LATEST ADDITIONS

Tech2
Review: MSR Acoustics Dimension4 Melody Room Treatment System
Brent Butterworth  |  Jun 11, 2012

I’ve been frustrated with acoustic treatment products since 1995, the year I first read F. Alton Everest’s Master Handbook of Acoustics.

Continue Reading »
Audio Video News
Father's Day Gift Ideas for 2012
Al Griffin  |  Jun 11, 2012

Father's Day is upon us again, graduations have just gone by - and chances are you may not have quite finished all of your shopping. Don't worry, the staff of Sound+Vision is here to help.

Continue Reading »
Vote
How Much Have You Invested in Your Home Theater?
Scott Wilkinson  |  Jun 08, 2012
A home theater is a blessing for those who have one, and it needn't cost a fortune to get decent picture and sound quality. Of course, the more you spend, the more potential there is for truly great performance, though high prices do not guarantee it. Also, as cost increases beyond a certain point, the gains in performance generally become smaller.

These musings lead me to wonder, how much have you invested in your home theater, including display, sound system, and source devices? If you've built a dedicated room, please include furniture, acoustic treatments, ambient-light control, décor, and construction as well. What proportion of your budget has gone for video, audio, and environment?

Vote to see the results and leave a comment about your choice.

How Much Have You Invested in Your Home Theater?
Continue Reading »
Ask S&V
Streaming DTS-HD and Dolby TrueHD
Scott Wilkinson  |  Jun 08, 2012
When one streams a movie from Netflix or other online services, the video probably looks good, but will I get the sound of DTS-HD Master Audio or Dolby TrueHD through my system, or just Dolby Surround as one gets from cable?

Wolf

Continue Reading »
Blu-ray Movie ReviewsMusic Reviews
First Look: Pat Metheny: The Orchestrion Project
Michael Berk  |  Jun 08, 2012

Last night we dropped by the 7.1-equipped 3D theater in Dolby's midtown offices for a sneak peek at Francois and Pierre Lamoureux's Pat Metheny: The Orchestrion Project, the forthcoming theatrical 3D film of jazz legened Pat Metheny's latest "solo" outing with his mechanical orchestra.

Continue Reading »
AV Receiver Reviews
Rotel RSX-1562 A/V Receiver
Mark Fleischmann  |  Jun 08, 2012
Audio Performance
Video Performance
Features
Ergonomics
Value
Price: $2,599 At A Glance: ICEpower Class-D amplification • Bluetooth- and iOS-compatible USB • No room correction or low-volume mode

How would you like your audio/video receiver if it had a coal chute and chimney atop the chassis? Would you enjoy shoveling coal into the chute as the chimney belched black smoke and particulates into your home?

Or would you find this entire arrangement so unhealthy, so 19th century, as to be unbearable? Most people probably would prefer to avoid burning coal when sitting down for movie night or putting on some music. And of course, there are no A/V receivers that run directly on coal. But don’t fool yourself. Coal is the single-largest feedstock for electricity generation—not only in developing economies like China, but in the United States as well—far outpacing natural gas, nuclear energy, and other sources.

Continue Reading »
Tech2
Subwoofers: Separating the Best From the Rest
Brent Butterworth  |  Jun 08, 2012

I was testing some subwoofers the other day when something wonderful dawned on me. I realized that at long last, we have an easy way to separate the serious subwoofer manufacturers from the not-so-serious.

Continue Reading »
Blu-ray Movie ReviewsMusic Reviews
Music to your Eyes: Qello
Michael Berk  |  Jun 07, 2012

If you're the sort of person who enjoys watching classic concert films and music documentaries (and let's face it, you're reading Sound+Vision, so I'm pretty sure you are), you probably wouldn't mind having access to a big archive if such things, available from wherever you are on almost any device.

Qello is here to help.

Continue Reading »
The Big Picture
Men In Black 3
Scott Wilkinson  |  Jun 06, 2012
I saw Men In Black 3 last night, and as with most 3D movies, I chose to see this one at an Imax theater, which uses two projectors—one for each eye—to increase the overall brightness of the image. Even though MIB3 was shot in 2D and converted to 3D in post-production, I thought the 3D effect was quite good overall. In fact, it seemed to me that the movie had been shot with 3D in mind, with lots of depth in many images—I especially enjoyed Agent J's fall from the skyscraper as he jumps back to 1969.
Continue Reading »
Other Source Component Reviews
Channel Master TV CM-7400 Over-The-Air HD DVR
Rob Sabin  |  Jun 06, 2012
Performance
Features
Ergonomics
Value
Price: $400 At A Glance: Effective, free alternative to cable or satellite • Vudu streaming • Runs hot!

In this day of dozens of HDTV channels delivered via hardwired cable or satellite transmission, it’s hard to remember that watching TV wasn’t always quite so easy. Way back when, every television had an antenna connected to it. If you were distant from the transmission tower, you might have had a big mast antenna on your roof, as did your next-door neighbor, and his next-door neighbor, and so on, until the suburban skyline came to be defined by these skeletal sculptures reaching into the bright dawn of a soaring postwar America. If you lived a little closer to the tower, you probably just used the telescopic rabbit ears poking up from the back or top of every set, and the ritual of changing channels (to another of the seven or eight available) involved walking across the room, manually clicking the TV’s rotary tuning knob, and then reorienting the antenna arms to minimize the distortion. Even then, it didn’t always work. Depending on conditions, it wasn’t uncommon to get snowy artifacts from a weak signal, or ghosting caused by multipath reception as the signal bounced off nearby buildings or other large objects.

Continue Reading »

Pages

X