Bob Ankosko

Okay, we’re still a couple days away from the official first day of spring but it’s warming up and the dreary winter landscape is starting to show signs of life. It’s a great time to celebrate the arrival springtime and have a look the latest A/V news and gear.

Time for a new set of speakers or subwoofer? An AVR with the latest features? Or maybe it’s time to bring your audio setup into the 21st century with a new music streamer. Wherever your home entertainment path is leading, click on to the next page for capsule reviews of more than two dozen products — all awarded Sound & Vision Top Picks in recent months.

Looking back at Sound & Vision’s Top Picks so far in 2022, speakers figure prominently into the mix, starting with a tower-based home theater ensemble that delivers the goods without draining your wallet. The lineup also includes a stately set of towers from a prominent German brand hoping to make a comeback in the U.S. and high performance subwoofers in two price categories — one from a well-known brand, the other from a name you probably don’t know. The odd man out is a new mid-priced AV receiver from Onkyo that can do just about everything you need it to do…except pop the popcorn.

As the pandemic winds down (again) and spring draws near, new product introductions are starting to pick up. Will they reach pre-2020 pandemic levels? Probably not, though the volume of press releases seems a bit higher than it was a year ago. Ongoing labor shortages and supply-chain disruptions caused by the logjam of shipping containers in major ports continue to hinder a return to normalcy — a situation that some analysts predict is here to stay for the rest of the year and possibly beyond. In the spirit of being thankful for the goods and services we can get, here’s a look at some of the latest A/V gear with a little news thrown into the mix.