| Page 52 | Sound & Vision

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Thomas J. Norton | Oct 22, 2014

The annual Rocky Mountain Audio Fest was held in early October in the Marriott Hotel at the Denver Tech Center. For at least the past 10 years this has been the biggest of the many audio shows now jostling for position around the U.S. Depending on who you ask, the Newport Beach (CA) show, held in June, is nipping at its heels but isn’t quite there yet.

Manufacturers (not to mention the press) must be tearing what’s left of their hair out trying to support all these shows, which now include RMAF, Newport, (northern) California, Chicago, New York City, Washington D.C., and Toronto. Let me know if I’ve missed one! And this doesn’t even include the trade-only CES (and, for some, CEDIA EXPO). For small manufacturers this is a major expense, and many of them only attend one or two. If they support two, it’s most likely they’ll include RMAF and CES).

Unlike many present-day audiophiles I keep one foot in the audio/video world of home theater and surround sound and the other in the 2-channel world of high-end audio. I regret that multichannel, even for music alone, remains anathema to many audio fans. As for film sound, for many that’s clearly the spawn of the devil...

4K TV Reviews TV Reviews LCD TV Reviews

Sony XBR-55X900B LCD/LED Ultra HDTV

Thomas J. Norton | Oct 21, 2014

2D Performance
3D Performance
Features
Ergonomics
Value

PRICE $4,000

AT A GLANCE
Plus
Exceptional blacks and shadow detail
Excellent color and resolution
Impressive sound with optional subwoofer
Minus
Price
Small screen for 4K

THE VERDICT
Short of sitting very close, you’ll need a screen bigger than 55 inches to see the full benefits of 4K resolution. But the XBR-55X900B is, nevertheless, a champion in all respects, including one we didn’t anticipate: state-of-the-art edge-lit local dimming.

The XBR-55X900B is the smallest set in Sony’s X900B series, which also includes the 65-inch XBR-65X900B ($5,000) and the 79-inch XBR-79X900B ($9,000). Fifty-five inches is a relatively small size for achieving the maximum benefits of 4K resolution. But it’s also perhaps today’s most popular size for the principal home HDTV, so there’s no denying its market importance for Ultra HD as well.

Blu-ray Movie Reviews

Pompeii

Thomas J. Norton | Oct 10, 2014

Picture
Sound
Extras

In the first 15 minutes of Pompeii, I wondered if it was heading toward a mashup of Gladiator and The Horse Whisperer. But the horsey part turned out to be just a minor plot (such as it is) driver. The lead character had been a slave since childhood, begins as a star sword-to-hand fighter in a backwater Britannia arena, has a seething grudge against the Romans for killing his family, soon becomes a gladiator in Pompeii, pals up with another gladiator (a big African, natch), and together they score a major victory in the arena against a faux Roman army in front of a vile, powerful Roman senator. Sound familiar?

A/V Veteran

What Price Glory

Thomas J. Norton | Sep 30, 2014

The cartoon above is only one of many from cartoonist Charles Rodrigues (1926-2004), who contributed to this magazine in the 1970s and 1980s (the mag was then known as Stereo Review). A favorite audiophile parody of an equipment report from Stereo Review’s iconic reviewer Julian Hirsch states, “Of all the amplifiers I have reviewed, this was definitely one of them.” Nevertheless, we all enjoyed Rodrigues’ take on our then, as now, crazy business.

But the cartoon here also heralded a problem that has fallen on the high-end audio industry, a problem also shared, though to a lesser degree, by the home theater business: eye-watering prices.

Projection Screen Reviews

Screen Innovations Slate Projection Screen

Thomas J. Norton | Sep 25, 2014

Performance
Setup
Value

PRICE $2,049 (as tested)

AT A GLANCE
Plus
Superb color and contrast with room lights out
Lights-on viewing can be more satisfying than with a conventional screen
Minus
Don’t expect miracles: Lights-out viewing still offers a superior picture

THE VERDICT
No screen can provide a projector’s best performance in normal room lighting, but the Screen Innovations Slate takes aim at this goal and, though not scoring a bull’s-eye, comes closer than most.

The surest route to realizing a knockout, big-picture home theater is to install a separate projector and screen. Once you’ve experienced it, you’ll wonder how you were ever satisfied with a “tiny” flat-screen HDTV.

Up until a few years ago, the biggest obstacle to realizing that ideal was the price of a good projector. Today, however, you can buy an excellent projector for under $3,000, and although that’s not chicken feed, it’s within the reach of many serious home theater enthusiasts. But what was once a secondary stumbling block is now front and center: the need for a fully darkened room to wring the best performance out of that projector. With most projection screens, there’s little choice, and this has kept home projection a niche market.

A/V Veteran CEDIA 2014

CEDIA Expo 2014---It's a Wrap

Thomas J. Norton | Sep 16, 2014

The big Blue Bear, the “mascot” for the Denver Convention Center, is sad. Another cycle of CEDIA Expos in Denver has ended; next year we head to Big D A double L AS (that spells Dallas, my, oh yes).

But this latest two-year run in in Denver ended with a bang. It was...

CEDIA 2014

Yamaha and Atmos

Thomas J. Norton | Sep 13, 2014

While Yamaha's lineup of new AVRs is heavy into support for Atmos, the company's well-reviewed Avantage pre-pro remains Atmos-free. A spokesperson for Yamaha told me that there are no immediate plans to come out with a new version that supports Atmos. It will certainly happen eventually (unless Atmos turns out to be this year's HD-DVD, and it doesn't appear that it will), but until then they're likely to loose customers to Marantz, Onkyo, and Integra, all of which offer competing pre-pros with that feature.

CEDIA 2014

Parasound's Even Dozen

Thomas J. Norton | Sep 13, 2014

Parasound's new ZoneMaster 1250 12-channel amplifier couldn't have arrived at a better time. Of course the name suggests a custom installation with multiple zones, but it could be used to satisfy the demands of Atmos as well, supporting a multitude of ceiling and surround speakers in a variety of configurations. Any pair of channels can also be bridged. Without bridging, the power is rated at 50W per channel into 8 ohms, all channels driven. A bridged pair of channels is rated at 120W into 8 ohms and 200W into 4 ohms. I can conceive of a user bridging three pairs for the front channels and using the other six unbridged for a 5.2.4 Atmos setup.

CEDIA 2014

Atlantic Technology Enables Dolby Atmos

Thomas J. Norton | Sep 13, 2014

By now you've likely heard of Dolby Atmos-Enabled speakers, which include an additional driver or drivers firing out of the top at an angle to bounce Atmos' height information off your ceiling if installation of ceiling speakers is impractical--as it will be for most of us. In addition to dedicated Atmos-Enabled speakers, several add-on modules were seen at CEDIA, which are designed to sit on top of your main left and right front speakers and surrounds if you want to add Atmos but don't want to replace your entire speaker system.

The 44-DA from Atlantic technology is designed for this purpose. At $500/pair, it employs a concentric driver (a coaxial woofer-tweeter). While designed to be a perfect fit atop the company's THX-4400 L/R speakers, it can be used on any speaker with a flat top surface large enough to accommodate its approximately 8.4-inch width and 9.5-inch depth.

CEDIA 2014

JVC Stands Pat

Thomas J. Norton | Sep 13, 2014

While JVC introduced no new projectors at CEDIA EXPO for the first time in years, it still produced some of the best-looking images at the show. Using a native 4K source, its top of the line DLA-X900 looked particularly striking in low lamp mode on an approximately 130-inch wide screen. For those unfamiliar with JVC's current models, its higher-end designs can accept a 4K input and process it so that can be reproduced by the projector's 2K (1920 x 1080) LCOS imaging chips. Through further processing it then simulates 4K. Though it isn't true 4K, it can look very good.

I'm guessing that in the depths of JVC's R&D facilities they're working on a way to produce an affordable true 4K home theater projector. So far no one has done this--unless you consider Sony's $16,000 VPL-VW600ES affordable (but see the story above).

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