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Audio Video News
After Aereo, Is the Cloud Doomed?
Mark Fleischmann  |  Dec 10, 2014
The judicial murder of Aereo—just in case you had any doubt about where our sympathies lie—leaves a cloud over cloud computing...
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Audio Video News
Is Your Car System a Royalty Scofflaw?
Mark Fleischmann  |  Dec 10, 2014
If you rip CDs to your hard-drive-based car media system, does that violate the rights of artists? The Alliance of Artists and Recording Companies says yes, claiming that your system qualifies as a digital audio recording device, and therefore that manufacturers should pay royalties to the music labels. The group filed suit in the D.C. federal district court, alleging violation of the Audio Home Recording Act (AHRA).
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Ears On
Yes, the High-Res Difference Is Audible
Mark Fleischmann  |  Dec 05, 2014
Would you like to feed your audio system with signals equivalent to what the artist, producer, and mixing engineer heard in the studio? For most people, this is a no-brainer. Why would you not want to hear what the pros heard? And on that basis, a new generation of music players, USB DACs, and other high-resolution audio products is now on the market, seeking open ears and open minds. You'd think this would be cause for celebration. But a small cadre of rigid ideologues are not celebrating. They're insisting that there is no audible difference between CD-quality audio and high-res audio. They bought Perfect Sound Forever, the ancient Compact Disc marketing slogan, hook, line and sinker. Infinitely condescending, the Perfect Sound Foreverists claim to have science on their side and dismiss any other point of view. But the latest science flatly contradicts their long-held dogma.

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Soundbar Reviews
Sony HT-ST5 Soundbar System
Mark Fleischmann  |  Dec 03, 2014

Performance
Features
Ergonomics
Value
PRICE $800 (updated 12/10/14)

AT A GLANCE
Plus
HDMI 2.0 and lossless surround decoding
7.1 channels of amplification
Fairly deep response
Upward-angled rubber feet
Minus
No HDCP 2.2 DRM

THE VERDICT
The Sony HT-ST5 provides up-to-date HDMI 2.0 connectivity along with great-for-a-bar sound, including excellent subwoofer integration.

OK, I admit it. When I signed up for audio-critic duty in the late 1980s, about a decade into my tech-journalism career, I envisioned a glamorous world of gleaming waxed wood-veneered speakers, precocious multitalented receivers, and dressed-to-kill home theaters designed by Theo Kalomirakis. Soundbars weren’t even on the horizon then. Even so, step by step, I have committed myself to the conceptual principles underlying soundbars: audio-for-video, compactness, minimal footprint, maybe a little surround magic, and user-friendliness, that last item being glaringly absent from AV receivers.

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Audio Video News
AMC Upsizes Moviehouse Seating
Mark Fleischmann  |  Nov 25, 2014
Desperate to reverse declining movie attendance, the AMC theater chain plans to install reclining seats in 1,800 of its 5,000 theaters. The seats are so big that they had to remove up to two-thirds of seating capacity, leaving some theaters with as few as 70 seats. But attendance has shot up 80 percent in the renovated moviehouses, with box-office revenue rising 60 percent, and that may save theaters that were already losing money.
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Surround Sound System ReviewsBookshelf Speaker ReviewsSubwoofer Reviews
JBL Studio 230 Speaker System
Mark Fleischmann  |  Nov 14, 2014

Studio 230 Speaker System
Performance
Build Quality
Value
Studio SUB 250P Subwoofer
Performance
Features
Build Quality
Value
PRICE $1,630

AT A GLANCE
Plus
Efficient, high output
Vocal clarity and defined soundfield
Affordable price
Minus
Thin, accentuated top end
Best at low-to-moderate volumes

THE VERDICT
Although their bright voicing may not be for everyone, the JBL Studio 2 speakers combine high efficiency with excellent detail retrieval.

What if the solution to room-interaction problems resided in your loudspeakers? Wouldn’t that be a great alternative to the ills of receiver-based room correction systems? Those are some potentially interesting questions posed by JBL’s Studio 2 series.

For starters, who needs room correction anyway? Well, when it’s hard to catch the dialogue, and imaging smears all over the place, the room correction program in your A/V receiver can mitigate those problems (depending on the receiver and the room). But quite often, it also introduces new artifacts and errors. For my own part, in my own room, I find that many room correction systems thin out the overall tonal balance and induce fatigue. That’s why some audiophiles shun room correction and choose to live with the acoustic character of their room, for better or worse—usually both.

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Audio Video News
Days of Plasma TV Coming to a Close
Mark Fleischmann  |  Nov 14, 2014  |  Published: Nov 12, 2014
Editor's note: This story has been updated.

Samsung and LG will end production of plasma TVs at the end of November signaling the death knell for a TV technology that has been the darling of video enthusiasts for more than a decade. Though plasma’s black-level performance has made it a perennial critic’s favorite, sales have dwindled in recent years.

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Ears On
Meet the New Dolby Surround
Mark Fleischmann  |  Nov 07, 2014
Dolby Atmos is hitting surround audiophiles like a succession of giant waves crashing on the beach. The first wave is Dolby Atmos in movie theaters. The second wave is Atmos in Atmos-enabled speakers and surround receivers. But what about that third wave, the one nobody's discussing? That's the quiet incorporation of another totally new technology into the Atmos technology bundle. I'm talking about Dolby Surround.

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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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Headphone Reviews
Oppo PM-1 Headphone
Mark Fleischmann  |  Oct 31, 2014

Performance
Features
Comfort
Value
PRICE $1,099

AT A GLANCE
Plus
Planar technology
Rich sound
Understated good looks
Minus
Voicing too rich for some
Crosses the $1K barrier

THE VERDICT
Oppo’s first headphone, the PM-1, uses a planar diaphragm to produce a luxuriously warm sound that becomes addicting on its own terms.

There once was a piano tuner named Opporknockity. A customer asked him to re-tune a piano he’d done the week before. “Sorry,” he replied, “Opporknockity only tunes once.” Luckily for consumers, Oppo Digital isn’t as stingy as Opporknockity. You can buy all the Oppo products you want.
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