Sound & Vision December 2021/January 2022

If an audio product were perfect, it would have no sound of its own. It would be invisible. It would have no “voice.” In the real world, DACs, amplifiers, turntables, and especially the transducers—microphones, phono cartridges, and loudspeakers—all have distinct sonic characters. Imperfections are inherent to every audio product and design. “Voice” is the result of crucially acknowledging the sonic effect of every decision and every part, and then purposefully coordinating the combined effect of all those many little imperfections into a whole, creating a voice with as little overt character as possible. At least, that’s the objective for all GoldenEar loudspeakers. Many speaker designers have different ideas about how a speaker should be voiced. Some voice their speakers to be more like studio monitors, which intentionally heighten the listeners’ awareness of…

FALL 2021 was a period of intense highs and lows for streaming giant Netflix. At one extreme, it scored an international hit with Squid Game, a Korean production that quickly became the service’s must-watch, most-watched show, drawing in over 111 million viewers during its first month. At the other extreme, a Netflix original comedy special, Dave Chappelle’s The Closer, drew intense criticism from the transgender community over its targeted jokes. The backlash over The Closer even spread to the ranks of the company’s employees, hundreds of whom staged a walkout and protest, calling for its removal from the service. Adding to Netflix’s woes during this time was the imminent cancellation of the service by a longtime customer, Sound & Vision editor Al Griffin. My reasons for canceling Netflix had less to…

Any money I save by canceling Netflix will inevitably be diverted to Disney+, specifically so I can catch the new Peter Jackson documentary series The Beatles: Get Back. That much-loved band’s Let it Be, their post-breakup album, holds a special place in my consciousness due to it being my first Beatles LP. I had asked my parents for the glitzy Rock ‘n’ Roll Music two-disc set that had just been released by Capitol Records, but instead found Let it Be sitting under the tree when I came downstairs on Christmas morning. At first disappointed, I came to love Let it Be with its mix of melodic, expansive, soulful, and genuinely rockin’ songs. I still have that same disc in my collection, where it now sits alongside the lovely new 5-LP…

Music for Children I enjoy reading Sound & Vision’s Blu-ray disc reviews, which cover a wide spectrum of film genres. Why, then, must your music reviews only cover children’s music? I understand the lure of nostalgia as much as the next person and occasionally enjoy listening to new wave from when I was a teenager in the 1980s. But I’m in my fifties now and my musical tastes have also thankfully matured. Can’t you please review classical music written by trained and educated composers, rather than simplistic children’s music (whatever the subject matter and cleverness of the lyrics) by self-taught entertainers from the 1960s and 1970s? Karen Amrhein / Baltimore, Maryland Al Griffin responds: We’re going to refrain from telling the occasionally prickly Bob Dylan (check out our review of his Springtime in…

I rarely have very much good to say about soundbars with DSP-based simulated surround. But the Denon Home Sound Bar 550 ($599) instantly impressed me by delivering convincing immersive sound. Add in the built-in HEOS multiroom platform, which lets you stream from music apps over Wi-Fi, and Denon’s Sound Bar turns out to be a winning proposition. The attractive, compact (26 inches wide) Sound Bar offers processing for Dolby Atmos and DTS:X and a recent firmware update adds the ability to wirelessly link it with Denon Home wireless surround speakers and the company’s DSW-1H sub. Denon’s HEOS app supports Spotify, Tidal, Amazon Music HD, and more via Wi-Fi, and AirPlay 2 and Bluetooth wireless streaming are on tap. The Sound Bar also has a built-in microphone for Amazon Alexa voice control. The…

The year is 1969. I am sitting in front of my family’s TV watching live black-and-white video from the moon. High-definition TV is still science fiction, but in the blurry picture I can see Neil Armstrong descend the ladder and step onto the lunar surface. In the middle of the transmission, I walk outside and look up at the moon, waxing crescent, thoroughly amazed that for the first time people are up there looking back at me. Now, almost a lifetime later, we are preparing to go back to the moon. Just writing that sentence gives me goosebumps. Sure, we have lots of problems here on earth. But that’s no reason not to send men and women to further explore the moon. To reword the oft-quoted phrase, we need to go there…