Mark Fleischmann

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CES 2011
Silbatone Acoustics Strikes a Chord
Mark Fleischmann  |  Jan 07, 2011
As you'd expect, I'll start with a cheap joke: Each of these Silbatone Acoustics SGW-24 speakers can double as a studio apartment. Even if you have a roommate. But believe it or not, this massive horned loudspeaker has a plausible reason to exist in the home theater realm: It's an attempt to recreate Western Electric theater speakers from the early days of the talkies. Western Electric, in case you didn't know, was the manufacturing arm of the Bell System (later AT&T) for more than a century. Oh, and it was my father's employer for several decades, though he worked on the phone side of the business, not the cinema side. More on the SGW-24 here. Believe it or not, it had dynamic power, the focus associated with horns, and even a certain delicacy. But I would say that, being a Bell Baby.
Surround Sound System ReviewsBookshelf Speaker Reviews
Silverline Audio Minuet Supreme Plus Speaker System
Mark Fleischmann  |  Nov 08, 2014  |  Published: Nov 07, 2014

Performance
Build Quality
Value
PRICE $1,748

AT A GLANCE
Plus
Versatile with movies and music
Superb build quality
Addictively listenable
Minus
Needs sub reinforcement

THE VERDICT
Like David in a world of Goliaths, Silverline Audio’s Minuet Supreme Plus is the kind of small speaker that makes listening to music an addictive pleasure.

Every January, I find myself walking down a hotel corridor lined with audio exhibitors. Sounds like the dream sequence from an audiophile movie, doesn’t it? I’m talking, of course, about the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Pretty much every year, I pay a visit to Silverline Audio, and pretty much every year, the reward is sweet, involving sound. This year, that sound was coming from Silverline’s Minuet Supreme Plus. Remarkably, it was powered by one of those tiny Class T amps you can buy on Amazon for $30. Having reviewed the original Minuet in 2008—and having loved it—I was eager to hear what its successor would sound like in my system with a better amp.

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Silverline Displays Small Wonders
Mark Fleischmann  |  May 13, 2007
Would you like to base your surround system on a pair of slim towers, like the Silverline Preludes, at $1200/pair? Or would you prefer something smaller like the Minuet, at $600/pair? In either case, you can buy them one by one and please yourself. The Chinese silk dome tweeters kept cymbals from getting spitty and the 3.5-inch paper midwoofers mustered a surprisingly well-proportioned and tuneful string bass.
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Bookshelf Speaker ReviewsSubwoofer Reviews
Silverline Minuet Speaker System and Pinnacle CS 66 Subwoofer
Mark Fleischmann  |  Feb 19, 2008  |  Published: Jan 20, 2008
Don't underestimate the little guy. Guys.

One of the annual highlights of my career as an audio/video scribe is the Home Entertainment Show. The 2007 edition took place at the Grand Hyatt in New York, practically on top of the gorgeously renovated Grand Central Terminal. It was there that I became interested in Silverline, a California-based speaker maker that was displaying both their Minuet mini-monitor (say that ten times fast) and the slender, floorstanding Prelude. The temptation to try five Minuets in a surround system proved to be overwhelming.

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CEDIA 2010
Simaudio Updates Moon Pre-Pro
Mark Fleischmann  |  Sep 24, 2010
Simaudio's Moon CP-8 pre-pro is one of the few to include Audyssey MultEQ XT auto setup and room correction, because really, purchasers of a $13,000 pre-pro should not have to envy their receiver-owning neighbors. HDMI has been updated to (ahem) 1.3 which at least provides definitive coverage of lossless surround. Regarding 3D, the company says most installers and their customers are going to use outboard video processors anyway. Pair the pre-pro with the MC-8 amp, 250 watts per module, $22,000 in its seven-channel version.
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Bookshelf Speaker Reviews
Sinclair Audio Brighton 50B Speaker System
Mark Fleischmann  |  Jul 06, 2011
Price: $1,398 At A Glance: Silk-dome tweeter with thermal protection • Race-car-inspired woven-fiberglass woofer • Sub’s passive radiators kill port noise

From Canada with Love

Canada has traditionally been a cornucopia of loudspeaker manufacturers. That isn’t exactly an accident. The Canadian government maintains a research facility in Ottawa with an anechoic (non-echoing) chamber that lures speaker designers like a garden lures honeybees. But Sinclair Audio’s roots are in Montreal, as is its Canadian distributor, Jam Industries, which began manufacturing, importing, and distributing musical instruments and other equipment in 1972 and expanded to include consumer electronics shortly thereafter. The company’s scope subsequently expanded to include lighting and audio equipment for concert, broadcast, and recording use. Sinclair is distributed in the U.S. by American Audio & Video. It’s sold via the same dealer network that handles Arcam, whose audio/video receivers and other products have attracted well-earned rave reviews in these pages.

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Ears On
Sir, Step Away from the Game Console
Mark Fleischmann  |  Dec 13, 2006
If you live in Germany, blowing away virtual baddies may soon do more than stress your thumb joints. Pending legislation in Bavaria and Lower Saxony would give creators, distributors, and--yes--players of violent video games up to a year in the slammer. To be specific, it would penalize "cruel violence on humans or human-looking characters." The move in the world's third-largest gaming market follows a horrific school shooting in a town on the Dutch border, where an 18-year-old gamer wounded 37 people before killing himself. Officials blame the rampage on the teen's fondness for the game "Counter Strike," although his video suicide note cites school, anarchist politics, bullying, a desire for revenge, social isolation, and the joy of gun possession--everything but video games. Even so, insists Bavarian interior minister Günther Beckstein: "It is absolutely beyond any doubt that such killer games desensitize unstable characters and can have a stimulating effect." Digg readers retorted: "Computer games don't kill people. It's the nutters with guns that kill people." And: "I propose a ban on bad parenting." But the outlawing of virtual crimes literally crosses the line between fantasy and reality. Maybe the best solution for virtual violence is a virtual prison sentence.
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Sirius and XM Jointly Exhibit as New Company
Mark Fleischmann  |  Sep 05, 2008
With this merger I do thee wed.
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Audio Video News
Sirius XM Channel Swapping Irks Listeners
Mark Fleischmann  |  Nov 21, 2008
Now that Sirius and XM have combined, the joint service is encountering some turbulence. Listeners are irked that familiar channel lineups are changing.
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Sjofn Shows 'Nice Things from Sweden'
Mark Fleischmann  |  May 12, 2007
Swedish patriots used Crown Princess Madeleine to lure showgoers into their demo room. Inside I found the QM-10 studio monitor which is expected to sell for $1850/pair starting soon and can of course be bought in a surround configuration with forthcoming sub. No, subs. The company thinks a system fit for a princess should have somewhere between two and four of them. Subs, that is, though the little monitors had an impressive amount of bass by themselves.
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