Innehållsförteckning för February/March 2018 från Sound & Vision

There’s some real irony in this issue, and it wasn’t planned. Well, a little maybe. I mentioned last month in this column that as we came upon this 60th anniversary of our launch in February 1958 as HiFi & Music Review, I had it in mind to celebrate by tapping our archive for some tidbits that might remind us where we all came from. The first of these flashback features, a primer from that first issue about a brand-new thing called “stereo,” appears on page 42. As it turned out, we also happened to complete our review of the recently revamped and relaunched Technics SL-1200, arguably the most popular turntable of all time with more than 3 million sold since 1972, just in time to stick it on the front…

Third-party research commissioned by LG has identified a phenomenon called the Weird Sick Aberrant Serious Watcher. “Many Americans will do almost anything to watch their favorite content,” the study warns. Nearly one in three said they would break up with their significant other for spoiling the ending of a beloved show. Another 42 percent say they know more about favorite characters than about their own friends. Three-quarters miss social events to allow more TV time. Thirty-seven percent skip their own children’s birthday parties, sporting events, school plays, or PTA meetings if they conflict with an important show. Twenty-two percent have missed multiple events. A whopping 82 percent sometimes put kids to bed early—and 59 percent do so routinely—to get them out of the TV den. One-third would cut short a…

Spectrum cable subscribers buffeted by constant rate hikes may be surprised to learn that parent company Charter Communications is actually cutting employee retirement and medical benefits. The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Local 3, is turning up the heat, buying TV air time to let customers know about a strike in progress since March 2017. Residents of the Upper West Side of Manhattan saw employees demonstrating for several months outside Spectrum’s storefront in the West Nineties. The company in turn accuses employees of vandalism. This news item will travel to my editors through a Spectrum broadband connection. Following recent service outages, a cheerful and hardworking Spectrum employee rewired my apartment. That solved my problem, but what about his? I hope he gets to keep his benefits.…

Last month’s column detailed the first part of the process of installing new speakers. Since planning before cutting is a massive part of retrofitting new speakers, that column focused on making sure you could actually install speakers where you want. This involved determining the best wiring route to the new speakers and ensuring the route was clear of any obstacles like wall purlins. So, starting part two, our route is mapped out, holes are drilled through the top plate in the attic (or bottom plate into the crawl space), and we’re ready to pull wire and install the new speakers. You’ll need your cordless drill, drill bits, Creep-Zit rod, electrical tape, drywall saw, wall box and plate, CL-rated speaker wire, pencil, level, wire strippers, and your new speakers. Let’s get…

In celebration of our 60th anniversary, Sound & Vision will be peeking back throughout this year at our past six decades of coverage. Given our long tenure, our editorial predecessors have reported on most of the seminal inventions in the history of consumer audio and video technology and have offered up shopping advice, which, to varying degrees, can be viewed today as either timeless or charmingly outdated. As much as possible, we will reproduce articles and reviews as they appeared, with the unedited text mated alongside the original illustrations. We’ll be laying out these articles in our modern format for readability but will include scans of the cover and original page layouts to show how these would have appeared if you had picked up that issue at the time of…

Epson Home Cinema LS100 LCD Projector FULL-ON/FULL-OFF Contrast Ratio: 1,030:1 PRE-CALIBRATION measurements were made with the Epson’s Cinema preset active. Postcalibration measurements were made in the same mode. All measurements were made using the Elite Screens Aeon CLR screen. THE projector’s highest contrast ratio in the Cinema preset was achieved with its Quiet Light Control mode selected and its Dynamic Contrast feature set to High Speed. With this combination, black level measured 0.022 ft-L and peak white 22.68 ft-L, for a contrast ratio of 1,030:1. Contrast ratio in Cinema preset with the Dynamic Contrast turned off was 200:1. Maximum light output was measured at 70.32 ft-L with contrast set to 100 in the projector’s Dynamic preset mode, with Normal brightness selected. BEFORE calibration, the Epson’s default color temperature preset in…

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. Oh...THERE You are! I’m responding to your December Track One editorial, “Where Have All the Audiophiles Gone?” I realize that, to most of your readers, much of the following will probably make no sense, but here goes:…

PRICE $399 SOUND & VISION READERS probably know about Astell&Kern’s portable high-resolution digital audio players. But I’m guessing you’re less aware of Jerry Harvey Audio’s in-ear headphones, which have found favor not only with audiophiles, but also musicians and pro sound engineers who make up a sizeable percentage of Harvey’s customer base. The Michelle Limited in-ear headphones from Astell&Kern were designed by Jerry Harvey. Harvey is definitely one of the most interesting designer-engineers I’ve ever met. The other guys are mostly straight-up techies, and Jerry has that in him, but he’s also a rocker with decades of on-the-road experience doing stage monitor mixes for Van Halen, Kiss, Morrissey, KD Lang, the Cult, and many, many more. He invented in-ear stage monitors for musicians, and that eventually led to consumer in-ear…

Dirac Research, maker of high-end room correction systems, has teamed up with Symphonova to integrate its technology into a working orchestra. The result is a form of hybrid human and machine music making. Symphonova is a 12- member orchestra augmented with custom Symphonova loudspeakers and the Symphonova wand, a gesture-based control device. To make the small orchestra sound like a large one, the Symphonova Instrumental Loudspeakers don’t merely play prerecorded parts—each speaker is a “virtual soloist.” Acoustic flaws are addressed by the Symphonova Virtual Acoustic System, which uses eight-channel Dirac Live miniDSPs to align the human and virtual soloists with the venue. Dr. Shelley Katz, creator of Symphonova, cites the technology as a peaceful form of the coming artificialintelligence revolution that “creates new jobs and opportunities” while “delivering a symphonic…

The year 2017 in the world of audio/video gear proved mostly evolutionary, with a touch of the revolutionary thrown in. The former was seen clearly in the flat-panel television category, which wholly gave itself up to not just Ultra HD resolution this year but also to the idea of high dynamic range (HDR) and wide color gamut displays. We saw Dolby Vision finally make its way to a few UHD Blu-ray Discs, and critically, watched OLED mature into a commanding market presence. Meanwhile, we got more, and cheaper, options for 4K signal-friendly front projectors. Audio gear— speakers, AVRs, stereo receivers, and integrated amps (a seemingly resurgent category)—all chugged along, with more equipment appearing to offer higher performance at lower prices. If there was a real revolution, though, it was in…

PRICE $1,100 BEFORE DIVING INTO A REVIEW of Elac’s Discovery DS-S101-G music server, it seems apt to ask: What is a music server? In the past, it was a standalone audio component with a built-in hard disk that stored and played a ripped CD collection while connecting to the internet to fetch metadata. While products that fit this description still exist, a music server can also be something as basic as a software application running on a computer or on a network-attached storage (NAS) appliance. The server application, wherever it may reside, acts as a librarian for your digital audio files, sorting and retrieving them, and then routing the data to a USB DAC or a networked audio component that translates the ones and zeros into music. With no built-in…

STOP FOR A moment and think back to home entertainment 10 years ago. You were starting to build a library of Blu-ray titles, thankful that HD had finally made its way to disc, but 4K at home was a technology of the future and streaming was still a curiosity. Netflix was a hugely successful DVD mail order company with a billion discs delivered but could see the writing on the wall when it started offering movies on demand over the internet in February 2007. Today, streaming is commonplace, and home audio and video have reached unprecedented levels of quality, raising the question of what comes next? Looking ahead to the future, we reached out to Dr. Shawn DuBravac, founder of the Washington, D.C.–based consultancy Astra Insights, former chief economist for…

I was late to class that morning. So I was a bit over the speed limit, astride my trusty BMW R50/2 motorcycle, heading into town and onto campus. I spotted something shiny lying in the middle of the highway. No time to explore—I was late. But on the way home that night, my weak (6-volt, you know) headlight saw that glimmer again, now on the side of the highway. I braked and circled back. Lying in the gravel was a Seiko wristwatch, a considerable find for a starving student. Boy, it was beat up, but it was still ticking. I wore that watch throughout college, then put it in a box, preferring other, more modern watches instead. Sometimes the “best” product isn’t the one that performs the best. Forty years…

Left for dead at the side of the road, RadioShack is still twitching. Following its latest bankruptcy filing, it has emerged with a reorganization plan that would mix an online presence with 400 independently owned dealerships and 27 company-owned stores in Colorado, Texas, and New York. Eight new Radio- Shacks have recently opened, and another 18 are being considered. However, RadioShack probably will not return to the days when it lived in a $200 million HQ in Fort Worth, overseeing an empire of 7,000 stores nationwide. Best Buy, meanwhile, is determined not to go the way of RadioShack. Five years into its own turnaround strategy, it has announced a new plan called Best Buy 2020 that would build on its Geek Squad and IT prowess to move further into connectedhome…

Analysts can’t seem to make up their minds about cord cutting. We’ve covered loads of studies asserting that viewers are shifting from traditional pay-TV to other viewing options. But some analysts demur, and occasionally we’ve cited them too. The latest contrarian take is a report from the Video Advertising Bureau which says pay-TV subscriptions are holding steady at 83 percent of households. Based on Nielsen data, the report says 71 percent of homes use streaming to complement—not replace—pay-TV. Calling cord cutting a “false narrative,” VAB’s CEO Sean Cunningham says even the most frequent streaming viewers still “watch eight times as much TV as they do streaming video.” His narrative is supported by J.D. Power, which gives consumer satisfaction with pay-TV 710 points out of a possible 1,000, though that’s down…

David Coverdale was at the crossroads when he beat a retreat to the south of France with guitarist John Sykes to work on the demos for what would become the biggest album of his career, 1987’s mega-multimillion-selling Whitesnake—or, as it’s better known internationally, 1987 in Europe, and Serpens Albus in Japan. (The phrase Serpens Albus, which can be seen adorning the band’s iconic seal/logo on the album cover designed by Hugh Syme, is Latin for, of course, Whitesnake.) To celebrate the 30th anniversary of the album that spawned such massive FM hits as “Here I Go Again,” “Is This Love,” and “Still of the Night,” Rhino has uncoiled an exhaustive 4-CD/1-DVD box set featuring a disc of demos titled 87 Evolutions, properly mastered live bootlegs, and four of-era videos remastered…

Sony VPL-VW285ES LCOS Projector FULL-ON/FULL-OFF Contrast Ratio in HD/SDR: 5,025:1 MEASUREMENTS were produced with CalMAN calibration software from SpectraCal, Photo Research PR-650 and Klein K-10A color meters, and a Murideo pattern generator. For the settings used here, see the review as posted on soundandvision.com. The chart shown is for HD/SDR. THE peak white reading for the above contrast measurement was 20.1 footlamberts (68.9 nits), and the black level 0.004 ft-L (0.0137 nit). At maximum zoom (the largest image), the full-on/ full-off contrast ratio measured 3,833:1; at minimum zoom, 3,788:1. (For these measurements, the projector and meter positions were unchanged, but the lens shift was altered as needed to center the measurement point on the screen.) FOR HDR, as viewed, the full-on/ full-off contrast ratio measured 2,763:1 at a peak white…

UHD BLU-RAY Baby Driver Stealer’s Wheel Can the dangerous business of getaway driving be elevated to an art form? Propelled by the constant soundtrack of his life, Baby (Ansel Elgort) combines speed, daring, and creativity in a thrilling and highly profitable display of skill. He doesn’t want to be a part of this prolonged crime spree, but he needs to repay a debt to a local kingpin (Kevin Spacey). In fact, he believes he has an exit strategy all figured out, once they’re square, and that he and his new lady friend (Lily James) can drive off into the sunset. But his boss has other plans, involving a violent new cohort (Jamie Foxx), and his freewheeling days of cops and robbers are definitely over. Just as artful is writer/director Edgar…