Ears On

Here is Barb Gonzalez, author of The Home Electronics Survival Guide Volume 1—I like the Volume 1 part!—flanked by two chimps. Ken Kessler, left, author of Quad: The Closest Approach, drew the most traffic with his world-class charisma (sorry about the flash). At right is the unedited original of my blog pic, with lovely pink and blue background, shot at the Paradox Coffeeshop in Amsterdam, a moment of bliss captured for posterity. Have you heard about my annually updated home theater guide? Just checking.

This could be one of those large jars of formaldehyde in a mortician's lab, or a really cool fish bowl, but in fact is the first liquid-cooled power amplifier: the Von Gaylord Uni Signature. Mustering 200 watts per channel, each mono-block comes with a separate boxy power supply. The four pieces retail for $59,000 (goldfish not included).

Dave Wilson's venerable Watt Puppy is now available in baby blue for $27,900. Having heard it with a recording of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, I think I may have to spend more time in Utah. Even in an acoustically imperfect room, the massed vocals were so beautiful, they tax my powers of description. You just had to be there. This is why events like the HES are so precious—and why high-end dealers with good demo rooms deserve the big bucks.

Onkyo, a speaker company? Don't laugh. These two monitors were among the best things I heard at the show. The neat cube-shaped monitor at the left, the D-312E, threw out a highly natural and realistic soundstage with orchestral music. Unfortunately it's available only in Japan. The D-TK10, at right, is slightly smaller, curvier, and features a cabinet made by guitar maker Takamine. It will be available for maybe $1600/pair though the price was not finalized at presstime.

The show was full of fridge-sized speakers but none of them sounded as good as the Totem Acoustics Dreamcatcher ($450/pair), driven by much pricier Plinius electronics. This was the most immediately appealing, and possibly the most accurate, sound at the show. It was utterly free of the grotesque coloration that marred dozens of larger speakers on display elsewhere. This picture looks good because I did not take it.

Under a court settlement, Sony BMG has agreed to compensate consumers for exposing their computers to CD-borne security hazards. If you bought a title with the now infamous XCP rootkit, you get a replacement disc, $7.50 in cash, and a free download (or no cash and three downloads). Not too shabby! Wish I'd bought a few myself. Purchasers of titles contaminated with Suncomm MediaMax get only the downloads. You've got to hand it to Sony BMG. The label has done an awful lot to atone for its error. Details here.

Hitachi bills four new 42-inch plasma models as 1080-line-capable. The following information is for numbers-obsessed videoholics only: The relevant model numbers are 42HDF39 ($2299), 42HDS69 ($2499), 42HDT79 ($2999), and 42HDX99 ($5299). Nominally these are 1080i, as opposed to 1080p, displays though at 42 inches that distinction is negligible. However, it's the vertical resolution that's 1080 lines. Horizontal resolution is actually 1024 lines, as opposed to 1920 in the 1080i ATSC broadcast standard (1920 by 1080). So three of these models are 1024 by 1080, and the lowest-priced is actually 1024 by 1024. Got all that? The difference probably stems from the inherent limitations of Hitachi's highly rated plasma manufacturing technique, which involves vertical channels of pixels crisscrossed by horizontal lines of electrodes. I got a preview at last week's press event in New York though production models will not arrive till later in the year. Up close and personal, the prototype looked pretty spiffy. I could see the dots only from two or three feet. Beyond that the picture looked seamless. The bottom line is that these 42-inch plasmas can show 1080 lines in a test pattern. Try that with a crayon and a piece of paper. Bet you can't do it.