John Sciacca

The Connected Life
Are You Ready for Your Annual AV Spring Cleaning?
John Sciacca  |  Mar 16, 2016  |  4 comments
For most of its life, your audio gear probably just sits there, quietly doing its thing, providing (hopefully) years of quality entertainment. But all the while, a silent killer lurks in your house: dust. And unless your listening room is like some kind of Silicon Valley clean space or you have a hermetically sealed audio rack—in which case you’ve probably got some ventilation issues to address—your gear is under constant attack from dust particles that could shorten its life.
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Soundbar Reviews
Definitive Technology W Studio Micro Soundbar System Review
John Sciacca  |  Feb 17, 2016  |  0 comments

Performance
Features
Ergonomics
Value
PRICE $899

AT A GLANCE
Plus
Ultra-thin form factor
Triple-threat with movies, music, and wholehouse audio
Great sound
Minus
Awkward handling of network media

THE VERDICT
The W Studio Micro’s strong performance and tons of streaming music features make it an easy recommendation.

The soundbar is one of the fastest-growing market segments in recent years, and that’s no surprise. As consumer demand grows for ultra-thin TVs with virtually zero bezel, display manufacturers are in the quandary of where to put the built-in speakers. The answer for most has been placing shallow speakers behind the screen, firing away from listeners. Obviously, these sonic compromises make it increasingly difficult to understand dialogue— let alone actually enjoy the wider dynamics of movies or music— and the simple solution is adding a soundbar.

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The Connected Life
Finding Audio Gateways for Millennials
John Sciacca  |  Feb 03, 2016  |  7 comments
Resident audio professor, Ken C. Pohlmann, recently wrote a blog entitled “Millenials: Your Soundbars are Killing Us” that generated quite a bit of ire among readers. The post generated over 30 comments both for, but mainly against, Ken’s assertion that millennials’ “insatiable love of soundbars” was going to ruin audio for the rest of us.
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The Connected Life
The Best Dolby Atmos Blu-ray Demo Scenes (Pt 2)
John Sciacca  |  Jan 20, 2016  |  2 comments
I’ve been fortunate enough to watch nearly every Dolby Atmos-encoded Blu-ray disc that has been released so far and while some of the movies are terrific (Gravity) others are more just things you suffer through (Jupiter Ascending). To save you some time trying to find the best scenes to demo, I’m gonna pinpoint each film’s marquee Atmos audio moment!
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CES 2016
Sony Bridges High Res Audio and Vinyl
John Sciacca  |  Jan 09, 2016  |  Published: Jan 10, 2016  |  1 comments
Sony showed one of the coolest audio innovations of the Consumer Electronics Show with the debut of the company’s new PS-HX500 turntable. While the HX500 is a fully functional, belt-driven turntable on its own with an analog output that can feed any audio system, it also features a USB output that can be connected to a computer to create ultra-high resolution, exact digital captures of the album including all of the vinyl's signature sound.

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CES 2016
DarbeeVision Enhances 4K Video
John Sciacca  |  Jan 09, 2016  |  1 comments
Sure, you might think that 8 million pixels of glorious UHD, 4K video would be the height of pristine image quality on its own without any room or need for improvement, but DarbeeVision would beg to differ. At CES the company demonstrated the improvement that could be had when true 4K images are processed and enhanced with the company’s proprietary Visual Presence DVP processing.

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CES 2016
Connect Your Home and Car with Meridian, Jaguar and Intel
John Sciacca  |  Jan 09, 2016  |  0 comments
In a technology demonstration Meridian, Jaguar and Intel combined to show how the future of a fully connected life could integrate both your home and automotive away lifestyle. Using integrated technologies that included a pair of Meridian DSP3200 digital speakers and a Sooloos music server, and a Meridian audio system in the Jaguar F-Pace SUV, notifications could be sent from the Jaguar to the TV in the home, and adjustments to the home could be mirrored to the SUV to insure a smooth transition between home and away living.

There were four primary aspects to the tech demo including personal inventory tracking, preferred temperature, seamless media transfer, and second driver notification.

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CES 2016
See Everything with Swann 4K Surveillance
John Sciacca  |  Jan 08, 2016  |  0 comments
Resolution is everything when it comes to a surveillance system, and each extra pixel can be the difference between positively identifying a bad guy and just being able to say, “Yep, we got robbed.” Swann is upping the DIY surveillance game with an upcoming everything-you-need-in-a-box surveillance system that will include four Ultra High Def 4K cameras and a 2 Terabyte NVR giving you more than 8 million per camera, all dedicated to keeping an eye on your stuff.

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CES 2016
Definitive and Polk Debut Wireless Surround
John Sciacca  |  Jan 08, 2016  |  0 comments
Definitive Technology and Polk Audio demonstrated for the first time the capability of its soundbars pairing with smaller, wireless speakers to form a true 5.1-channel wireless surround system. While company representatives would not confirm the technology being used, one could infer that since all of the speakers involved were from the PlayFi wireless ecosystem, and since one of the recent PlayFi updates enabled the possibility of adding surround speakers, that PlayFi was the underlying wireless technology at play.
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CES 2016
Put a Canary in Your Coal Mine
John Sciacca  |  Jan 07, 2016  |  0 comments
Back in the day, canaries would be carried down into mine tunnels to warn of any dangerous gases such as carbon monoxide. When the canary died, you knew it was time to get the heck out of dodge. This modern Canary is designed to protect your house while you’re away and notify you of any break-ins.

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