser files.

THE VERDICT
The AK100 successfully ventures beyond the iTunes universe to open a world of high-resolution portable playback.

Is Apple the biggest obstacle to progress in portable audio? The iPod has been around a full dozen years, and the iPhone for half that, yet even today the Apple ecosystem fails to support 24-bit audio file formats. All Apple-supported file formats—even the best of them, Apple Lossless, AIFF, and WAV—are limited in iOS to 16 bits. That’s not high rez, that’s mid rez. Forget about playing your growing library of 24-bit FLACs. Leaving the Apple ecosystem can be painful because the company’s touchscreen and clickwheel devices are so ingratiating. But leave you must if you want better sound in your pocket, and the Astell & Kern AK100 may be on your list of destinations.