Innholdsfortegnelse for August/September 2019 i Sound & Vision

“Everything that made Triton Reference Sound & Vision’s Product-of-the-Year in a gorgeous, super sounding, more compact and even more a ordable package!” “  The powerful sense of atmosphere that the One.R speakers conveyed conjure up memories of my time with the Triton Reference.–Al Griffin, Sound & Vision” GoldenEar Technology is pleased to announce the introduction of the new Triton One.R. This extraordinary new reference quality loudspeaker is a smaller, less expensive follow up to the Triton Reference. The T Ref has been compared with speakers selling for over ten times its surprisingly a. ordable cost. It has had a remarkable response from both music and hi. enthusiasts as well as press and reviewers from around the world, who have bestowed upon it innumerable Speaker-of-the-Year and Product-of-the-Year awards. Now the T…

Home Is Where S&V Is At Eureka! After being located in temporary housing for 8 months following an involuntary displacement last November, my family moved into a more permanent rental and I finally received the latest Sound & Vision after missing a few issues. This was after 20-plus continuous years of SR and S&V! I love the speaker-laden current issue and am glad to once again be enjoying the comforts of home after wandering in the wilderness without S&V! M. Gulli / via email Welcome home! A word on subscriptions: By changing a sub to Print+Digital status, you will not only receive Sound & Vision in the mail but can access a digital version of each issue that’s viewable on a PC/Mac computer, tablet, or phone. Print+Digital only costs a…

Neil Young is not easily satisfied. And if there’s one true constant to the pioneering songwriter/guitarist/vocalist’s ever-mercurial yet creatively rewarding six-decades-and-counting career, it’s his unyielding pursuit of high-fidelity playback for all. Young is someone who inherently understands how the best sound quality can also serve to convey the original feel and intent of what an artist wants listeners to hear of music created and performed in the recording studio and/or on the live stage—and he’s never been one to compromise the execution of such a laser-focused vision for sound. (See what I did there?) While Young has achieved a combination of longstanding great successes (Harvest) and momentarily demoralizing setbacks (Pono) during such a noble career-long pursuit, the man and his team of tech geniuses may have finally struck the true…

During my many years in the custom installation industry, I've been involved in hundreds of projects of all sizes. These are some of the pearls of accumulated wisdom that I typically share when new customers come in to my shop with plans, or we are walking together through a jobsite. PREWIRE FOR EVERYTHING One of the questions I get asked now more than ever is, “With so many devices going wireless, do I even need to pull any wiring?” Yes, you do. First off, actual wire cost is usually pretty minor in a project’s overall scope. Second, even when using Wi-Fi-enabled gear, your home should have a solid wired backbone. The reasons for this include alleviating wireless traffic, data security, and gaining the ability to expand your Wi-Fi network by…

RATING Speakers PERFORMANCE BUILD QUALITY VALUE RATING Subwoofer PERFORMANCE FEATURES BUILD QUALITY VALUE EVERYBODY LOVES a great comeback story. Whether it’s Tiger Woods winning The Masters after a decade of disappointment, or Apple’s return to global dominance after nearly going bust twenty years back, it’s nice when someone or something can make a strong return. Let’s add Rodgersound Labs (RSL) to the comeback list. Founded by Howard Rodgers nearly fifty years ago, the Rodgersound Labs brand started life as a small Southern California chain of audio shops, with a house line of speakers that were built in the back of the original store and sold exclusively through the chain. While Rodgers himself preferred the more refined “East Coast sound” of speakers like the Acoustic Research AR3, with RSL he came…

THE VILLAGE OF BERK is now the overcrowded home not only of our favorite Viking clan, now led by a grown-up Hiccup, but also a huge and motley assortment of friendly dragons. After they encounter a revived gang of dragon-hunters led by the ruthless Grimmel, Hiccup decides that their only solution is to evacuate Berk, where they’re an obvious target, and search for a new home where they’ll be safe. Complications ensue with the arrival a white female Night Fury, soon dubbed a Light Fury. Toothless is smitten, threatening both the clan and the close friendship between Hiccup and Toothless. There’s surprising depth to the final resolution, and it wraps up the third and likely final installment of this boy and his dragon saga in an emotional fashion that should…

CAPTURING ZEITGEIST MOMENTS as they happen are a filmmaker’s dream. Lucky for us, drummer/rhythmatist extraordinaire Stewart Copeland picked up a Super 8 film camera when The Police were but budding bleached-blonde young punks, and he filmed, well, practically everything they did both onstage and off. His you-are-always-there POV makes Everyone Stares a fascinating chronicle following the real-time rise of a band that skyrocketed from playing dingy clubs with bad P.A. systems in front of 400 fans (or fewer!) in the late-1970s to packing stadiums and headlining festivals during their early-1980s heyday. Copeland narrates the proceedings in chronological fashion with his patented dry wit, with all ensuing dialogue nestled, as it should be, in the center channel. Film quality is as grainy as one would expect from a Super 8 source,…

HI-FI AT HIGH END MUNICH 2019 The High End show that took place in Munich, Germany this past May was a literal hi-fi playground, one offering countless opportunities to sit back and listen to music being played on some of the world’s best gear. Compared with High End Munich 2018, which Sound & Vision also attended, the gear on display at this year’s show skewed further toward the pricey and exotic—think low-power tube amps, huge horn speakers that look like something from a Dr. Suess book, and ultra-expensive turntables. Even so, we managed to find more real-world products worth reporting on. Here’s a sampling of what we uncovered. Pro-Ject Audio Pre Box RS2 Digital Pro-Ject Audio Systems’ Box lineup has grown substantially since the company first started offering the mini-sized…

Irrelevant. Old-fashioned. Obsolete. If you have a thesaurus handy: superannuated, or even antediluvian. And let’s not forget that the technology in question is not particularly accurate, is prone to malfunction, and requires periodic maintenance. Last but not least, it is more expensive than gear that performs much better. I could be describing the old analog audio/video gear that you still keep proudly stacked in your home theater. Or, I could be describing that curious bit of technology under your shirt cuff. My thesis is this: if you have analog gear in your home theater, I bet you also have analog gear on your arm. The two go hand in hand. We are talking, of course, about wristwatches. Once upon a time, telling time was extremely difficult. Sun dials are great,…

With the new Amazon Echo Link Amp ($299), Amazon is sending Alexa off into unchartered territory. The goal: get music out of the phone and into the home, where it can be shared with family and friends. Such a warm, fuzzy idea! Good thing the Link Amp’s sound is crisp, clear, and not fuzzy at all. The Link Amp is a 2 x 60-watt (into 8 ohms) class-D streaming amplifier that works with existing Alexa devices in your home. By setting it up on the same network as an Echo Dot or any other Alexa speaker, you can stream music from compatible services. You simply select it as your preferred speaker using the Alexa app, or request it every time you ask Alexa to play music. Streaming support includes Spotify…

A RECENT ARTICLE I wrote for Sound & Vision on High Dynamic Range (HDR) technology (“HDR Explained,” April/May, and also on soundandvision.com) focused on what HDR is and how it gets implemented in different types of displays. The focus of that article was movies on Ultra HD Blu-ray disc and on streaming services, but another topic worth discussing—one that regularly gets overlooked—is HDR gaming. HDR has actually been a factor in gaming for over a decade now, but has mostly consisted of HDR emulation, which involves taking a standard dynamic range game and exaggerating its visual aspects to create an HDR-like image. (I remember reading about HDR emulation way back when one of the Halo games launched for the Xbox 360 console.) But now that true 4K/HDR support has arrived…

FULL-ON/FULL-OFF CONTRAST RATIO: 836:1 native and 3,770:1 dynamic (Smart Eco mode) Measurements were made in both Standard and Eco light modes with the bulk taken in the Cinema picture preset with 6500 selected for color temperature and REC709 for color gamut. The selected gamma preset was 2.2. All calibration was done with the projector’s dynamic LED disabled and the contrast ratio measurements were carried out using a variety of light modes as noted. Viewing and measurements were performed on a 140-inch diagonal 2.35:1 Stewart Studiotek 100 screen (1.0 gain). The full on/off contrast was measured with a Minolta T-10 meter from 1 meter away from the lens face. I tested the projector in various light modes with the Smart Eco mode engaged for dynamic contrast measurements. The RGB tables were…

INTERGALACTIC KREE WARRIOR Vers (Brie Larson) is a total badass. And that might be the problem with the latest MCU solo outing, Captain Marvel. If the cryptic flashbacks of her former life are to be believed, she’s always been tough as nails, even as a kid, so there’s no real character arc—an essential component for Marvel superheroes. Following an encounter with the shapeshifting enemy Skrulls, Vers crash-lands on Planet C-53, the Terran homeworld (a.k.a. Earth), in 1995, where she eventually learns the truth about her identity and gets a lesson to not trust wartime propaganda. Ultimately, Captain Marvel has too much mystery and not enough action, although Academy Award-winner Larson’s smartass-and-sass help somewhat. But the movie is also a necessary introduction to the potential savior teased at the end of…

UNTIL THIS YEAR, two Lego movies followed up on the original, The Lego Movie (or as it should be called now, for clarity and consistency with the Star Wars paradigm, The Lego Movie One: The First Part). But those other two Lego sagas, The Lego Ninjago Movie and The Lego Batman Movie, can be ignored here. Nothing in The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part (or TLM2TSP) depends on anything in the Two Middle Parts. TLM2TSP’s plot is nearly incoherent. Alien Lego Duplos (big Legos), invading from the Sistar system, turn Bricksburg, the home of our good-guy Legos, into Apocalypseburg, a hell-hole straight out of Mad Max: Fury Road. The Duplos also capture several of the good Legos and take them to their queen, Watevra Wa’Nabi, for a nefarious wedding…

DO YOU WANT to walk into the picture above? We do. The latest home theater project from Cobb Home Innovations is hands down one of the most inviting media room spaces we’ve seen. Unlike a traditional home theater with rows of theater-like seating, this room screams “kick off your shoes and get comfortable because your mind is about to be blown.” The owners of this simple yet elegant space wanted a luxury home theater and top-shelf tube-based audio system in a sound-proofed space with its own concession area, complete with a bathroom. The system also had to be invisible and dead easy to operate using a single remote control or app. As intimidating as it might seem, building this magnificent space was a walk in the park for Cobb, which…

Black Hawk Down concerns an ill-fated U.S. Army Ranger and Delta Force mission on the streets of Mogadishu, Somalia in 1993. The story can be difficult to follow at times with its large cast of characters, but it’s still effectively told. Made in collaboration with über-producer Jerry Bruckheimer and directed by Ridley Scott, Black Hawk Down definitely does not want for production values and is a well-crafted, straight-ahead drama. The Ultra HD disc’s native 4K/HDR10 video transfer reportedly involved a remaster made from the original camera negative and looks absolutely gorgeous. Much of the film has a green-yellow tint and a high-contrast look. There are occasional instances of grain—in shots of far-off, billowing smoke, for example—but this is more an artifact of the stylized visuals. The HDR picture is not…

S&M, VOYEURISM, MURDER, rape, violence, and torture… some of the typically wholesome activities to be found in small-town America. This psychosexual possible-murder mystery—set in a neo-Fifties 1980s logging town — soon gets weird when an innocent local finds a severed human ear in a field. Writer-director David Lynch uses various tactics to keep the viewer as off-balance as his attracted-to-the-hidden-underbelly protagonist. There’s grotesque humor, disquieting images and sounds momentarily inserted into a scene, and exaggerated acting that’s just short of David Mamet. He also throws in visual quotes ranging from Psycho to The Godfather, but the overall style is a disorienting mixture of surrealism, film noir, and bland ordinariness that conveys the feel of a menacing dream. Much of the film unfolds in near darkness—both literally and morally—so when Laura…

THE SPEARS & MUNSIL (S&M) UHD HDR BENCHMARK is a video test disc developed with a wide range of users in mind. It has basic video setup and evaluation patterns aimed at the general consumer, but also patterns and features designed for use by professional calibrators, reviewers, and even manufacturers. Unlike S&M’s previous test disc, the HD Benchmark, this version does not include general explanations on how to use the patterns wrapped into its interface, but is still easy to navigate and use. (Tips should be posted on the spearsandmunsil.com website by the time you’re reading this that will help to get the most from the disc’s content.) S&M worked with Dolby and other industry heavyweights on the disc’s patterns and demonstration montage, both of which provide a range of…

THE ROCK AND ROLL CIRCUS was coming to town. In 1968, Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger, The Who’s guitar wizard Pete Townshend, and Small Faces bassist Ronnie Lane had collectively decided to organize a perpetual traveling show that would consist of equal parts live performance, grand spectacle, and mobile art installation, all rolled into one never-ending carnival bacchanal. Of course, it didn’t quite work out that way. For many, many reasons we don’t have nearly enough words to explain, the traveling circus idea transformed into a one-off extravaganza intended for a BBC broadcast. Filmed over a score of ridiculously long hours over December 10-11 1968, Rock and Roll Circus was ultimately shelved mainly at Jagger’s behest. Legend long had it that the Stones’ performance was considerably underwhelming (hardly the case)…