Mark Fleischmann

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Ears On
A Little Night Music
Mark Fleischmann  |  Aug 02, 2013
Review samples traipse through my 5.1-channel home theater system in a constant procession. A smaller number get hooked up to my 2.1-channel desktop system. But very few make it into the bedroom to serve me before I drift off to sleep. A speaker named The ONE, from a company named Audience, is one of the rare exceptions. What follows is not an orthodox review. It's just a story about how a distinctive product was able to fit briefly into my life.

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Audio Video News
Search Begins for New TV Standard
Mark Fleischmann  |  Jul 26, 2013
Remember the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC)? They’re the folks who spent years hammering out the digital broadcast television standard that has brought high def and standard def to antenna-loving TV addicts around the nation. Now the standard-setting body is seeking proposals to replace the core transmission system for ATSC broadcasting. The ATSC 3.0 standard will use the latest in compression and transmission technologies to accommodate ultra-def video, mobile video reception, and greater efficiency in spectrum use. The process is just getting under way with a call for proposals, and several years will probably pass before the new standard emerges in final form.
Bookshelf Speaker ReviewsSubwoofer ReviewsSurround Sound System Reviews
SVS Ultra Speaker System
Mark Fleischmann  |  Jul 26, 2013

Ultra Speaker System
Performance
Build Quality
Value

SB12-NSD Subwoofer
Performance
Features
Build Quality
Value
Price: $3,348 At A Glance: Distinctive enclosure shapes • Strong build quality • Satisfying, balanced sound

The debut of the SVS Ultra speaker line prompts me to reconsider a question that’s been lurking at the back of my mind for years: Is SVS one of the great American speaker brands?

As a company founded in Ohio and initially operated out of a garage, SVS has all the right narrative elements of a great speaker brand. The company has built a reputation for making brilliantly unorthodox subwoofers and pretty good speakers—versus the scads of respectable brands that put most of their brilliance into speakers and treat subs as an afterthought. In the past few years, the story has added a few new chapters, with new heavy-hitter personnel in management and product design and a manufacturing move from Ohio to (where else?) China.

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Audio Video News
Amazon AutoRips LPs
Mark Fleischmann  |  Jul 18, 2013
7113ama.jpgLongtime Amazon customers may already be surprised to find CD purchases from years and years ago appearing in their Amazon Cloud Players. Their eyebrows are set to move even higher now that Amazon is extending the courtesy to LP purchases. Buy an AutoRip-eligible disc—analog or digital—from the online retailer, boot up the Cloud Player, and there it is. If your computer or tablet of choice lacks a disc drive, as increasingly many do, you’re also free to download a free 256-kbps AutoRipped copy. The feature is available to U.S. customers only, for titles displaying the AutoRip logo.
Audio Video News
Do Your Headphones Need Audyssey?
Mark Fleischmann  |  Jul 09, 2013
If you like the effect of Audyssey room correction in your home theater system, would you like to apply it to your headphones? That may happen if headphone makers embrace Audyssey’s ExpertFit Partner Program. Audyssey wants participating manufacturers to create a profile for each model using an ExpertFit measurement program and new algorithms based on existing MultEQ and Dynamic EQ, until now best known for their use in audio/video receivers.
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Audio Video News
CinemaNow to Stream DTS
Mark Fleischmann  |  Jul 09, 2013
Audio quality in streaming video has taken another step forward with the news that the Best Buy–owned CinemaNow service is adopting DTS-HD. Despite the moniker, it is not the same lossless DTS-HD Master Audio that appears on 80 percent of Blu-ray Discs—it’s a slimmed-down streaming-friendly DTS Express codec that delivers 5.1 channels at data rates up to 512 kilobits per second. Consumers will access encoded content through Rovi-powered storefronts that will operate through Samsung’s 2013 smart TVs and Blu-ray players and their ARC-enabled HDMI or optical outputs. DTS-HD is not the only surround game in streaming town: Dolby Digital Plus is in use by Netflix, Vudu, and Amazon Instant Video.
Ears On
This Is My Rack
Mark Fleischmann  |  Jul 05, 2013
In every review I write of a surround receiver or speaker system, I tap out a graf on associated equipment used to audition the product. You can always find it between the product description and the listening notes. Whenever I read an audio review, I feel cast adrift if the reviewer doesn't disclose what's in his reference system. After all, the receiver I use to review a set of speakers, or the speakers I use to review a receiver, may exert a significant effect on the product's performance and how I perceive it. So does the room, for that matter, and maybe I'll tackle that subject someday. I use asymmetrical long-wall placement in a room with six sides where no two sides are the same length. That should make for an interesting blog. In the meantime, here's a more detailed description of what's in my rack, moving from top to bottom.

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Surround Sound System ReviewsBookshelf Speaker ReviewsSubwoofer Reviews
Klipsch Quintet Speaker System
Mark Fleischmann  |  Jul 05, 2013

Quintet Speakers
Performance
Build Quality
Value
SW-100 Subwoofer
Performance
Features
Build Quality
Value
Price: $1,050 At A Glance: Molded reinforced polymer enclosure • Vertically expanded Tractrix horn • Conventional sub

Compact satellite/subwoofer sets are often affordable, mate well with budget receivers, allow more speaker-placement width than soundbars, lend themselves to wall mounting—and best of all, they don’t hog the room, even if you place them on stands (which would usually produce the best sonic results). What Justice Anthony Kennedy’s swing vote is to the Supreme Court, the spouse acceptance factor is to loudspeaker genres, and the elegant compactness of a sat/sub set just may be the tiebreaker, the factor that makes the difference between having or not having a surround system. Sat/sub sets continue to be the most underrated product category in home theater.

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Audio Video News
Streaming TV Productions Proliferate
Mark Fleischmann  |  Jul 01, 2013
Online streaming outfits are turning themselves into studios, bankrolling movies and TV series. Before you scoff, did you watch Netflix’s House of Cards? We did, blasting through all 13 episodes in the first month of availability. The series, with Kevin Spacey as a Machiavellian congressman, has made 86 percent of Netflix subscribers less likely to cancel, says a Cowen and Co. survey. We can’t wait for the second “season.”
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Surround Sound System ReviewsBookshelf Speaker ReviewsSubwoofer Reviews
Axiom Epic Midi 125 Speaker System
Mark Fleischmann  |  Jun 27, 2013

Epic Midi 125 Speaker System
Performance
Build Quality
Value
EP125 v3 Subwoofer
Performance
Features
Build Quality
Value
Price: $1,786 (updated 1/28/15)
At A Glance: Distinctive cabinet shapes • Revealing voicing • Sold factory direct

Merriam-Webster.com defines a cabal as “the artifices and intrigues of a group of persons secretly united in a plot (as to overturn a government),” or “a group engaged in such artifices and intrigues.” For the past 30 years, Axiom Audio has been part of a Canadian cabal of loudspeaker manufacturers secretly united in a plot to overturn bad sound—ironically, with government support. The Ontario-based company is one of several brands that sprouted from Ottawa’s National Research Council facilities where Axiom founder and president Ian Colquhoun learned the art and science of speaker design under the legendary Dr. Floyd Toole.

Why do we say “secretly united”? Axiom is one of those well-kept secrets of the audio world, and that’s partly our fault. The company has been designing and manufacturing its products in Canada, right under our North American noses, yet this is the first review we’ve done on an Axiom product in about 20 years, despite the accolades the brand has attracted in the interim. So we’re playing catch-up with this review of Axiom’s Epic Midi 125 5.1-channel speaker package, which includes two monitors and a center in the front, dedicated diffuse surrounds, and a subwoofer. Let’s just say the secret is out.

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