Tabla de contenidos para February/March 2022 en Sound & Vision

Customer Service And Subscriptions soundandvision@email-customerservice.com Call (800) 666-3746 (international calls: 386-447-6383) or write to: Sound & Vision, P.O. Box 420235, Palm Coast, FL 32142-0235 Please include your full name, address, and phone number on any inquiries. PREMIUM VOD, Early Access, Theater at Home, In-Theater Rental. Each of these terms essentially describe the same thing: new movies screening in theaters that can also be streamed for home viewing. Premium VOD (we’ll run with that label) is a fairly recent development, one that quickly accelerated with the arrival of Covid. And while theaters have since re-opened, Premium VOD appears to be here to stay in a big way, with many new movies available to stream from services such as Vudu, Amazon Prime, Apple TV, and more. What’s the catch with Premium VOD?…

Many years ago, I would ride my bicycle to the neighborhood record store, lean it against the window (no need to padlock), spend an enjoyable hour flipping through LPs, pick one out, and buy it (cash, of course). I would then slip it into my backpack and ride home, put the needle in the groove, and enjoy the sound of my purchase. Oh, how times have changed. In particular, the cool kids are now buying music as non-fungible tokens (NFT). Strictly speaking, music is a stream of ever-changing fluctuations in pressure that are literally airy. Some pieces of music could even be described as superlunary. Nevertheless, we have found ways to brutally commercialize it. For well over a hundred years, companies have churned out packaged music on a wide variety…

Q I want to get the highest possible audio quality from my home theater system when using the streaming apps on my new Samsung QN90A Neo QLED 4K Smart TV. I have a Denon AVR-A100 A/V receiver that has an HDMI ARC port. My previous TV only had an optical digital output, and I used that to connect it to the Denon, but I’m now ready to use the Samsung’s HDMI eARC connection to get sound from the TV. Here’s my question: Is my Samsung TV’s eARC port compatible with my Denon receiver’s ARC port? By compatible, I mean will the Denon “understand” the Dolby Digital Plus bitstream coming from the apps and just ignore any Atmos metadata? GEORGE PERKINS / MADISON, WI A Unlike standard HDMI ARC connections, the…

RATING GIVEN THE current uncertain state of the world, I was truly surprised when JVC announced not one but three new projectors prior to the kickoff of CEDIA Expo 2021, an event that ended up being a pale shade of its regular self. The new JVC trio largely replaces the company’s current projector lineup, offering a list of new features including a next-gen BLU-Escent laser light engine, HDMI 2.1 connectivity with full 8K/60Hz and 4K/120Hz video input support, and HDR10+ high dynamic range. Along with this uptick in features comes a substantial uptick in pricing, with the new projectors ranging from $10,000 to $25,000. Even so, the refreshed lineup sets a new price/performance bar for native 4K laser light engine-driven projectors. For this review, JVC sent me its top-dog DLA-NZ9…

RATING PERFORMANCE BUILD QUALITY VALUE THE STORY of how Monoprice parlayed its success as a humble purveyor of computer peripherals into its current status as a direct-toconsumer A/V gear powerhouse will have to wait for another day, mostly because I don’t know it. But I do know this much: the torrent of ultra-high-value speakers and electronics, desktop audio, and even pro audio designs that have bubbled up from the Monoprice spring over the past few years is all but unprecedented in my decades in the audio/video world. The latest gush this flow has brought forth is the Monolith by Monoprice Encore T6 speaker system seen here. This suite consisting of towers, center, and two-way surrounds checks in at just over $1,400—hundreds, or even thousands, less than many established, well-regarded speakermakers…

RATING PERFORMANCE FEATURES BUILD QUALITY VALUE OSD AUDIO is a maker of many audiorelated things, its extensive product line covering most bases for custom residential and commercial installations. But the company also has a fair number of consumer offerings, including a sizeable range of subwoofers. Last year I reviewed its Nero TubeBass 10, a cylinder-shaped model that provided a decent wallop of bass given its compact size and $179 price. Now, for this review I’m stepping up to the Trevoce 12 EQ DSP, a flagship subwoofer from the company’s swanky Black Series that still tops out at a reasonable $600. (By the time you're reading this, a 15-inch model with a $799 price should be available.) The Trevoce 12 EQ DSP combines a 12-inch front-facing active driver with a pair…

R.E.M. were the undisputed kings of American-bred alt-rock by the time the mid-1990s rolled around. Emerging from the college-town kudzu of Athens, Georgia, with the game-changing jangle of July 1981’s “Radio Free Europe” single and August 1982’s subsequent Chronic Town EP, the underground quartet perfected a more fully realized signature sound on their April 1983 full-length debut, Murmur. (Hmm, was lead singer Michael Stipe one of the foremost progenitors of mumblecore? A discussion for another time.) Soon enough, R.E.M. vaulted from indie-label darlings to major-label envelope-pushers, bringing their garage-and-club-bred sonics into the mainstream with bigger-budget production values best exemplified with March 1991’s Out of Time and most especially October 1992’s Automatic for the People. Following September 1994’s primal-driven Monster, R.E.M. wanted to reconnect with the charge they got from creating…

FLAT-PANEL UHDTVS ❚ PROJECTORS ❚ SCREENS ❚ A/V RECEIVERS ❚ AUDIO SEPARATES & INTEGRATED AMPS ❚ SOURCE COMPONENTS ❚ SPEAKERS ❚ SOUNDBARS ❚ WIRELESS SPEAKERS ❚ SUBWOOFERS ❚ HEADPHONES ❚ EXTRAS ❚ TOP VALUES LOOKING BACK on 2021, I can honestly state that it represented an improvement over 2020, though it didn’t end up being the full-scale return-to-normal everybody was looking for. A/V consumer and trade shows such as CEDIA Expo in Indianapolis were gutted. Supply chain logjams delayed the arrival of new gear, particularly in core categories like speakers and A/V receivers, both of which ended up underrepresented in our 2021 Top Picks of the Year list compared with previous years. But even with all the challenges, the wheels of industry continued to grind, with much fantastic gear coming…

RATING PERFORMANCE FEATURES ERGONOMICS VALUE IS THERE a projector maker that hasn’t yet come out with an ultra short throw (UST) model aimed at viewers who want a theater-size image in their living room, but without the usual ceiling-mount and dark room baggage that accompanies it? If you asked me that question one year ago, I would have replied “BenQ.” But now, with its V7050i 4K DLP Laser TV, BenQ has joined the UST projector fold, adding its name to the ranks of Sony, Epson, Optoma, Vava, Hisense, LG, Samsung, and others. BenQ’s specific take on the category is to deliver a model capable of the high light output needed for daylight sports viewing, but to add features that optimize picture quality for sources such as 4K movies on Ultra…

RATING PERFORMANCE FEATURES ERGONOMICS VALUE BOTH THE original Sonos Beam and the company’s new Beam Gen 2 soundbar use beamforming, a technology that combines an array of drivers with advanced signal processing, to create an enveloping audio experience without need for multiple speakers. With the Beam Gen 2 ($449), Sonos builds upon the virtual surround sound capabilities of the original by adding Dolby Atmos processing and side-firing drivers, a combination that ups the sense of immersion it can create. And the cost for this upgrade: a mere $50 premium over the original Beam soundbar’s $399 price. The presumed advantage to virtualized Atmos, which is much less dependent on room acoustics, is that it will work in a space with a vaulted ceiling as opposed to the flat ceiling Dolby recommends…

You can tell if a speaker is good the moment it starts playing, so I knew right away the Ai41 was good but didn’t fully appreciate how good until I had lived with it for a couple of weeks. Designed by Fluance, one of the many excellent speaker companies hailing from Canada, and built to spec in China, the Ai41 replaces the outstanding Ai40, one of our Top Value Picks in 2019. It’s a standard two-way bookshelf design featuring a 5-inch woofer and 1-inch silk-dome tweeter in an attractive cabinet just under 11 inches tall—small but not super compact—and available in four woodgrain finishes: black ash or black walnut with a black baffle or a white baffle offset by walnut (shown) or bamboo. There’s no speaker grille. The left speaker…

When I started out as a custom installer back in 1998, a “big screen” was a 60-inch rear-projection TV, with high-end models available from the likes of Mitsubishi and Pioneer Elite. These were 4:3 aspect ratio, cathode ray tube-driven sets with 480i resolution, and they were physically hulking beasts weighing upwards of hundreds of pounds. In fact, our company purchased special industrial suction cups to use when delivering the Pioneer models that allowed four of us to safely move it. And an installation often required doing a site survey before delivering the TV to make sure we had the logistics of getting it into the room figured out. If you wanted a more cinematic image larger than 60-inches, the decision then was simple: go with a projector. And it wasn’t…

RATING PERFORMANCE FEATURES ERGONOMICS VALUE KALEIDESCAPE SURE has been busy since I reviewed its Strato S 4K Ultra HD Movie Player late last year (October/November 2020 issue). The company added three new servers to its Terra lineup: the compact 6TB ($5,995), 12TB ($7,995), 18TB ($9,995) options, and a 72TB monster ($23,995) for those who want massive storage without having to string multiple Terra units together. For this review, I was sent the 12TB Terra, along with a Strato C 4K Movie Player (recently reduced in price to $2,995) to test it with. I’ll focus first on the 12TB Terra and then give an update on my overall Kaleidescape experience after living with a system for over a year (I purchased my Strato S review unit). BIG THINGS IN SMALL PACKAGES…

RATING PERFORMANCE BUILD QUALITY VALUE CANTON MAY be a speaker brand that’s relatively unknown in North America—no doubt due to the company’s products not being available in these parts for the past decade—but the German outfit has been doing business for almost 50 years. Headquartered about 25 miles north of Frankfurt, Canton is one of Germany’s largest loudspeaker manufacturers, offering a truly breathtaking spread of models across several product ranges. If you wanted to pluck a representative speaker out from the middle of Canton’s lineup, you’d most likely select the Chrono 70. The whole Chrono series resides somewhere in the middle of the company’s range, occupying a comfortable sweet spot between affordability and performance. One key advantage to this positioning is that the Chrono series leverages trickle-down technology from Canton’s…