Premiere Design

Anyone who knows high-end video knows Runco, which is now the high-end home-cinema division of Oregon-based Planar. Among Runco's many well-regarded projectors, the premier line is undoubtedly the Signature Cinema series, which now includes two brand new models.

I've written about line-array speakers in this blog several times, and for good reason&#151;tall stacks of drivers deliver smooth horizontal dispersion and sound levels that fall off more gradually than point-source speakers, creating a coherent, open soundstage. That's the idea behind the so-called iso-linear speakers from American maker <A href="http://www.scaena.com">Scaena</A>, whose name is Latin for "stage."

I'm always casting about for interesting high-end products to feature in this blog, so I suppose it was inevitable that I would eventually find the
FH001 speaker from a British company called <A href="http://www.fergusonhill.co.uk/">Ferguson Hill</A>. As soon as I saw a photo of this intriguing design, I knew I had to profile it here.

It will not be for everybody. But it will be for the right somebody. Three years in the making, BeoLab 90 is the culmination of the wildest dreams of our acoustics department: creating the future of sound.

The 2009 CEDIA (Custom Electronics Design and Installation Association) Expo is only a month away, and I'm starting to get lots of press releases about products that will be introduced there. Many of these announcements are under embargo until the show, but here's one that isn't&#151;the M15HD surround preamp/processor from respected Canadian manufacturer <A href="http://nadelectronics.com">NAD</A>.