Innehållsförteckning för July - August 2016 från Sound & Vision

This being our annual outdoor/portable A/V-themed issue, we had fun with some categories we don’t normally follow closely. Along the more conventional product lines, yours truly finally got curious enough about so-called pico projectors to call in a few for a test. Our survey, starting on page 36, includes two remarkable projectors that actually slip into your breast pocket, and two “minibeamers” that resemble the big-boy home theater projectors we test year round, just shrunk way, way down. I didn’t have particularly high expectations going in, but, as you’ll read, I was pleasantly surprised. On the audio front, along with reviews of some very high-performing headphones and a new hi-res music player, you’ll find Geoff Morrison’s roundup of some compact and super-affordable tube-driven headphone amps he found on Amazon. With…

Tom DeVesto, cofounder of Cambridge SoundWorks and Tivoli Audio, has launched a new Boston-based company called Como Audio. The first products, due in fall, will be different from Tivoli’s, but still small and user friendly... Ultra HDTVs Occupied 40 percent of U.S. retail shelf space in late 2015, according to Quixel Research—although picture-improving HDR and other technologies are still developing. Shelf share of 1080p TVs dropped to 46 percent, from 71 percent 18 months before... Netflix in HDR is on the way. Check out the first season of Marco Polo and the second season of Daredevil... Vudu’s Ultra HD offerings have increased to 33 with The Intern and In the Heart of the Sea. The latter streams in Dolby Atmos... Amazon’s First Non-Prime original series is the third season of…

Welcoming the 21st Century Baby As I write this, I am sitting in a hospital room waiting for my wife, Dana, to be induced sometime around 5:00 this evening. My weekend plans had been to grab some craft beer and watch The Masters in 4K on DirecTV, but this was a late-in-life, bonus baby (I’m 46), and the pregnancy has been fraught with “excitement” as we’ve dealt with high blood pressure and gestational diabetes. If you get nothing else from this column, heed my advice to have kids sooner rather than later. Sitting in the hospital room, I reminisced about having our first daughter, Lauryn, back in 2006, and was struck by just how much has changed in the world of technology in those 9½ years. On the medical side,…

The Rise and Fall of Stereo (Part Two) Last issue, we discussed the ascent of glorious stereophonic sound. Stereo was a true revolution in audio playback, and it quickly condemned monaural to an eternity of lo-fi hell. Audio manufacturers’ marketing departments had an easy time convincing consumers to upgrade to stereo; everyone could easily hear the improvement. Now, 50 years later, stereo is unraveling. As an audiophile, it’s difficult for me to express my dismay as I see stereo practically becoming a historical footnote. I feel like a doctor in the tropics where malaria has finally been eradicated. What a tremendous outcome. Then, incomprehensibly, people stop using insecticides and nets. The mosquitoes come back, along with malaria. What happened? Let me try to explain. Stereo is much, much more than…

PRICE $1,199 REMEMBER TECHNICS? THEY made turntables, right? Yes, they did, and now they’re making them again. The brand’s history dates back to 1965 when it debuted the Technics 1 monitor speaker. The brand went on to create a wide range of components, including a tube amplifier in 1966, and in 1970 the world’s first direct-drive turntable, the SP-10. Many other products followed, but the Technics name faded from view a few years ago and then roared back to life in 2015 with a couple of stellar speakers and a new line of electronics. This year, Technics showed an all-new SL-1200 Series turntable and these remarkable headphones, the EAH-T700. These crisply styled beauties feature finely crafted aluminum earcups and deliciously thick padded ear cushions and headband; pictures fail to convey…

First 3D was the next big thing in television. Then it was a feature, not a category. Now it may be turning into an absent feature and a dead category. An anonymous source at Samsung told cnet that 2016 models will not support 3D. Some Samsung models carried over from 2015 will still support it, as will some sets from LG and a couple from Sony. Vizio pulled out of 3D in 2013. But who needs 3D when we have virtual reality? Samsung’s Gear VR headset will enhance in-the-flesh rollercoaster rides at Six Flags amusement parks by adding heroic visuals of Superman battling the LexBots and fighter jets repelling alien invaders.—MF…

Your computer probably can’t handle the Oculus Rift or the HTC Vive. Sorry. If you’re lucky, you might only need a new video card. The issue is multifold. Essentially, your video card needs to render 2160 x 1200, which is likely 25 percent more than what it needs to create now (presuming a 1080p TV/projector is your display). Worse, it needs to do that at 90 fps. Actually, that’s not even the nub of the issue. It has to do with stuff like “API-event-to-draw-call latency” and other things that would take an entire article of their own to explain. It’s a lot more intense than what your video card is doing now. At a minimum, you need an Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 or an AMD Radeon R9 290. Ideally, something…

HiFiMan Edition X Headphones PRICE $1,799 HEAD-FI IS SOMEHOW MORE personal than hi-fi or home theater. I may love my loudspeakers, but I don’t wear them on my head. Speakers bring music into my room; headphones bring music into my head, and voices in my head are the very definition of personal. So if the sound of my fairly stable main system is aesthetically consequential, the sound of my constantly rotating head-fi system is emotionally charged. That may explain the intensity of my bond with the HiFiMan Edition X headphones. The look pushes my bling buttons, and the sound brings me closer to music—close to what I love, to my original motive for getting into audiophilia in the first place. Founded in 2007 by Dr. Fang Bian, HiFiMan makes not…

TiO Home Automation System PRICE $2,979 as reviewed THE FOLKS AT TIO (SHORT FOR “Turn it On”) claim they’re taking “an entirely fresh approach to home automation” with a philosophy that considers the user to be the most important part of a TiO system. In other words, if a home automation system were a round hole and the user a square peg, the manufacturer should re-engineer the hardware hole into a square rather than force the user to become a round peg. Of course, making things truly and honest-to-goodness-ly easy for the user is way, way simpler to pontificate about than it is to accomplish. Here’s a brief overview of TiO. To begin with, TiO is definitely not DIY. So if you’re allergic to paying someone to install gear, this…

E-mail them to HTLetters@sorc.com. Please note: Questions about the features and functions of a particular product are best directed to the manufacturer. Questions about what product you should buy are best directed to a dealer who knows all the details of your system, your preferences, and your personal habits. All submissions are considered the exclusive property of Sound & Vision magazine and TEN: The Enthusiast Network. We reserve the right to edit letters for brevity. Due to the volume of mail that we receive, we regret that we cannot respond to every letter. Take Me to the River The River is, undoubtedly, a great album, but the recording of the original version was awful. I often wondered who was the... who approved the final mix/sound to be sent to the…

Open Your Ears PRICE $299 CARDAS AUDIO IS BEST KNOWN as a manufacturer of audiophile cables, but the Bandon, Oregon– based company jumped into headphones a few years ago with its EM 5813 Ear Speakers. Their sound was big and bold, but comfort issues limited my listening times to short bursts because the earpieces were heavy and the cables unwieldy. Now Cardas is back with new in-ears, the A8 Ear Speakers. I’ve known George Cardas for decades, and he’s normally a soft-spoken dude, but he’s really jazzed about what’s going on with headphones. They’re keeping hope alive for the future of high-end audio for the next generation. Ask him about the A8, and he’ll give you an earful—he’s a man on a mission. The A8 is lighter and more comfortable…

PRICE $1,699 THE HOOPLA SURROUNDING the introduction of Sennheiser’s original HD 800 headphone in 2009 was monumental because it was such a radical upgrade over the HD 650, the previous Sennheiser flagship. So, we’re due for another flagship, but the HD 800 S is more like a reboot. What about a new flagship? As you’ll read below, it’s coming, too! The most obvious difference between the HD 800 and HD 800 S is easy to spot: The new one is black, while the original is gray. That works for me; the black finish enhances the headphones’ striking good looks. Sennheiser’s Axel Grell responded to my query about how the two headphones differ with this: “For the HD 800 S, we are using the same RingRadiator transducer [driver] as for the…

Atmos Advice It’s my understanding that the overhead speakers in a Dolby Atmos system are meant to create diffused sound. I have a pair of dipole surround speakers with a front-facing woofer and side-facing drivers. Could these be used in a 5.1.2 Dolby Atmos system if I hung them from my cathedral ceiling with the woofer facing down and the side drivers firing to the front and back of the room? Al Erdelyi / via e-mail Let’s take your main point first. The function of the overhead speakers in a Dolby Atmos system is not to create diffused sound, but an enveloping soundfield with individual sonic elements at identifiable locations in space. Dipole surround speakers, which fire sound from opposing sets of drivers acoustically out of phase with each other,…

AT&T-owned DirecTV is launching its own video streaming service. It will use both home and mobile broadband networks to reach smart TVs, tablets, phones, PCs, and streaming devices. Unlike DirecTV satellite service, it won’t require an annual contract, set-top box, or dish installation. Stop the presses—among three service tiers will be a free ad-supported option called DirecTV Preview. According to the press release: “This free offer for anyone with a wired or wireless internet connection will feature some of the quality programming available on DirecTV today. The tailored ad-supported service will showcase content from AT&T’s Audience Network, many networks and other content sources, and millennial-focused video from Otter Media, a joint venture of AT&T and The Chernin Group.” The paid tiers will be DirecTV Now, “including much of what is…

Now that we never need to dismount from the barstool to drop quarters in the jukebox, it just seems wrong to call TouchTunes a mobile app. Pushing through a crowd to reach an illuminated cabinet required actual mobility, also called walking. But that was then. Today no one with a smartphone is budging. In the battle of the bulge, beer wins, waistline loses. Music lovers win, too. That’s because the soundtrack playable by revelers in today’s bars is stored in the cloud rather than in a mechanical changer. Instead of 99 selections, you can choose from hundreds of thousands. In an ideal world, I should be able to play the music already in my pocket directly to the bar’s speakers via Bluetooth just like at home. But that would constitute…

HTC Vive ($800) Built by HTC but designed and “powered” by Valve, the Vive is the Rift’s most direct alternative. Their specs are far more similar than they are different: same resolution OLED screens, same refresh rates, same reliance on fullmotion tracking. There are two main differences, however. The first is that the Vive already comes with the handheld controllers that let you feel like you have hands in the virtual world. The Rift’s Touch controllers should be available by the time you read this, but for around $200—which will make the Rift system price the same as the Vive price. The other difference is in how the devices track your movements. The Rift has emitters in the headset. The Vive uses two laser-emitting base stations and photoreceptors on the…

PRICE $35 THE SAINSONIC WAS THE LAST amp I tested, and it had a lot going against it. First, the skinny tubes in my sample didn’t sit perfectly vertical, appearing like a pair of fingers giving the peace sign (or the two-fingered salute, if you’re British). Second, it has a power supply that is, no joke, larger than the amp itself. The silver chassis is about the size of a pack of cigarettes, but somehow, with the skinny tubes, it all ends up looking rather...perplexed. And third, believe it or not, there’s no way to turn the amp off, so you’ll just have to enjoy the music at all times, forever. Like the Nobsound, the SainSonic has a name on the faceplate that doesn’t match the name on Amazon. The…

RSL Speakers Speedwoofer 10S Subwoofer PRICE $399 THERE ARE TWO THINGS THAT I really love in life. The first is the entrepreneurial spirit that grows within someone and inspires them to take a chance with an idea, create a company, and do their best to make it succeed. The second is great bass. As longtime readers know, I’m a bass-oholic—and if my wife would let me, I’d have four (or more) subwoofers in my media room, because there’s no such thing as too much bass! My reference subs are a 15-inch Hsu Research VTF-15H MK2 ($899), located closest to the listening position along my right wall, and a 12-inch SVS PC-Ultra ($1,199 in 2004), sitting in my front left corner. This is quite a combination, and it’s rare that any…

Nugs.net. Ever heard of ’em? I hadn’t but was intrigued when I saw the press release: “Live Music Pioneers nugs.net Launch Streaming Service.” Turns out the company has been making professional recordings of concert performances available to fans of jam bands for years—something followers of Gov’t Mule, Phish, and Widespread Panic probably already know. To learn more about this unique service, I reached out to founder Brad Serling.—Bob Ankosko S&V: Can you tell us a bit about the history of the company—how and why you started it and the story behind the name? BS: I actually launched the nugs.net site in 1997, so we’re approaching 20 years. Back then, the idea was to make it easier to trade my tape collection with other tapers. I had started recording the Grateful…

PRICE $400 SINCE THEIR FIRST VERSION, Parrot Zik headphones have been consistently beautiful to look at and have featured technology that is a nose ahead of the competition. It’s the combo of pretty and new that has made the Ziks the darlings of the tech-enthusiast set. Now in its third iteration, the new Zik 3 is packed with all sorts of bells and whistles. Some will be familiar to users of the Zik 2.0: touch-sensitive controls on a sleek-looking earcup, deeply customizable noise cancellation and EQ via an app, sensors that trigger a pause in the music when the headphones are removed. And some are new: wireless charging, USB audio, Apple Watch, and Android Wear compatibility. At face value, the Zik 3s have a lot of things going for them.…

Look out, cable ISPs. You’ve got another competitor to worry about in addition to Google Fiber. GigaMonster is also bringing fiberoptic Internet service networks to communities that could use a little competition. The service made its debut in Denver and is also building in Atlanta, Charlotte, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Memphis, Nashville, Phoenix, and San Francisco. It is concentrating on apartments and gated communities, either directly or through a partner in the community, and the service cost is built into rents. The company has peering deals with Amazon, Netflix, and YouTube, so those services would not be throttled. Pricing ranges from $39 to $109 a month for 30 Mbps to 1 Gbps.—MF…

Tidal music streaming and FireConnect wireless multi-room connectivity are coming to A/V receivers from Onkyo and Pioneer, both of which are now under the same management. Tidal’s celebrity ownership by rapper Jay Z has overshadowed its strong reputation among audiophiles as a lossless music source. FireConnect, from Blackfire Research, allows an app to route music from computers and mobile devices on a home network to the receiver or to compatible wireless speakers, such as the ones Pioneer has on the drawing board. Software updates will be necessary. Applicable models include the Pioneer LX301 ($700) and LX101 ($500) and Onkyo TX-NR757 ($799), TX-NR656 ($699), and TX-NR555 ($599).—MF…

WITH THE WARM SPRING beckoning us Northerners to the outdoors, thoughts of week-long beach vacations or camping trips bring on a serious dilemma: How in the world are we going to watch movies? OK, maybe, maybe not. But if you happen to be a millennial or a teenager with a smartphone, you know that its screen handily doubles these days for your old pappy’s big-screen TV. Except, it’s really not so big, is it? You can crowd in only so close when you’re trying to share your latest photos or a download of American Horror Story with a group of friends Today’s projector manufacturers have heard your cries for help, as well as those of business professionals who need to cart around projectors for presentations. And even the cries from…

PRICE $599 STEPPING UP FROM THE TINY, battery-fed Magnasonic and Sony portables to Vivitek’s AC-powered, $599 Qumi Q6 puts you into new territory. At a compact 6.5 inches wide x 1.3 high x 4 deep, it’s not going to slip into your pocket, but it will fit easily in a briefcase or backpack, and it comes with a padded carry pouch that holds the projector, its small power brick, the credit-card-style remote, and the included HDMI and HDMI-to-mini-HDMI cables. It’s a stylish little thing with rounded corners that comes in seven colors, including the snappy brushed gold of my review sample. There are unraised and fairly invisible touch-sensitive controls on the top for operation and menu access that proved annoying— I inadvertently excited them every time I touched the projector.…

PRICE $68 IN THE HARSH REALITIES OF A sober morning, I set about my task, having managed to burn in the three amps overnight. Bravo Audio’s V2 is definitely the coolest looking of the bunch. The single Shuguang 12AU7 tube and big capacitor pierce a clear plastic top, while all the various bits, heatsinks, and connections sit below. The company’s logo is even great, saying Brav Audi in big letters next to an illustration of a record on a turntable. The Brav Audi feels fairly solidly put together, or about as solid as you can expect from a $68 tube hybrid amp. (Our tech editor Mark Peterson says that, technically, the twin triode sections in the tube act as buffer stages for both channels while the output stages are solid…

IN THE BRIEFING PRIOR TO OUR TESTING OF the sets, LG and Dolby representatives spoke on behalf of their new sets and Dolby Vision, respectively. Among other advancements, LG described the OLEDs’ Enhanced Pixel Dimming. It wasn’t clear what that means, as dimming of the actual pixels is inherent in a self-illuminating technology like OLED (it resembles plasma more than LCD in that respect). The new OLEDs were also said to cover 99 percent of the P3 color gamut, an improvement over last year’s models. For those who wonder about the even wider BT. 2020 gamut standard supposedly supported by Ultra HD Blu-rays, no current consumer set can get anywhere near it as yet. P3 is the gamut used in digital cinema, and it’s wider than the standard HD Rec.…

Questyle QP1R Music Player PRICE $899 IF YOU HAD CHUCKED ME INTO A time machine a decade ago, freed me today, then handed me the Questyle QP1R, naturally I’d mistake it for an iPod on steroids. With that clickwheel, it’s got to be an iPod, right? You’d have to explain to me that what Questyle calls the steering wheel isn’t identical to Apple’s clickwheel; here, the functions are divided differently among the wheel, its big central button, and the four vibrating touch-sensitive buttons around it. My second reaction would be: Wow, this is heavier than an iPod. You’d have to explain that this high-end music player stuffs its rigid machined-aluminum chassis with lots of audio circuitry; the analog output section even utilizes discrete components. That requires some real estate, but…