Audio Video News

Without question, the Internet has made life better. It is much easier to look at satellite photos of your neighbor's pool, buy drugs without a prescription, and send checks for $25,000 so the bank in Nigeria will send you a check for $55...

Imagine a dozen alley cats, who would normally claw at each other incessantly, purring happily together in a box. This gives you an idea of what's so remarkable about the <A HREF="http://www.1394ta.org">1394 Trade Association</A> (TA) Theater Demo this week at <A HREF="http://www.comdex.com/">Comdex</A> in Las Vegas. Several consumer-electronics giants, such as <A HREF="http://www.sony.com">Sony</A>, <A HREF="http://www.mitsubishi.com/">Mitsubishi</A>, <A HREF="http://www.samsung.com/">Samsung</A>, <A HREF="http://www.NEC.com/">NEC</A>, and <A HREF="http://www.yamaha.com/">Yamaha</A>, as well as computer titans <A HREF="http://www.intel.com/">Intel</A>, <A HREF="http://www.compaq.com/">Compaq</A>, and <A HREF="http://www.microsoft.com/">Microsoft</A>, are pulling together to support the 1394 (FireWire) standard. It is hoped that FireWire will unite the consumer-electronics and computer worlds with a common digital interface. A recent agreement between the consumer-electronics and cable industries has established 1394 as the standard link between digital television sets and DTV set-top boxes.

Even if you never heard his name you know his work. For nearly half a century Morris Kessler has been quietly designing and building world-class power amplifiers, not only for SAE—the iconic brand he founded in 1967—but for his other company ATI and a number of respected brands including Dynaco, Aragon, Crestron, Adcom, Integra Research, and B&K, to name a few. But that’s not all Kessler is known for...

Speakers are the single most important link in the audio chain — one that defines the sonic character of your system, whether it’s a straight up stereo rig or a surround-sound movie setup. Great speakers put you in the front row of an intimate musical performance or draw you into a scene in an emotional (and sometimes harrowing) way. Here we spotlight 16 of Sound & Vision’s Top Picks, running the gamut from inexpensive wireless speakers to a selection of home theater systems featuring a suite of wireless speakers at one end and a stately six-piece setup at the other. The mix also highlights a couple stand-out subwoofers and soundbars as well as a handful of all-in-one wireless speakers, including one you can take outside.

New music revitalizes old movie: the Kronos Quartet has just completed an intense eight-day recording session at Lucasfilm's Skywalker Ranch studio in Marin County, north of San Francisco. The Quartet laid down a Philip Glass score for a reissue of <I>Dracula</I>, the 1931 horror flick starring B&#233;la Lugosi. The effort is part of a <A HREF="http://www.mca.com/home/">Universal Home Video</A> project that will bring classic early horror films to a new audience.

MQA Ltd. has announced that the original recording of Fairytales, a 1982 musical collaboration between Scandinavian singer Radka Toneff and American-born pianist Steve Dobrogosz, has been meticulously restored from the master tapes using Master Quality Authenticated (MQA) technology.