Bruce Soord, guitarist, vocalist, and founder of the British post-prog collective The Pineapple Thief, caught the surround-mixing bug well over a decade ago, and he’s yet to shake it—something that’s quite good news for those of us who admire his learned approach to the 360-degree soundfield. Soord’s recent Atmos forays include The Pineapple Thief’s evocative new album It Leads to This, as well as current albums by Jethro Tull and Big Big Train—and he’s not done yet. During a recent Zoom interview across the Pond to Paris, music editor Mike Mettler and Soord discussed how he first got into surround mixing, what mistakes he made along the way, and why he strives for achieving a “natural feel” in his Atmos mixes. . .
An esteemed doctor on the run (Harrison Ford), a dogged U.S. marshal (Tommy Lee Jones) on his trail, a one-armed killer, and… F. Lee Bailey? These disparate elements all come together to form a delectable whole in Andrew Davis’s thrilling crime drama, The Fugitive, which has been brilliantly restored in 4K.
Last October, S&V’s man about town and all-around tech expert Ken Pohlmann wrote about a government-sponsored cybersecurity labeling program designed to give consumers peace of mind that TVs and other smart products they buy are essentially hack-proof. On March 14th, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted to approve the program.
AT A GLANCE Plus
Ultra bright picture for an OLED display
Wide natural color gamut coverage
Impressive matte anti-reflective screen
Low input lag and high refresh rate for gaming
Minus
No ATSC 3.0 NextGen TV tuner
Slight blooming from anti-glare technology
No Dolby Vision HDR
No Google Assistant voice support
THE VERDICT
This series greatly improves Quantum-OLED tech's brightness game. It has an excellent reflection-reducing screen that sets it apart from other Quantum OLEDs we've seen. It's worth the extra cost over a 2023 S95C close-out. But you will likely find a better deal if you wait for key sales events later in the year.
Samsung's 77-inch QN77S95D TV is the third version of its OLED TVs, which combine quantum dots and blue OLED light. This technology is called "Quantum-OLED" by Samsung Electronics and "QD-OLED" by Samsung Display, the company that makes the screens. It uses quantum dots to change blue OLED light to red and green light for its RGB pixels.
Long-time U.K. audio specialist Cambridge Audio has introduced wireless earbuds that support high-quality listening for up to 10 hours even when active noise cancellation is turned on.
Frank Zappa was a master at creating musical Venn diagrams. What do I mean by that? Well,
Zappa’s compositional talents stretched well beyond the rock music idiom, so many of his releases would offer a keen intersection of doo-wop, classical orchestration, avant-jazz, progressive jams, country funk, and pure pop sensibilities (for starters). Sometimes he would even incorporate all his artistic powers into all 20-plus minutes of an album side’s lone track.
SVS, the Ohio-based company best known for its subwoofers and ever-expanding line of high value home theater speakers and accessories, today announced the launch of the Ultra Evolution Series it previewed at CES 2024.