LATEST ADDITIONS

Nine Inch Nails: Hesitation Marks

New release (Columbia; tour dates)
Photo of Trent Reznor by Baldur Bragson

Trent Reznor already came back haunted in March with the release of Welcome oblivion by How to destroy angels. That side project with Atticus Ross and (Reznor’s wife) Mariqueen Maandig took post-industrial/ambient music and made it sound fresh. By contrast, Hesitation Marks, Reznor’s first album in five years under the Nine Inch Nails moniker, seems beset by run-of-the-mill electronica. Ross and another veteran collaborator, Alan Moulder, return as co-producers with Reznor, but together they’re often just busy little techno-bees buzzing around Reznor’s generally average material.

When it released its Digital Drive subwoofers back in the mid-2000s, Velodyne got the jump on all of its competitors. The Digital Drive circuitry and software let you tweak a sub’s sound — manually or automatically — to perfection, and also provided several preset EQ modes to suit different types
of material.

The Power Sound Audio XV15’s sole concession to design is that, besides the stock satin-black finish, you can get the sub in your choice of five wood finishes for an extra $150. Otherwise, it’s a big, ugly box, standing 23 inches high and weighing 75 pounds. It packs a 15-inch woofer — the biggest of any sub in this test — powered by a BASH amp rated at 500 watts RMS, 1,000 watts peak.

NHT was the first speaker company I ever wrote about, way back in 1989. The company has changed hands several times since then, but its current product offerings are strikingly similar to the originals. It still focuses on compact, well-engineered speakers with gloss-black finishes.