Innehållsförteckning för April 2015 från Sound & Vision

Vizio Sponsored the AFI Fest for the American Film Institute in Hollywood. Among many other niceties, attendees got to charge their phones and enjoy a drink while watching P-Series TVs showing Ultra HD content... Pioneer and Onkyo moved ahead with a merger that has Pioneer buying a 14.95 percent stake in Onkyo, making it Onkyo’s third biggest shareholder after Otsuki Strategic Holdings and Gibson, the guitar manufacturer. What will happen to Pioneer’s world-class AVRs and other audio products was unknown at press time... The Urban Movie Channel launched from the folks at BET. It includes documentaries, comedies, horror films, and stage plays. A free trial through February 4 gave way to a $2.99/month charge... TV-Everywhere Viewers will quadruple from 5.6 billion in 2010 to 11.32 billion worldwide by 2020, predicts…

Bruce Hornsby could never be accused of being an artist who rests on his laurels. “I’m such a different musician in every way than I was 20 years ago,” he admits. Prime evidence of the master pianist’s ongoing creative evolution can be found all over the double-disc Solo Concerts (Vanguard), where Hornsby explores a variety of styles from behind the keyboard: everything from blues ’n’ boogie to New Orleans funk to the tenets of modern classical music. He also recasts the character of some of his best-known songs, such as turning “The Valley Road” into a blues vamp and giving “Mandolin Rain” an indelible bluegrass stamp. Hornsby views playing a song the same way twice as akin to being in “a creative prison.” And, he feels, “if you’re a musician…

“It’s a very common name. Back of $20 bills, that’s me.” Producer Andy Jackson is typically self-effacing as he leans back in a chair across from me in front of the massive 48-track Neve 88R console that dominates the control room on the Astoria, the grand Edwardian houseboat recording studio moored on the Tames somewhere near Hampton, Middlesex in England. The Astoria was built in 1911 for English theater mogul and music-hall comedian Fred Karno, and three-quarters of a century later, it was purchased in 1986 by Pink Floyd’s chief sonic architect for the past four decades, David Gilmour, who oversaw its transformation into a top-drawer recording studio. Fast-forward to late August 2014, where I’ve been summoned across the Pond to come aboard the Astoria and partake in an exclusive…

PRICE $5,000 TRUNDLE DOWN TO YOUR LOCAL big-box store, and you will find quite literally dozens of Blu-ray Disc players on offer, starting well under $50. Big ones, little ones, skinny ones, flat ones, cheap ones, and cheaper ones. None of these will be Sharp’s new SD-WH1000U, a Blu-ray player with a difference. Two differences, in fact: First, it has a jaw-slackening price tag of $5,000; second, Sharp’s design is wireless-centric, being the first WiSA-compatible player to appear, and one of the very first WiSA sources of any description. As such, the SD-WH1000U is not merely a player. It’s meant to serve as a WiSA hub, the control center of a high-performance wireless system of up to 7.1 channels. WiSA, while it may sound like something Jar Jar Binks would…

Life isn’t easy when you’re the bastard child of Zeus, father of all Gods, and your name happens to be Hercules. In ancient Greece, it was commonplace for the Gods to descend from Mount Olympus to fornicate with humans and leave mortal of spring in their wake. But Zeus’ infidelity incurred the vengeful wrath of his wife, Hera, who wanted to destroy his illegitimate progeny. When killing Hercules proved problematic, she instead did the next best thing and drove him to madness and the murder of his own wife and children. Remorse then prompted him to undertake his twelve impossible labors to purge himself of his crime. Or so the legend goes. This latest cinematic retread—the second of two in 2014, in fact— takes the classic myth with a hefty…

A charmer of a film, deeper, even grittier than its Capra-corn romantic populism might suggest, It Happened One Night swept the 1934 Oscars—winning Best Picture, Actor, Actress, Screenplay, and Director— and if it hadn’t edged out The Tin Man in doing so, I’d say, Bravo, well deserved. The story is a classic class-crossing fable: A spoiled rich girl runs away from her father to join the king she wants to marry; a hardscrabble newspaperman finds her, blackmails her into letting him come along to write a story; they take to the road, by bus, foot, thumb, and jalopy, squabbling, scolding, and, of course, falling in love with each other. Yes, it’s predictable and sentimental, but it’s also funny—one of the first screwball comedies—and genuinely (but not at all carnally) erotic.…

In 1999, Sports Illustrated voted Muhammad Ali its “Sportsman of the Century.” Ali unquestionably deserves this honor, but it doesn’t begin to convey his importance. Political martyr, civil rights activist, religious zealot, and all-around hero, Ali was one of the 20th century’s greatest figures and, during the ’70s, the most recognizable person on earth. Ali has been the subject of countless films including the brilliant When We Were Kings, 1997 Oscar-winner for Best Documentary. Whereas Kings idealized Ali, I Am Ali humanizes him, showing him as father, friend, and husband, a portrait made possible by access to Ali’s audio journals. These tapes, together with rare archival footage and present-day reminiscences from Ali’s friends, peers, and family, form the foundation for director Clare Lewins’ intimate documentary. No one will purchase I…

Post-war Belleville, New Jersey—an impoverished suburb of the impoverished city of Newark—offered few opportunities for upward mobility. Te hottest tickets to the middle class were joining the army or joining the mob—either of which could get one killed—or becoming an entertainer. Francis Castelluccio (John Lloyd Young) and his friends were fortunate and talented enough to choose the latter. Adapted from the wildly successful Broadway play, Jersey Boys is the mildly embellished story of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, the most popular rock group until Te Beatles, who thrived despite the personal tragedies, prison sentences, and personal excesses that attended stardom. Unfortunately, the story doesn’t translate well to the big screen. Te carefully calculated dramatic scale that works so well as a stage play is disproportionate here, as both dialogue…

Surely Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig are two of the more interesting people working in Hollywood right now. With his diverse mile-long résumé and her Oscar nomination (for co-writing Bridesmaids) and indie cred, plus their shared Saturday Night Live pedigree, we never know quite what we’ll get next from them. Te Skeleton Twins is not their first big-screen pairing, but it’s their most significant, as they play same-age sibs Maggie and Milo, estranged for the past 10 years and now suddenly reunited as they grapple with their own issues. Te entire cast is top-notch, and the humor grows from the subtlety of the performances. But it’s when Hader and Wiig are together that the movie truly shines, bringing both comedy and drama as dark family secrets are confronted. At first…

In the utopian community of The Giver, citizens have been relieved of the burden of having memories beyond their own lives. Human history has been erased. The logic being that if you have no memory of the past, you won’t be doomed to repeat it. Daily mandatory injections chemically stife personal ambition, curiosity, and primordial urges, and Big Brother is ever watchful. The established rules are these: Use assigned language, wear the approved clothing, take your daily medication, obey the curfew, and never lie. Every adolescent enters their stage of maturation in a graduation ceremony in which their life vocations are issued to them by a committee of elders, but a promising young man named Jonas is selected for a very special assignment. There is one among the elders called…

Al Kooper coulda been a contender—contender for being acknowledged as one of the most forward-thinking surround sound mixmasters, that is. It’s been well known in audiophile circles that Kooper had long ago turned in “interesting” 5.1 mixes to Sony for a pair of albums he personally had stakes in—Blood, Sweat & Tears’ trippy big-bandinfluenced debut, Child Is Father to the Man (originally released February 1968) and Mike Bloomfeld, Al Kooper, and Steve Stills’ still infuential jam amalgamation, Super Session (July 1968). Both mixes gathered multichannel dust on the corporate shelves until almost a full decade later, when Audio Fidelity released them from captivity by way of Hybrid Multichannel SACD. While Steve Hofman handled the stereo layers of each release, surround is where it’s at to experience the full weight of…

Steinway Lyngdorf P200 Surround Processor At last September’s CEDIA Expo, Steinway Lyngdorf ofered a sneak peek of the P200 surround processor it plans to start selling in early 2015 for $18,000. (No, that’s not a typo.) The P200 distinguished itself as the first processor to support both Dolby Atmos and Auro-3D. To get the story behind this one-of-a-kind product, we spoke with CEO/CTO Tomas Birkelund. S&V: What led to the decision to incorporate Dolby Atmos and Auro-3D? TB: Early on in the design process, we saw that a defining market trend in coming years would be immersive surround sound installations. We built the P200 to be as flexible as possible, and we are therefore able to offer support of Dolby Atmos, Auro-3D, and the newly announced DTS:X. S&V: Atmos has…

Meridian MQA Lossless Processing NEW GEAR, TOP NEWS, HOW TO, AND MORE... A genius never stands still. Bob Stuart, digital audio pioneer and inventor of the Meridian Lossless Packing format that forms the basis of Dolby TrueHD, recently launched MQA (Master Quality Authenticated), which he modestly calls a “revolutionary British technology” that will change the way we hear music. Truth is, given Stuart’s track record, you have to take his proclamation seriously. Early listening sessions suggest that he may be onto something. Something big. MQA is a proprietary digital encoding system used during recording or mastering that captures “extremely high-frequency timing and detail in an audio signal” and encapsulates it in a form that can be streamed or downloaded via FLAC or any other lossless file format. The thechnology uses…

JOHN SCIACCA Gone in Sixty Seconds A few years ago, I attended a product demonstration at CES by a company famous for touting how durable its hard drives were. In fact, the company—ioSafe—calls its products “disaster proof hardware” and used CES to deliver extreme, over-the-top demonstrations to prove just what kind of damage their drives could withstand and still protect all of the data stored within. One year, ioSafe set one of its drives on fire, sprayed it down with a fire hose, dropped it onto concrete from 20 feet up, and then drove over it with a backhoe. Another year, they let members of the press blast a drive with a 12-gauge shotgun. At the demonstration I attended, they put a drive in a “Cage of Death” and repeatedly…

Monitor Audio Airstream A100 DAC/Amplifier The Airstream A100 gets our vote for Most Stylish Audio Component. When we first saw the little amp at CEDIA Expo, we wondered if the Brits had gone mad. Why were they showcasing a router? The A100 is more than just a pretty face with its 2x50-watt Class AB amplifier, high-resolution digital-to-analog converter, DLNA and AirPlay compatibility, and Wi-Fi connectivity with apps for Spotify and Last.FM. Connections include an optical digital input, stereo analog inputs and preouts, and a subwoofer output. It even has an Airstream Direct mode for “router-free music.” Up or Down: Whether it’s standing tall or lying on its side, the A100 can be used on its own or as part of a TV-based setup. Available in black or white. Price: $500…

PRICE $3,295 as reviewed FOR A WHILE, AUDIO MANUFACturers seemed resigned to give it the ol’ “lie back and think of England” routine when it came to accepting Sonos as the dominant force in the wireless audio world. Sure, they might not have liked it, but they weren’t offering any compelling alternatives of their own. And while there had been some challengers in the past, most fell well short of the Sonos benchmark and quickly faded. This tide has changed lately, however, and the war for wireless audio is heating up. Multiple systems are now offering their spin on wireless music distribution and hoping to take a bite out of the Wi-Fi audio pie. And unlike past attempts, several of these new solutions are not only good, they’re great. Darryl Wilkinson…

Sin City: You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. In A Dame to Kill For, the second big-screen adaptation of the works of writer/artist/director Frank Miller, we find that stripper Nancy (Jessica Alba) has been driven cuckoo-bananas by the events surrounding the death of her hero and one true love a few years ago. She now finds herself shadowed by the ghost of Bruce Willis (where have I seen that before?) and hungry for revenge against the most powerful man in town. Dwight (Josh Brolin, replacing Clive Owen), meanwhile, is a good man with a dark side who’s being sucked back into a dangerous relationship with the wrong dame. Te movie consists of four yarns altogether, bound by the seedy locale, although two of them…

Wallace has not been lucky in love. He dumped his last girlfriend when he caught her cheating on him and was so dejected he ended up dropping out of medical school and moving in with his sister and her young son. Shut away from the world for almost a year, he decides to attend his ex-college roommate’s party where he meets the perfect girl and gets her phone number right before she drops the bombshell that her boyfriend is waiting for her at home—some guys can’t catch a break. After Wallace’s previous relationship, he doesn’t want to be “that kind of guy” and discards her number. As luck would have it, he runs into her a few weeks later at the movies and the pair decide to just be friends—but…

A modernist masterpiece as revolutionary as Picasso’s Demoiselles d’Avignon made in a time when film was important, L’Avventura tells the story—or anti-story—of a wealthy young woman on a boating trip who disappears of an island. After a search of the barren rock, her fancé and best friend set of to find her, investigating sites where she’s supposedly been seen. Over the course of their travels, they become involved and gradually forget about what they’re searching for. L’Avventura is a whodunit without a who, a mystery without a solution, a dislocation of the already dislocated. In the process, director Michelangelo Antonioni peels away the skin of society as characters play at love without enthusiasm, sincerity, or context in ennui of unaware existential numbness. As in Blow Up and other Antonionis, L’Avventura…