The Mordaunt-Short Aviano 6 tower speaker reminds me why it’s sometimes best to hold out for something you truly love instead of something that merely gets the job done.As we age, we often give up the pursuit of the great and settle for the good. We settle for sedans instead of sports cars because they get us to work every day.
Like panthers or hamsters or bats, video projectors do the bulk of their business in the dark. But darkness makes most humans uncomfortable, which may be why front projection has never made it into the mainstream — in order to get a good picture, you have to turn most, and preferably all, of the lights off.
Some critics say hip-hop is dead. If they’re right, then Kanye West and Li’l Wayne should get into the A/V receiver business. The two industries bear striking similarities. Hip-hop artists maximize sales by loading up their albums with guest performances. Audio manufacturers maximize sales by loading up their receivers with guest technologies.
In Los Angeles’s San Fernando Valley, where I live, “naked” is all the rage. That’s not just because the Valley is the world capital of adult video production. It’s also because the SFV is home to several of America’s leading speaker reviewers. Don’t worry — as far as I know, the reviewers are keeping their clothes on. But many of the speakers they review are not.
Lots of companies make cars. Lots of companies make video projectors. But when you look under the hood of either product, you’ll realize that not many companies make engines — i.e., the piston engines that power cars and the light engines that power projectors. That still leaves plenty of things to do like add a body, decide which features should accompany the engine, and sometimes tweak the engine to better suit individual needs.
Back in the days when a decent TV cost $4,000, I never hesitated to recommend spending $300 or so on professional calibration. But now you can get a pretty good set for less than $1,000. Far be it from me to tell you what your priorities should be, but to me, spending three bills to have a $900 TV calibrated seems as silly installing a $10,000 Viking range a 30,000 mobile home. Does this harsh nancial reality leave TV bargain hunters at the mercy of the factory calibration?
Do you trust your ears? I don’t. By that I mean I don’t trust my ears. Frankly, though, I don’t trust anybody’s. I’ve heard laymen enthuse about systems that had little more to offer than a few notes of booming bass. I’ve heard audio veterans trash impeccably engineered speakers — and praise speakers that showed glaring technical flaws.
I can tell you in one paragraph how to set up a pair of small speakers, but I could write a book about setting up subwoofers. It’s the most challenging aspect of home audio because the resonances in a room tend to stress certain bass frequencies and strangle others. The effects of those resonances change from place to place in a room, so the sound may be perfect in one seat and a mess the next chair over.
A product that functions imperfectly yet possesses a singular character can be as enjoyable to own as one that delivers unassailable performance. Before you argue the point, know that millions of Harley owners stand ready to back me up.
Glancing over the stylish, diminutive Paradigm MilleniaOne speaker, you might assume it’s nothing more than a flimsy plastic housing packed with 25-cent drivers scavenged from a parts bin somewhere in the bowels of Guangdong Province. But besides its cute looks, the MilleniaOne has nothing in common with the typical “lifestyle” speaker.