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Rocky Mountain Audio Fest 2012 Report: Best Speakers
Brent Butterworth  |  Oct 17, 2012

If you’re looking to hear the latest speakers, there’s no better place to go than Colorado’s Rocky Mountain Audio Fest. Last weekend’s show was packed with new speakers, ranging from bookshelf designs to huge towers, budget models to budget-busting models, and ordinary to exotic.

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Headphone Reviews
Review: V-Moda Crossfade M-100 Headphone
Michael Berk  |  Oct 17, 2012

We're not sure about you, but here at Sound+Vision we've been eagerly awaiting the arrival of V-Moda's M-100 since we first glimpsed it at the 2012 CES. It's been a long and interesting road for the company's latest full-sized, audiophile-friendly 'phone, with many changes stemming from the active input from the community of headphone enthusiasts at Head-Fi. And the Crossfade M-100 is finally here.

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This Week
New Blu-rays for October 16, 2012: Oddballs, Revolutionaries, and Avatar 3D at Last
Josef Krebs  |  Oct 16, 2012

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This Week
Music New and Reissued for October 16, 2012: Quad Lives!
Mark Smotroff  |  Oct 16, 2012

We've learned about some cool surround discs coming out (we like to keep an eye on interesting sources such as the great UK magazine Record Collector).  We'll be looking for them soon so we can review them for you.  Included are:

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Audio Video News
Chesky's Binaural+ Aims to Recreate the Live Music Experience
Bob Ankosko  |  Oct 16, 2012
Chesky Records aims to re-create the experience of listening to live music from the best seat in the house with its new Binaural+ Series of high-resolution 24-bit/192-kilohertz recordings. Specially calibrated microphones implanted in the ear canals of a dummy head are used to capture a “stunningly accurate and realistic” 3D representation of the soundfield. With traditional binaural recordings, which have been around for decades, distinct left and right channels are recorded as they would be heard by a pair of human ears and played back through headphones—left channel to left ear, right channel to right ear—to create the illusion of a 360-degree soundstage.
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Blu-ray Movie Reviews
The Original Cult Classic: Harold and Maude
Shane Buettner  |  Oct 16, 2012
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1971’s Harold and Maude, a cult classic before there was such a thing, undoubtedly remains the weirdest rom-com of all times (classifying this movie as such has me laughing out loud as I type!). Harold (Bud Cort) is an odd young man who lives with his wealthy, high-society widow of a mother and gets his kicks (and much-needed attention) from elaborately acting out his own death. Over and over. While Harold’s mom’s ideas for straightening him out are to put him in the military or marry him off, another of Harold’s hobbies, attending strangers’ funerals, leads him to Maude (Ruth Gordon), a daring older woman and the freest spirit you’ve ever seen. She lives in a renovated boxcar, fights the system in her own inimitable ways, ruffles a lot of feathers, and steals a hell of a lot of cars. She’s a gas and is absolutely as obsessed with life as weird Harold is with death. They fall in love.
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Bookshelf Speaker ReviewsSurround Sound System Reviews
KEF R Series Speaker System
Daniel Kumin  |  Oct 16, 2012

Like so many British (and, for that matter, American) ür-audio brands, KEF — originally Kent Engineering & Foundry — had its roots in the post- WWII technology boom. In KEF’s case, it grew inside a Quonset hut on the grounds of the aforementioned foundry. A half-century down the road the Kentish maker is still there (in Kent, not in the metal shed!), still focused on its core competency (loudspeakers), and still producing wholly excellent designs.

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TV ReviewsLCD TV Reviews
Test Report: Samsung UN55EH6000 LCD HDTV
Geoffrey Morrison  |  Oct 16, 2012

Instead of starting this review by listing the features that Samsung put into its UN55EH6000 LCD TV, I’m going to start with what it doesn’t have. There’s no 3D. There are no Smart TV features. It’s not wafer-thin. It doesn’t even have an edge-lit LED back- light (though its “direct-lit” backlight does use LEDs). In other words, it lacks all the latest features found in most modern LCDs.

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Headphone Amp/DAC Reviews
iPhone Home
Daniel Kumin  |  Oct 16, 2012

When we first looked at iPhone/iPod touch remote control solutions in our September 2010 issue, the concept was novel enough that we were unabashedly gushy. There was only a bare handful of remote control apps, and the variety of angles by which they attacked, mostly success- fully, the ever-vexing problem of how to operate an A/V system without losing any marbles (and then throwing them, hard, at expensive components) was truly cool.

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TV Reviews
Test Report: LG 50PM9700 3D Plasma HDTV
Al Griffin  |  Oct 16, 2012

For a company whose supposed emphasis is LCD TV manufacturing, LG sure makes some good plasmas. Its 50PZ950, which we reviewed in the September 2011 issue, earned a Certified & Recommended stamp, both for its accurate, eminently tweakable picture and for its innovative Magic Motion remote-controlled “Smart” GUI. New for 2012 is the 50PM9700, which follows in its predecessor’s footsteps by being THX 3D-certified, Smart, and also Magic Motion remote-controlled. There are a number of other differences between the two models, but here’s one that immediately stands out: At $1,299, the 50PM9700 sells for about $300 less than the 50PZ950.

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