Innholdsfortegnelse for February - March 2016 i Sound & Vision

Our annual Top Picks of the Year list appears in this issue, representing our reviewing experience in the 2015 calendar year. Along with selecting the best or most intriguing products from among those that received our TP designation, we also select a Top Pick of the Year—the single product that most impressed us or best represented the evolution of our hobby. For several years running, that product has been a state-of-the-art flat-panel TV, but we’re breaking the pattern this time and awarding top honors to a surround sound preamp/processor, the Marantz AV8802. Why, with all these new Ultra HD technologies emerging around us, have we gone with an audio product? And one that, some would argue, is too pricey and esoteric in this age of soundbars to be relevant to…

A PlayStation Hack allows hundreds of games for the portable PlayStation Vita to work on the Play-Station TV console. That includes such gaming staples as Mortal Kombat and Call of Duty: Black Ops Declassified... Global HDR TV Shipments will pass the 32 million mark by 2019, says an IHS forecast, though HDR won’t hit its stride until 2017, when 12.5 million units are projected to ship. “Numerous consumer trials by broadcasters, content producers, and research labs have demonstrated that HDR has huge impact on viewers,” says principal analyst Paul Gray... Samsung Gear VR, the company’s virtual-reality headset, has added Netflix, Hulu, and Twitch to its streaming attractions. A new Gear VR headset, at $99, is lighter than the existing model, half the price, and works with Samsung’s entire 2015 smartphone…

THE VERDICT The Sonos PLAY:5 gets a radical makeover that adds $100 to the price but combines an amazing user experience with stunning audio performance. PRICE $499 HERE’S THE BAD NEWS: AFTER six years, Sonos has stopped making the company’s first and, until now, best all-in-one wireless speaker system, the PLAY:5. Now for the good news: Sonos has a replacement for the PLAY:5 called… wait for it…the PLAY:5. (Confusing, I know.) At $499, though, the new PLAY:5 is $100 more than the original. For multiple reasons, the original PLAY:5 was my all-around favorite wireless speaker. Will its replacement prove worthy of its heritage—and the higher price? The basics of the new PLAY:5 are much like the old PLAY:5 (which I’ll call the PREV:5 to avoid the repetitive new/old/original/etc). The all-in-one…

I recently purchased a Bose SoundTouch 130 soundbar and have a Samsung BDP7500 Blu-ray player connected to it. Here’s my question: There’s a setting in the Samsung player’s menu for speaker size and distance. Since I’m using a soundbar that gets calibrated using a headset in five positions, is it necessary to also adjust the Blu-ray player’s speaker size/distance settings, or should I just leave those alone? I called Bose tech support, and they had no answer for me. Peter Palagonia/Las Vegas, NV Bose tech support may not have an answer, but I do. No, you do not need to touch the speaker size and distance settings in your Bluray player’s speaker setup menu. That adjustment is meant for situations where the Samsung BDP7500 Blu-ray player’s 7.1-channel analog audio output…

Have you heard about the sequel to the TV series, Lost? It’s called Found, and the premise is that the island is where all things lost end up: a missing sock, a runaway drone, a lost shaker of salt. Tourists arrive, and the lucky ones are reunited with their stuff. In truth, thanks to the Tile App and a white plastic tile (1.5 x 1.5 x 0.2 inches) containing a Bluetooth receiver and audio emitter that you can affix to anything that might be misplaced (like all your remote controls), no one will be shouting “Da plane! Da plane!” any time soon. Once you’ve downloaded the iOS or Android app and register your e-mail, you install each Tile by holding down the “e” until you hear the Tile play a…

THE VERDICT Most current 4K sets deliver only the 4K slice of Ultra HD’s full pie. The RS65-B2 goes all the way, including 4K resolution, advanced color, and high dynamic range. VIZIO RS65-B2 LCD ULTRA HDTV PRICE: $6,000 Vizio • (888) VIZIO-CE • vizio.com PRICE $6,000 IN A RECENT REVIEW OF VIZIO’S relatively affordable M65-C1 Ultra HDTV (soundandvision.com), I reflected on that company’s vision in having “sale prices low enough to attract millions of buyers.” But reality has a way of intruding on a dream, and a state-of-the-art Ultra HD set isn’t cheap to produce. With its new, two-model Reference Series (a 120-inch, $130,000 monster examined in our January issue and the 65-incher under review here), the company now challenges the thin-aired peaks of cost-no-object sets previously dominated by older,…

THE VERDICT Polk’s T50 system is all about value with a capital V— delivering a real 5.1 experience including a powered subwoofer and floorstanding tower speakers at a soundbar price. SPEAKER SYSTEM POLK AUDIO T50 SPEAKER SYSTEM PRICE: $690 (T50, $130 ea; T30, $130; T15, $100 pr; PSW108, $200) Polk Audio • (800) 377-7655 • polkaudio.com PRICE $690 as reviewed “WHAT THIS country needs is a really good five-cent cigar.”—Thomas R. Marshall American vice presidents aren’t usually remembered for much, but Woodrow Wilson’s VP Thomas R. Marshall will always be remembered for saying that America needed good cheap cigars. If you figure in a hundred years of inflation, Marshall’s five-cent cigar would still be well under a buck today, so clearly he was a man who wanted real value for…

THE VERDICT Astell & Kern’s AK380 offers copious network audio features and the unique plus of native 32-bit playback—but is it worth the high price to consumers? ASTELL & KERN AK380 MUSIC PLAYER PRICE: $3,499 Astell & Kern/iriver • (949) 336-4540 • astellnkern.com PRICE $3,499 SHOCK LEAD OF THE YEAR: Astell & Kern’s AK380 music player retails for $3,499. That’s an awful lot to pay for a pocketful of music. But it seems unjust to start a review of such a product by carping over its price before evaluating its merits. After all, not many people muster moral outrage over the price tags on Porsches, Patek Philippe watches, or 99-point offerings in Wine Spectator. Why should high-end audio units— including the Pono, a comparative bargain at $400— be the only…

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. More on the Disappeared Data In regards to the article by Ken C. Pohlmanm about Blu-ray soundtracks (“The Mystery of the Disappeared Data,” Signals, December 2015), you will be surprised to know that I rented the Blu-ray…

PRICE $130 THE VERDICT If you own a 4K TV, this is a slam dunk. If not, the advances in hardware are still enough to step up from a Roku 2. ONE MUST WONDER IF ROKU waited to release its fourth-generation media streamer until the aptly named Roku 4 was capable of streaming 4K content. The newest Roku box can connect to compatible UHDTVs to stream 4K movies, TV shows, and videos from Netflix, Amazon, YouTube, M-Go, and a growing number of 4K streaming sources. And though 4K streaming is the Roku 4’s main appeal, improvements in hardware and the software interface make it the best Roku box yet. As media streamers have continued to shrink in size, the Roku 4 moves in the other direction; it is considerably larger…

THE VERDICT The affordable Sennheiser HD 598 is styled differently from its famous and more costly sibling, the HD 600, but is just as beautifully voiced and just as insanely comfortable. PRICE $250 THE MOTLEY CREW THAT LIVES in my headphone drawer was getting long in the tooth when I decided to add a widely acknowledged classic to the collection. The new acquisition was the Sennheiser HD 600, now more than 20 years and umpteen generations old, and he’s become my go-to guy when I want to spend an evening kicking back with headphones that guarantee total physical and listening comfort. Lately I’ve had a chance to try the HD 600’s little brother, the HD 598. At $250, it lists for $150 less than the HD 600, though as of…

THE VERDICT Apple TV Gen 4 brings a better remote to the table but fails to soar above other top streaming devices. PRICE $149 (32 GB), $199 (62 GB) WHEN APPLE TV DEBUTED IN 2007, dozens of rival media receivers were already in place. At a time when TVs were too dumb to do their own streaming, Apple TV came along mainly to benefit iTunes users. Since then, other media players have come and gone, but Apple has persevered. The company recently shipped Gen 4. What’s different in 2016 is that most consumers now own a smart TV, media receiver, game console, or Blu-ray player connected to the Internet. Unless Gen 4 can deliver a richer experience over other Internet appliances, notably the Roku 4 Streaming Player (see review, this…

THE VERDICT Atlantic Technology’s 3.1 HSB uses H-PAS bass technology to deliver real bass response along with enviable smoothness and dynamics. ATLANTIC TECHNOLOGY 3.1 HSB SOUNDBASE PRICE: $799 Atlantic Technology • (781) 762-6300 • atlantictechnology.com PRICE $799 VISUALIZE, IF YOU WILL, A HOME theater system with a flat-panel TV and 5.1-channel surround sound. For many readers, this is nirvana. For others, it’s too much stuff—a TV, three speakers in front, two surrounds, and a subwoofer. How do you reduce the intrusion into the room? Wall-mounting the TV is a no-brainer. Now imagine that the three front speakers have disappeared, along with that pesky sub. What’s left, you’re probably thinking, is some kind of typical soundbase or bar. It offers bass hardly worthy of the name, fake surround, and a fraction…

THE VERDICT The Marantz SR7010 has nine amp channels, Dolby Atmos decoding, DTS:X upgradability, and even Auro-3D upgradability, making it as future-proof as a receiver can currently be. A/V RECEIVER MARANTZ SR7010 A/V RECEIVER PRICE: $2,199 Marantz • (201) 762-6500 • us.marantz.com PRICE $2,199 THE MARANTZ SR7010 IS THE fifth Dolby Atmos receiver I’ve reviewed. However, to be frank, it’s only the second one that matters to me. Most of the Atmos receivers occupying my rack’s guest berth have been seven-channel models limited to 5.1.2-channel Atmos, with just a single pair of height channels in the front. Only the nine-channel Pioneer Elite SC-89 and this Marantz have provided what I deem the minimum acceptable Atmos experience utilizing 5.1.4 channels, with height channels in both front and back. This review also…

Adapted from George R. R. Martin’s fantasy series of books, Game of Thrones debuted on HBO in 2011 and became an instant small-screen classic. The fifth season was recently honored with the “Outstanding Drama Series” Emmy, and the sixth (of rumored eight) will debut this year. This is my second attempt at watching after the first failed miserably due to complaints from Mrs. Reviewer. While she loved the medieval period sets and costumes, she was extremely turned off by the gore and the seemingly never-ending display of bare breasts along with “pointless sex scenes.” I have to admit that I wasn’t particularly thrilled with the incestuous scene in the first episode, but I found that the rampant depictions of prostitution showcased the low morality prevalent in this society, and it…

Resident audio professor, Ken C. Pohlmann, recently wrote a blog on soundandvision.com entitled “Millenials: Your Soundbars are Killing Us” that generated quite a bit of ire among readers. The post generated over 30 comments both for, but mainly against, Ken’s assertion that millennials’ “insatiable love of soundbars” was going to ruin audio for the rest of us. To briefly recap, Ken cited the NPD Group’s Soundbar Ownership and Usage study, saying that millennials—those born between the early ’80s and early ’00s—account for 44 percent of all audio hardware purchases, and that “sales of soundbars costing less than $200 saw double-digit growth, while sales of soundbars costing more than $500 fell 34 percent. Not only are you buying soundbars, you are buying junk soundbars.” Ken finished the post with the line,…

Which of the following statements is false? 1. The sun rises in the east. 2. The hands of a clock go clockwise. 3. New technology is always better than old technology. This last statement, of course, isn’t quite as gospel as the others. Sometimes old technology has advantages that cause it to linger longer than we’d expect, or in rare cases, even make a comeback. Let’s consider print versus pixels. Conventional wisdom states that printed books and magazines will be obsoleted by digital media, probably within a few decades. Except that’s not what’s happening. From 2008 to 2010, e-book sales rose almost 1,300 percent. Printed books went on the endangered species list. Borders bookstore declared bankruptcy. It was widely predicted that sales of e-books would surpass printed books sometime in…

Standards: Somebody has to set them. And when it came to creating the 20th-century template for how to properly sing popular music, one need look no further than Johnny Mathis, the romantic, soulful tenor whose range and control remain just as vibrant today as when he began taking lessons in the San Francisco area in the 1950s from opera singer and vocal teacher Connie Cox. “The most important thing she felt for me as a young singer was she didn’t want to harm my voice,” explains Mathis. “One day I’d come into the studio sounding like a little girl, and then the next day I sounded like [baritone bandleader] Billy Eckstine. She was very, very conscious of not rushing me into the full male voice. We tiptoed around a little…

2015 was very much a transitional year for both audio and video technology. On the display side, Ultra HDTV continued its march into the marketplace, and we saw the first high dynamic range displays. A/V receivers caught up to the UHD displays with full passthrough of HDMI 2.0 signals bolstered, finally, by HDCP 2.2 copyright compliance—a key feature missing from most 2014 AVRs. We got our first real listen to object-based Atmos surround at home in both the nine-channel variety with four height speakers (a winner!) and the seven-channel variety with two height speakers (not quite so much). Beyond that, we saw more growth in the wireless multiroom audio segment, with several accomplished speaker manufacturers getting in the game. Here, then, is our list of standout products reviewed in the…

THE VERDICT With the hindsight of four years of product development, GoldenEar reboots their very first speaker with updated drivers, crossover, and low-frequency DSP—to quite stellar results. SPEAKER SYSTEM GOLDENEAR TECHNOLOGY TRITON TWO+ SPEAKER SYSTEM PRICE: $7,750 (Triton Two+, $1,750 ea; SuperCenter XXL, $1,250; Invisa HTR 7000, $500 ea; Invisa MPX, $500 ea) GoldenEar Technology • (410) 998-9134 • goldenear.com PRICE $7,750 as reviewed UNFORTUNATELY, THE FIRST GoldenEar Technology Triton Two loudspeaker I ever saw didn’t work. It wasn’t the result of shoddy workmanship, chintzy materials, or some brutal, shipping-induced internal hemorrhage of crossovers and cables. Truth be told, the speaker wasn’t technically a Triton Two because, at the time (in early January during CES 2010), GoldenEar Technology didn’t officially exist. The tall, dark tower standing silently in front of…

THE VERDICT The W Studio Micro’s strong performance and tons of streaming music features make it an easy recommendation. SOUNDBAR DEFINITIVE TECHNOLOGY W STUDIO MICRO SOUNDBAR SYSTEM PRICE: $899 Definitive Technology • (800) 223-5246 • wireless.definitivetech.com THE SOUNDBAR IS ONE OF THE fastest-growing market segments in recent years, and that’s no surprise. As consumer demand grows for ultra-thin TVs with virtually zero bezel, display manufacturers are in the quandary of where to put the built-in speakers. The answer for most has been placing shallow speakers behind the screen, firing away from listeners. Obviously, these sonic compromises make it increasingly difficult to understand dialogue— let alone actually enjoy the wider dynamics of movies or music— and the simple solution is adding a soundbar. Soundbars are veering off in two directions: They’re…

How do you improve upon perfection? That is the central question at the very core of the 1+ collection—emphasis very much on the plus—the latest must-have Deluxe Edition to emerge from The Beatles’ empiric vaults. Fifty Beatles classics—all of The Fab Four’s 27 #1 hits, plus 23 additional cuts that include alternate versions of some of those aforementioned moptop chart-toppers—are presented here on two Blu-ray Discs in filmed form, all accompanied by stunning 5.1 mixes done by Giles Martin with Sam Okell at Abbey Road Studios. (The CD is a stereo remaster of the original 1 disc released in 2000, which has sold 31 million copies internationally to date.) There’s no one else I’d trust to do The Beatles right in 5.1, since Martin not only literally shares DNA with…