Sitting beside my laptop computer is the coolest portable TV I have ever used. But the question I’m trying to answer is whether anyone’s going to want it.
We’ve received a few inquiries from readers about a music track I’ve mentioned in recent subwoofer reviews. Considering that I’ve described the piece in question as having “the most intense low bass I’ve ever heard,” this interest isn’t surprising.
If you’re carrying a smartphone, you’re carrying one potent little entertainment system. It has two weaknesses, though: the tiny screen and the fact that most people tether themselves to the device with a set of headphones.
I haven’t tried every audio-oriented app for Android phones, but I’ve tried a bunch. Not surprisingly, the one I like best by far costs $6.99, which for an Android app is a truly Rolls Royce price. Yet it’s also the most insane deal of all time for DIY audio measurement software.
I have a confession to make: Often when I see a new über-expensive high-end audio product, I think, “It’s cool, but who would actually buy this?” I sure didn’t feel that way when I got a demo of the new Steinway Lyngdorf S-series at the company’s showroom in Los A
An audio reviewer hears two lines over and over: “That never happened with any of the other samples” and “We created this [fill in the blank] because the products that are out there now are inadequate.” I heard the second line last week in a ramshackle Van Nuys, California industrial space bordered by a security gate and half-filled with piles of decades-old test gear. Unlikely as the setting seemed, its tenant actually delivered on his claims.
The CD is dying. iPod sales are declining. More and more, people are getting their music from … well, everywhere: MP3s stored on a hard drive, Internet radio and music services like MOG, Pandora and the recently hyped Spotify.
The review I just wrote of the Sonos Play:3 streaming music system, and another I recently finished of several small Bluetooth speaker systems (you’ll see the full results soon in the print edition of Sound+Vision) reminded me of just how important listening is in audio produ
Since time immemorial (or at least the late 1980s), designers of compact subwoofer/satellite speaker systems have struggled against The Hole.
The Hole is the gap between the lowest note the satellites can play and the highest notes the subwoofer can play. The Hole can make voices sound thin, and can rob gunshots and other sound effects of their dynamic impact. But the usual methods for filling The Hole can cause worse problems than The Hole itself.
At the party last night at the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood to celebrate the release of the Blu-ray Disc and DVD of Dexter, Season 5, I got to spend some quality time with Craig Eggers, Director of Blu-ray Ecosystems for Dolby Labs. Eggers was there because the Blu-ray release is in Dolby TrueHD 5.1. I think I was supposed to talk with him about the new discs, but instead I cornered him for an update on something far more interesting to me: the status of 7.1 sound.