Audio Video News

The dust has settled, E3 is over, and I have a notebook of nigh indecipherable scratches and scribbles left over from my week in LA. Covering E3 as one person and seeing everything is impossible, but I was able to check out a lot of very cool stuff.

Another day, another dock - but wait. There's no dock on the new Phorus PS1 ($199). It's just a shelf. And the little Phorus PR1 ($149). That's no dock either. . .

The CanJam section of the annual Rocky Mountain Audio Fest, which took place this weekend at the Denver Tech Center, is one of the best places in the U.S. for audiophiles to sample headphones and headphone amps.

It's that gadget-buying time of year again, and in case you haven't noticed, there's been something of a mobile-device convergence going on lately, with tablets shrinking and smartphones getting bigger and bigger. Under the hood, they're all very similar to begin with, so it shouldn't come as much of a surprise.

But is there a compelling reason for S+V readers to pick up one of these barely-pocketable chunks of Gorilla Glass and plastic? To find out, we took a look at three of the current leaders in the competition for your inside jacket pocket: HTC's Windows Phone 8x and Droid DNA, as well as Samsung's boundary- (and pocket-) stretching Galaxy Note II.

If 2011 was the year that tablets took over, 2012 was unquestionably the year of the headphone. The market for headphones has exploded, and Sound+Vision has stepped up its coverage to handle the flow, with reviews of new ‘phones, along with related gear such as portable and desktop speakers, amps, and DACs appearing on a weekly basis at soundandvisionmag.com.

Samsung’s product preview event, held on Wednesday 3/20 at NYC’s American Museum of Finance (who knew such a place existed?) was notable on two counts. First, the company announced a price for its 85-inch UN85S9 Ultra HD TV — the cover star of Sound&Vision’s April/May print issue. Second, it had another cover star, SI swimsuit model Kate Upton (fully clothed), along with Giants’ quarterback Eli Manning on hand to say how much they dig the company’s 2013 Smart Hub interface.