Innholdsfortegnelse for September 2016 i Sound & Vision

Our main cover story this month, in an issue chock full of loudspeakers, is a review and inside look at Definitive Technology’s recently revised BP9000 series. The BP9000 towers represent the fourth generation of the product that launched the brand in 1990, the BP10, a passive tower featuring a bipolar radiation pattern (powered woofers were added later). Many of us have heard or own bipole or dipole surround sound speakers. These typically have a pair of offset baffles and can provide a more diffuse and less localizable rear soundfield to enhance the sense of envelopment. But bipole and dipole mains, used in the front left/right positions of a stereo pair, have always been a bit of a rarity; perhaps more so today. I’d venture to say that many of our…

Microsoft’s Edge browser in Windows 10 can now auto-pause moving Flash content in peripheral ads till you click on them, improving performance while reducing power consumption (and annoyance)... UHD Blu-ray is now supported by Universal and Paramount. That leaves Disney as the only major studio yet to announce—whither Star Wars: The Force Awakens?... The White House Backs the FCC’s initiative for next-generation cable readiness. Chief economist Jason Furman declares: “No corporation can unfairly squeeze their competitors, their workers, or their customers at everyone’s expense”... Buy Phone, Get Free TV! It’s true—the purchase of a Samsung Galaxy S7 or S7 Edge from AT&T will get you a 48-inch Samsung J5200 smart TV. AT&T had previously offered a 32-inch set with phone purchase. See att.com/samsungtvoffer... Bang & Olufsen’s OLED TVs will be…

AT A GLANCE + Plus ■ Hand-crafted in Brooklyn! ■ Lightweight design ■ Incredibly open soundstage - Minus ■ Cable isn’t user-replaceable GRADO LABS IS LOCATED IN A nondescript four-story building in the Sunset Park neighborhood in Brooklyn, where Joe Grado started manufacturing phono cartridges in the early 1950s. John Grado (Joe’s nephew) took over day-to-day operations in 1978, and in 1989 Grado Labs jumped into the headphone market. John and Joe hand-built all of the company’s first-generation headphones—the HP-1, HP-2, and HP-3—and those ’phones now fetch anywhere from $1,000 to $2,500 on eBay! Grado Labs is still a family-owned business, and John’s son Jonathan came aboard in 2014. The Grado Reference Series RS1e sports African mahogany earpieces, the headband is covered and padded with genuine leather, and there are…

A recent wave of cable-company consolidations is inexorably bringing the market under the dominion of ever fewer players. The latest mega-deal is the absorption of Time Warner Cable into Charter Communications in a $65.5 billion deal, which followed lengthy review by the FCC. To seal the deal, Charter agreed not to try keeping desirable programming away from streaming competitors such as Netflix, not to impose data caps on online video viewers for seven years, and not to charge streaming competitors for network access to Charter subscribers. The company will also expand internet service to an additional two million homes and offer lowcost broadband to low-income households. The deal has attracted criticism from consumer groups, who decry concentration of ownership; from competitors like the Dish Network, which believes cable consolidation is…

West Sussex, meet Silicon Valley. Bowers & Wilkins, the legendary British high-end loudspeaker maker, has been sold to EVA Automation of Redwood City, California. And who is that exactly? Says EVA’s website: “We are passionate about home entertainment and creating easier and better ways for people to use the products they love.” EVA is backed by the same venture capitalist that sold the virtual-reality outfit Oculus to Facebook. “Since I founded EVA Automation two years ago,” writes chairman Gideon Yu, “we have been working hard to create fantastic home A/V user experiences. When it was time to seek out partners for our journey ahead, Bowers & Wilkins was unquestionably our #1 choice.” How they might mesh remains to be seen, but EVA’s mission includes multiroom products. And as S&V editor-in-chief…

The Ears Have It! You’d think that a company that started out in 1998, four years before the iPod, selling a dedicated audio player and a small library of spoken-word books would be out of business by now. Yet thanks to the rise of smartphones and a timely acquisition in 2008 by Amazon, Audible has become the leading provider of digital audio books. Audible describes itself as a kind of Netflix for listening, offering more than 250,000 titles including original content. For those stuck in daily commutes or anyone craving the ability to “read” hands free, audio books are a godsend. But in 2016, what’s the fuss about having books read to you? Quite a lot, actually. This year, Audible added a feature called Clips that lets you copy segments…

Definitive Technology BP9080x Speaker System PRICE $7,194 as reviewed AT A GLANCE + Plus ■ Spacious bipole sound ■ Seriously full-range with powered bass section ■ Astounding dynamics - Minus ■ Big and demanding of floor space ■ Reflective bipolar reproduction may not suit every room, taste DEFINITIVE TECHNOLOGY’S monolithic bipolar towers —which launched the brand in 1990—have been around in one form or another almost as long as that thing in 2001: A Space Odyssey. With the fourth generation bowing recently, the Baltimore-area manufacturer set us up with a full suite: BP9080x fronts, CS9080 center, a pair of smallerbut-still-huge BP9060 towers for surrounds, and the A90 elevation speakers (Dolby Atmos-enabled and compatible with DTS:X) to go on top of those surrounds; the marquee BP9080x fronts have the same elevation…

PRICE $1,499 ea AT A GLANCE + Plus ■ 2.5-way crossover ■ Excellent build quality ■ Amazing soundstage - Minus ■ Gloss finish needs careful handling WITH ITS TALL-AND-NARROW rectangular cabinet, front-mounted drivers, rear-firing port, and cloth grille, Paradigm’s Prestige 75F is the quintessential tower loudspeaker. Fans of new driver types, exotic cabinet designs, the rarest of rare-earth metals, and de rigueur built-in powered woofers might be tempted to pass by (especially when the grille is attached), much as I did figuratively when a pair of the towers arrived. Paradigm had shipped them to use with the company’s Premium Wireless streaming amplifier, the PW Amp (Sound & Vision, June, and soundandvision.com). The Prestige 75F wasn’t the focus of that review, so although I began burning in the pair, I basically…

PRICE $1,550 to $2,075 as reviewed AT A GLANCE + Plus ■ Slim-profile passive soundbar, or... ■ Compact LCRs in front, with... ■ One sub or two - Minus ■ AVR required for passive bar ■ Inherent limits of 8-inch sub HOW SHOULD YOUR 5.1-channel system handle the three channels in front? You might use the traditional approach of three separate speakers. Then again, you might simply use a passive soundbar with left, center, and right drivers. We’ve reviewed both kinds of systems—but until now, we haven’t reviewed both options at once. In this Test Report, that’s just what we’re going to do. We’ll start with Atlantic Technology’s new FS3 soundbar in the front and two voice-matched LCR3 satellites in the surround positions. Then we’ll swap out the soundbar for…

PRICE $1,999 pr AT A GLANCE + Plus ■ Ribbon tweeter for wide horizontal dispersion ■ Kevlar cone woofer with dual-chambered loading ■ Multi-layered, curved cabinet - Minus ■ Limited bass, typical of compact monitors EVERYTHING YOU THINK YOU know about Quad comes with a curve ball. Some might associate the name with quadraphonic sound, but in fact it originally stood for Quality Unit Amplifier Domestic. That name implies a mission involving amps, and Quad does make ’em—but as any longtime audiophile can tell you, the brand is best known for its large flatpanel electrostatic loudspeakers. Some of those graying audiophiles remember Quad as a British manufacturer, but it has been under the competent and enlightened ownership of Bernard and Michael Chang of Taiwan and their International Audio Group for…

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. Poor Man’s Atmos Years ago, I was an early adopter of the DVD. I spent $1,000 on the first DVD player from Sony, and the only DVDs that were obtainable at the time were the four discs…

Hafler and Dynaco, two historic high-end audio brands, were relaunched at the High-End Show in Munich. New owner Radial, with roots in pro audio, is restarting the brands with two step-up transformers, two phono preamps, and two headphone amps (including the tube-driven “vintage inspired” HA75 shown below), all made in Canada, at prices from $500 to $1,200. Both companies were founded by David Hafler (1919–2003), who pioneered affordable high-end gear under the Dynaco brand. You’ll still find the legendary ST 70 stereo tube amp all over eBay. Consumers had the option of buying the amp as a DIY kit, and many of today’s graying audiophiles fondly reminisce about assembling one.…

SINCE launching the BP10 as its inaugural product in 1991, Definitive Technology has evolved its bipolar tower design through four generations. The 9000 series reflects the company’s latest thinking in engineering, components, and industrial design. According to Matt Lyons, senior VP of new product development, these speakers are new from the ground up, with only some design concepts (no parts) directly carried over from the 8000 series. There are four towers in the new line, including the flagship BP9080x with top-mounted Dolby Atmos–enabled height drivers (also suitable for DTS:X), and the successively smaller BP9060, BP9040, and BP9020—the latter three are ready to accept the new plug-in A90 Atmos and DTS:X height module. Three new voice-matched center-channel speakers (CS9080, CS9060, CS9040) and two new bipolar surround speakers (SR9080, SR9040) complete the…

PRICE $1,199 AT A GLANCE + Plus ■ True surround sound without the wiring hassles ■ Quick and easy setup ■ Hi-res wireless audio transmission - Minus ■ No Dolby TrueHD or DTSHD Master Audio decoding ■ Remote is difficult to use ■ Lots of wall-wart power supplies to plug in HERE AT SOUND & VISION, WE like to think of ourselves as hard-core home theater enthusiasts, so it’s difficult for us to fathom why average people don’t want to jump through hoops to set up a complete 5.1-channel surround system. Sure, you’d need to find space for an A/V receiver and a pile of speakers—plus you’d have to hook up a bunch of wires and thumb through a stack of onscreen menus to get everything properly configured and adjusted—…

PRICE $1,700 AT A GLANCE + Plus ■ Dolby Atmos and (via future upgrade) DTS: X ■ MusicCast, AirPlay, Bluetooth (both in and out), and Wi-Fi for music streaming - Minus ■ Larger than most soundbars ■ Remote control isn’t backlit IT HAD TO HAPPEN: SOMEBODY took Dolby Atmos and superglued it to a soundbar. It looks like Dolby Atmos in a Bar (DAIB) is the new Home Theater in a Box (HTIB). Oh, joy of joys. I jest, of course. I’ve reviewed some really great soundbars—and Yamaha, the company behind this groundbreaking Atmos-enabled model, is no slouch when it comes to all-in-one theater systems. At $1,700, the new YSP-5600 is the most expensive, and most extensively featured, soundbar in Yamaha’s lineup. Measuring in at 43.25 inches wide x 8.38…

I’m sure I wasn’t the only local who was surprised (or puzzled) to see an old-school record shop open up in Milltown, New Jersey, 15 minutes from Rutgers University’s main campus in New Brunswick. A welcome addition, but I wondered how long a store specializing in LPs and vintage audio gear would last. Could it survive in the age of Spotify? A year after opening its doors, Revilla Grooves on Main is not only surviving but thriving, according to Darren Revilla, who turned his long-standing love of vinyl into an online business called Revilla Grooves and Gear five years ago. He still uses Revilla Grooves and Gear when he sells records online or at shows like Brooklyn’s famous WFMU Record Fair. I sat down with the veteran collector to talk…

Out With the Old One of my favorite comedies is Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, a film starring the incredibly well-cast Michael Caine as a savvy, sophisticated British confidence man trying to first mentor and then ultimately compete against the boorish, uncultured, bumbling American swindler played by Steve Martin. Near the middle of the movie is a scene where the duo has just finished a scam, and as they are divvying up the money amongst the crew, Jamieson (Caine) tells Freddy (Martin) that he won’t be getting any of the spoils. “I wouldn’t dream of giving you your share without being certain that you would spend it wisely on beauty and culture,” Jamieson says. “Spending money is a responsibility, Freddy.” In the next scene, the two are in a lavish wine cellar…

Nestled in the heart of the trendy Meatpacking District, Samsung 837 is Manhattan’s latest destination. It is not, however, a store. You can’t buy anything there. But you can get an eyeful of the company’s TVs, virtual-reality headsets, phones, and other gear in convivial environments. In the auditorium is a giant screen made up of ninety-six 55-inch panels. It is used for screenings and Oscar parties—you can even display a selfie on it. The main floor’s art gallery features digital installations. If you’re not sure how a smart home works, the connected living room will show you; there’s also a kitchen for cooking demos and classes. Feeling peckish? Hit the cafe. But if you’re creatively inclined, you might use the pro-level studio to create your own videos or podcasts.…

The End of the Road Things you will find on the side of the road: shredded truck tires, plastic hubcaps, baseball caps, too-fast squirrels, too-slow turtles, Bud Light cans, men’s underwear. And, of course, scratched, shattered, and otherwise discarded CDs. It wasn’t always like that. I know a thing or two about cars. My first car was a 1948 Willys Jeep. Paid $400 for it. Its principle feature was an immeasurably large number of teachable moments. I also know something about audio. After I built my first stereo FM radio, I discovered that I could clearly hear a 19-kilohertz pilot tone and that my radio had a technical problem. One of humankind’s greatest achievements was the combining of cars and audio. I am referring, of course, to the car 8-track.…

PRICE $50 AT A GLANCE + Plus ■ Easy to install ■ Tames unwanted vibrations - Minus ■ Why aren’t these standard issue? I LOVE BASS, ALWAYS HAVE, always will. The same can’t be said for my wife, who constantly tells me, “Turn it down. You’re going to wake the dead, or worse, go deaf!” Part of my problem is that my home rests on a raised foundation with a wood subfloor underneath my carpet, which means my dual-subwoofer setup transmits plenty of vibrations from the subwoofer to the floor, which then resonate through the rest of the house. In fact, on certain low-frequency scenes in movies, you can literally see my windows vibrating. But is this really a problem? To us bass hounds, not really, but are we getting…

PRICE $15/month AT A GLANCE + Plus ■ 16 built-in tuners ■ Supports Netflix 4K UHD content - Minus ■ Non-backlit remote IF THE NEW SATELLITE RECEIVER/DVR from Dish, the Hopper 3, were indeed merely a new satellite receiver/DVR, the chances of us reviewing it would be between slim and you’ve got to be kidding me. After all, this is the age of internet streaming and cord cutting—and linear TV is just soooo last century. Since this is actually a genuine review of the Hopper 3, I guess it’s not a spoiler to say that there’s more to this third-generation, whole-home satellite DVR from Dish than time-shifting network broadcasts. There’s no short-and-sweet way to describe the Hopper 3. Yeah, at its core, it’s a satellite TV receiver with a built-in…

PAGE# MANUFACTURERS 13 Audio Plus Services (800) 663-9352 audioplusservices.com 73 AV Science (877) 823-4452 71 Bluesound bluesound.com 51 Bowers & Wilkins bwspeakers.com 59 CinemaShop (866) 243-1001 cinemashop.com 14 Crutchfield (800) 555-8347 crutchfield.com C2-3 Definitive Technology (410) 363-7148 definitivetech.com 63 Emotiva Audio Corporation (877) 366-8324 emotiva.com 73 Gobudi outofsightbracket.com 8,9 GoldenEar Technology 10,11 (410) 998-9134 goldenear.com 50 HSU (800) 554-0150 hsuresearch.com 28,29 JL Audio jlaudio.com 7 Legacy Audio (800) 283-4644 legacyaudio.com 5,C3 NAD (800) 263-4641 nadelectronics.com 41 Needle Doctor (800) 229-0644 needledoctor.com PAGE# MANUFACTURERS 27 Oppo Digital, Inc (650) 961-1118 oppodigital.com 15 Paradigm paradigm.com 46 Parts Express (800) 338-0531 parts-express.com C4 Philips Consumer consumer.philips.com 62 Seymour-Screen Excellence (515) 450-5694 seymourscreenexcellence.com 21,23 SVS (877) 626-5623 svsound.com 47 ZVOX Audio (866) FOR-ZVOX zvoxaudio.com soundandvision.com Information listed in this index is done so as…