UTFORSK populære artikler om ZINIO Unlimited

DEN STORE KINOFØLELSEN

Samsung HW-Q995B tegner opp stort, troverdig og helomsluttende lydbilde, som trekker oss inn i handlingen. Den evner også å spille meget høyt og rent. Nykommeren koster litt mer enn forgjengeren HW-Q960A, som fortsatt er et meget godt kjøp, den også. Samsung har et solid rykte å ivareta når det kommer til lydplanker. Helt siden den sørkoreanske produsenten etablerte sin egen Audio Lab i California for noen år siden, har de fortsatt å levere noen av de beste lydplankene på markedet. 2022-modellen HW-Q995B tar over stafettpinnen etter den populære HW-Q960A, som vi testet i fjor med godt resultat. HW-Q995B benytter nøyaktig samme høyt-talerkonfigurasjon som tidligere, nærmere bestemt 11.1.4 kanaler – der 4-tallet indikerer at både lydplanken og de to bakhøyttalerne er utstyrt med høydekanaler for Dolby Atmos og DTS:X. Totalt dreier det seg om…

DEN STORE KINOFØLELSEN
Garth Powell

Garth Powell

What is the most misunderstood aspect of power conditioning among audiophiles? My lights blink at my home or office. I’m in a busy city, or I’m in a rural area at the end of the power line; therefore, I must have poor power. What many people don’t realize is that the power issues that affect audio systems have to do with either low or high voltage, variable voltage, or the poor quality of the AC sinewave that reaches component power supplies. Audio-component power supplies typically adjust for (regulate) the incoming voltage and, most importantly, rectify the AC signal into DC (direct current). The sinewave from your utility is far from being a perfect sinewave, but the component power supply will eliminate that sinewave and most or all its harmonic distortion as…

INDIA’S ENERGY CHALLENGE

INDIA’S ENERGY CHALLENGE

ON A WARM AND HUMID MORNING in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh last September, Chetan Singh Solanki stepped off a bus he’d been living in for the past 10 months and walked into a high school auditorium in the small town of Raisen, where 200 students, teachers, and officials had gathered to hear him speak. A solar energy professor at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Mumbai, Solanki is a slender man in his mid-40s with a boyish appearance and a quick smile that are assets for the mission he’s on. In late 2020 he took a leave to make an 11-year road trip around India to inspire action to fight climate change. Solanki’s vehicle is a mobile demonstration of the utility of renewable energy: Solar panels generate…

2022 Ford Shelby Mustang GT500-H

2022 Ford Shelby Mustang GT500-H

Yes, you read that right. Hertz is going to rent a 900-plus-hp Mustang GT500 to just about anyone who can swing the rental fee. We took the first Hertz Ford Shelby Mustang GT500-H for a quick drive to find out whether that’s a good idea. There’s at least precedent for this. Hertz and Shelby first teamed up in 1966 with the GT350-H, which was tuned up to 306 hp instead of 271 hp, a 13 percent increase. When you think about it that way, the 18-ish percent increase in power between a stock 2022 GT500 and a Hertz Shelby GT500-H seems fairly reasonable … until you remember we’re talking about more than 900 horsepower. If we’re honest, the GT500 didn’t need more power, but that’s kind of Shelby’s thing. A massive 3.8-liter…

Keith Martin

Keith Martin

What is the most misunderstood aspect of power conditioning among audiophiles? It seems that most audiophiles have the preconception that a power-cleaning system can or will kill the dynamic range within the music. Thus, one must never put a power amplifier on a power-cleaning system. However, this is only the case if the power—cleaning system has not been designed correctly or with enough technical understanding. IsoTek delivers absolute power—unrestricted current delivery within what the power company can supply and regulations allow Generally, for power amplifiers or high-wattage electronics IsoTek provides output which offers extremely low impedance and low Direct Current Resistance (DCR). This eliminates any possibility of current restriction and enhances dynamic range. When power is contaminated, dynamic range is reduced. This is because the brain compares the softest and loudest sounds…

ASK THE EXPERTS

Q I bought tickets for an activity using my Visa credit card and was charged a 5% credit card surcharge. I thought the average fee for Visa was only about 2%? Seems just a way for a business to sneakily take a bit more from customers. A CHOICE money expert Uta Mihm: In 2016 businesses were banned from applying excessive payment surcharges to credit card payments. ‘Excessive’ is defined as anything more than what it costs the business to process the payment. This ban applies to Eftpos (debit and prepaid), MasterCard and Visa (credit, debit and prepaid), and American Express “companion cards” (Amex cards issued through an Australian financial service provider, rather than directly through American Express). How do you know how much it costs the business to process the payment? As…

ASK THE EXPERTS

Caelin Gabriel

What is the most misunderstood aspect of power conditioning among audiophiles? Based on our experience over the past 25 years, the two most common misconceptions are that: 1) power delivery is an ancillary, non-essential product category that sits somewhere behind electronics, speakers, signal cables, and room treatment in importance; and 2) most of the noise that impacts performance is carried in from somewhere outside the system. Below, I’ll break down and explain our point of view on each subject. On misconception one, hobbyists and sound professionals tend to believe that the sound they hear begins at the microphone, CD, tape, or record. While this makes conceptual sense, the truth is that the source of what we hear begins at the component’s power supply, which is modulated by the source signal. The design…

Caelin Gabriel

THE BATTLE FOR UKRAINE’S INTERNET

In the wake of the counteroffensive that reclaimed vast swaths of Ukraine from Russian forces, teams of local technicians and engineers quietly arrived. Wearing helmets and bulletproof vests amid the ongoing shelling, often escorted by Ukrainian troops to avoid land mines, the workers barely waited to see the last of the retreating Russian soldiers before beginning to repair the damaged base stations and fiber-optic cables that left hundreds of towns and villages cut off from the outside world. Ukraine’s dogged efforts to restore internet and mobile connection underscore the urgency with which government officials view the communications blackout in previously occupied areas. “The first thing the Russians do when they occupy these territories is cut off the networks,” says Stas Prybytko, head of mobile broadband development in Ukraine’s Ministry of Digital…

THE BATTLE FOR UKRAINE’S INTERNET

HØYTTALERE I ALLE FORMER

Høyttalere kan være så mangt, og de spenner seg meget bredt i både pris og størrelse. For stereofolket er høyttalerne det siste og mest krevende leddet i avspillingskjeden, og en tommelfingerregel sier at man bør bruke like mye penger på hver høyttaler som på forsterkeren. Og det kan handle om ganske mye penger, da de dyreste høyttalerne i kavalkaden koster like mye som en ny bil. I den motsatte enden av skalaen finner man et vell av trådløse høyttalere som kan brukes med mobilen, nettbrettet eller datamaskinen. De minste av dem glir rett ned i lomma, mens de største fyller et stuebord og kan konkurrere med et stereoanlegg. I hvert fall når det gjelder lydtrykk, men stereoanlegget trekker det lengste strået hva stereo lydbilde angår, fordi høyttalerne kan stå mye lenger…

HØYTTALERE I ALLE FORMER
PIRATE HAVEN OF PORT ROYAL

PIRATE HAVEN OF PORT ROYAL

A devastating earthquake rocked Port Royal, favorite hideout of the Caribbean’s most notorious pirates. Centuries later, archaeologists are exploring Jamaica’s coast and the town’s wellpreserved ruins. EDITORS OF NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC he 19th-century author Howard Pyle is responsible for a great many beliefs about 17th-century pirates, from their flamboyant costumes to their buried treasures. Published after his death, the 1921 Howard Pyle’s Book of Pirates contains vivid illustrations alongside rollicking stories of life on the high seas. Historians have dismissed much of it as romanticized exaggeration, but his depiction of Port Royal still rings true: [T]he town of Port Royal … in the year 1665 … came all the pirates and buccaneers … and men shouted and swore and gambled, and poured out money like water, and then maybe wound up their merrymaking by…

Everest Broke It. Scientists Fixed It.

Everest Broke It. Scientists Fixed It.

ILLUMINATING THE MYSTERIES—AND WONDERS—ALL AROUND US EVERY DAY ON A PICTURE-POSTCARD DAY IN 2021, Tenzing Gyalzen Sherpa crested the Balcony, a windswept rest spot high on Mount Everest’s Southeast Ridge. In front of his crampons, half buried in the hardened snow, were the remains of the world’s highest weather station. When the station was first assembled and bolted to the rock, it looked like an elaborate backyard antenna festooned with bird feeders and weather vanes. In reality it was $30,000 of precision instruments to measure wind, humidity, temperature, solar radiation, and barometric pressure. Now the mangled seven-foot-tall mast lay on its side, embedded in ice. Tenzing, a 31-year-old electrician and mountain guide, removed his phone from his down suit and began taking pictures of the scene. The Balcony Station had stopped transmitting on…

Fast Times with Patrick Dempsey

Q+A IMAGINE THIS: IN YOUR EARLY 20S, YOU’RE ALREADY ONE OF AMERICA’S biggest heartthrobs. By your late 30s, you are America’s biggest heartthrob. Then you decide to try your hand at being a race-car driver and land on the podium at Le Mans, one of the world’s most grueling endurance races. Next you become co-owner of a racing team. Now you’re 57, still racing a bit, and you just landed a role in Michael Mann’s forthcoming Ferrari movie, because, oh yeah, you’re still an incredibly handsome actor. That’s Patrick Dempsey. We caught up with him from his home in Maine to find out how he keeps his charmed life in balance. Esquire: Early in your career, after the movie Can’t Buy Me Love, you did the thing that I wish most people…

Fast Times with Patrick Dempsey
XI MISSES THE MARK

XI MISSES THE MARK

CHINESE LEADER XI JINPING APPEARED to revise his long-term economic outlook when he opened a major political event last month, hinting at modest growth that casts fresh doubt on China’s capacity to surpass the United States in the future. Beijing’s two-step plan to build what it calls a “great modern socialist country in all respects” by 2049, the centennial of the People’s Republic of China, involves first raising levels of public wealth and doubling the national economy by 2035. To achieve that, economists believed China would need to maintain annual gross domestic product growth of at least 5 percent, a once-realistic trajectory that might have seen it one day overtake the U.S. economy in GDP terms—valued at $23 trillion versus China’s $17.73 trillion in 2021, according to the World Bank’s records. This first…

BOM DIA, BONITA!

Florence Grinda is an enthusiastic collector, to say the least. “I adore buying things,” Grinda admits. She has a group of cockerel sculptures in her Paris apartment, and the kitchen of her chalet in Gstaad is filled with black ceramics from Vallauris. Meanwhile, her vacation home near Comporta in Portugal is stocked with rattan mirrors, midcentury Murano glass fish, and turquoise-colored vases from the Burgundy village of Accolay. “She’s quite insatiable,” says her longtime friend Jacques Grange, who oversaw the architectural design of her Portuguese getaway. “She’s like a child who wants all their toys.” The pair have known each other for 50 years and counting. “Florence is charming, amusing, and not afraid of speaking her mind,” says Grange, who is far from alone in falling under her spell. Her list…

BOM DIA, BONITA!

Horizon

1 NOTHING PHONE (1) £399, nothing.tech It’s not hard to follow the thread from OnePlus to Nothing. Indeed, OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei is in charge here, and there’s a definite parallel between the launch strategy that put OnePlus on the map and the trickle-down reveal that preceded the Nothing Phone (1). But while OnePlus’ emergence essentially kickstarted the mid-range, Nothing enters a market already full of excellent £400 phones. Thus it does something different. The specs aren’t altogether bad, but like the striking Nothing Ear(1) true wireless buds before it and unlike just about every other generic middleground Android handset, this is a phone built with design first. Nothing and design partner Teenage Engineering have absolutely succeeded on that front: you’ll know the Phone (1) when you see it. The clever clear rear is…

Horizon
ROLE OF A LIFETIME

ROLE OF A LIFETIME

WHEN RUSSIA’S VLADIMIR PUTIN BEGAN A MILITARY INVASION OF UKRAINE on February 24, 2022, it was widely assumed that Ukraine would surrender quickly. Instead, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky—an actor-turned-politician famous for playing an actor-turned-politician in the TV comedy Servant of the People—refused to budge, withstood multiple assasination attempts and rallied his people to fight. He pleaded with the international community to implement sanctions on the Russians and to provide weapons and ammunition for the Ukrainians. How did Zelensky accomplish this transformation? Where did he first take Putin’s measure? Read about it in this exclusive advance look from Ukrainian journalist and political commentator Serheii Rudenko’s upcoming Zelensky: A BiogrAphy (Polity Books, July 18), in which he explores Zelensky’s life and governing style, from his childhood through the beginnings of the war. IN…

Juan Sebastián Elcano, His Forgotten First

Juan Sebastián Elcano, His Forgotten First

Mooring at the southern Spanish port of Sanlúcar de Barrameda on September 6, 1522, the Victoria’s hull was so rotten that it could only stay afloat by continually operating the pumps. Three years before, the ship had set out from port as part of a proud, five-ship flotilla under the command of captain-general Ferdinand Magellan. Since then, of the four other ships, three were lost and one had deserted. Of the 250 men that had formed the flotilla’s original crew, only 18 returned that September day. The man who had captained these survivors on their long journey home, however, was not Magellan—killed in the Philippines more than a year before—but a Basque seaman named Juan Sebastián Elcano. By steering the frail Victoria across the Indian Ocean and around Africa’s Cape of…

BEACH TECH YOU CAN’T BEAT

BEACH TECH YOU CAN’T BEAT

BRITAIN’S STONE AGE BUILDING BOOM

BRITAIN’S STONE AGE BUILDING BOOM

SOMETHING MOMENTOUS was in the air in the south of Britain about 4,500 years ago during the dying days of the Neolithic era, the final chapter of the Stone Age. Whatever it was—religious zeal, bravura, a sense of impending change—it cast a spell over the inhabitants and stirred them into a frenzy of monument building. In an astonishingly brief span of time—perhaps as little as a century—people who lacked metal tools, horsepower, and the wheel erected many of Britain’s huge stone circles, colossal wooden palisades, and grand avenues of standing stones. In the process they robbed forests of their biggest trees and moved millions of tons of earth. “It was like a mania sweeping the countryside, an obsession that drove them to build bigger and bigger, more and more, better and…

KING OF THE WORLD

KING OF THE WORLD

rom inscriptions on palace walls and incisions in cuneiform tablets, he was styled“Great King, the Mighty King, King of Assyria, King of Sumer and Akkad, the King of the World.” Those titles might seem exaggerated today, but for his time, they just might have been warranted. For almost 40 years, Ashurbanipal reigned over the Assyrian Empire and ruled over the largest kingdom of its time—and perhaps the greatest up to the seventh century b.c. When trying to discuss Ashurbanipal’s greatness as a world leader, understanding what his contemporaries, the Assyrians, meant by “world” is vital. Their world was Mesopotamia, but Assyria’s holdings extended farther than that—from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf, and from Egypt to the mountains of southeastern Turkey. The Assyrians were certainly aware that beyond lay other lands,…

I Can Just Be Her Mum

I Can Just Be Her Mum

Two years ago, my daughter, Samantha, graduated from university. She went on to start her first full-time job and go flat hunting with her best friend. These milestones, bittersweet for most parents, have felt monumental to me. As Sammie steps into her future, our family stands on the precipice of a life we didn’t dare contemplate before now. Because, until recently, I still believed I would outlive her. My daughter was almost two when we learned she had cystic fibrosis (CF), a progressive genetic disease that affects breathing, digestion, and other functions while slowly destroying the lungs. She had been dropping weight for months, her once plump arms reduced to sticks, her belly distended. A sweat test detected CF, which a blood test confirmed. “The good news is the life expectancy for…