Innholdsfortegnelse for April/May 2020 i Sound & Vision

Bookshelf Reference X $1599/Pair “GoldenEar’s Astounding New BRX Defines State-of-the-Art Reference Bookshelf Performance with Fantastic Imaging, Incredible Transparency, Lifelike Detail and Powerful Bass!” “Listening to the sonic excellence of the BRX…it is hard to imagine that a bookshelf speaker can sound this good…airy and detailed, solid bass and excellent imaging.”–Maureen Jenson, Technology Insider GoldenEar Technology is pleased to announce the introduction of a new ultra-high-performance compact bookshelf/stand-mount loudspeaker, the BRX. The goal of the BRX development project was to create a gorgeous, luxuriously finished, ultra-compact loudspeaker which would incorporate the latest advanced technology developed for GoldenEar’s Triton Reference and Reference One.R, in order to achieve truly superb sonic performance typical of larger, much more expensive units. “I was amazed…like all GoldenEar products, they punch way above their weight and deliver…

The Pleasures of Perusing In the February/March issue’s Letters section, a reader lamented print space being “wasted” on reviews of Blu-ray discs. I live in a semi-rural area with very slow internet speed and am unable to stream anything. For that reason, I still maintain a large disc collection organized by genre and enjoy the ease of perusing titles and giving guests the opportunity to do the same. Discs also include the ability to watch “extras” not available via streaming (as far as I know). I also use an antenna for TV and my music collection is ripped from CDs. Jim Krillenberger / Bellville, Ohio Al Griffin responds: Astonishingly, a recent FCC report cites the number of Americans without access to broadband internet, most of them in rural areas, at…

Please don’t “OK Boomer” me after reading the following statement—for one thing, I’m a born-and-bred Gen X’er—but back in the day, you practically had to have the skill level of a gold-seeking prospector to find a good rock documentary to watch. The quality of said rock docs wasn’t the issue as much as their availability was. Movie theater screenings were rare appointments at best, physical releases were a crapshoot, and cable TV showings were usually banished to off-peak hours with limited re-airings, all in those dark days before viewing anything on-demand was commonplace. But now, thanks to the always-must-be-fed M.O. of today’s streaming services, we have a plethora of rock documentaries accessible at the touch of a button and/or vocal command. Where to start? Herewith are a half-dozen sure-fire rock-doc…

Q I made the decision to buy an Epson PowerLite Home Cinema 2045 3LCD projector about three years ago based on the great review of it I read in Sound & Vision magazine. It’s my first projector, and I find it amazing to watch my favorite movies on a HUGE screen. We don’t use it all the time—mostly just for movies and for football on weekends. I know I’ll need to change the lamp out at some point and would like to know how to tell when the lamp has dimmed to the point of needing replacement. I have no idea how many hours we’ve used it, or how to find out that information. SCOTT MILLER / VIA EMAIL A The lamp life specification that projector manufacturers routinely provide for…

WHAT WOULD you pay for a 75-inch Ultra HDTV that’s bright enough to handle virtually all high dynamic range programs without having to perform the tone mapping most 4K/HDR sets require? How about $4,000? If it was 2018, that would be a serious answer, but it’s 2020 and we now have Vizio’s 75-inch P-Series Quantum X, a model that claims to deliver uncompromised HDR performance for just $2,200. Does Vizio’s flagship live up to the company’s ambitious specs? Let’s take a look. FEATURES Quantum dots are a main feature in all current M-Series Quantum and higher Vizio sets, so it’s no surprise that they’re present in the flagship P-Series Quantum X. These are nanometer-sized semiconductor particles that, when energized by a blue LED, emit either red or green light depending…

* Value represents the difference in accuracy expressed in dE when measured with a Colorimetry Research CR-250 Spectroradiometer ** 8x10" sample of ST130 G3 material used that was fastened to the screen in test As part of my testing I made a series of measurements to track brightness uniformity and color shift across the screen. The ST130 G4 material’s gain provided a 21% total brightness increase at the center of the screen. An ST130 G3 material sample provided a 11% brightness increase, but since this was a test piece that wasn’t pulled tight, the results may not be the same as with a tensioned piece of material. Color uniformity using a full-field 100% white pattern was comparable on both the ST100 and the ST130 G4, with minimal differences measured at…

IN 2020 many of us will get to witness the summer Olympics in Tokyo, Japan—on TV at least. Why do I mention that in the first line of a speaker review? Because, like the medals handed out to Olympian champs, speaker lines from Monitor Audio tend to come with names like Gold, Silver, and Bronze. To take home an Olympic silver medal, you’d have to be an amazing athlete. Along those same lines, a speaker would need to provide impressive performance to merit a “Silver” moniker, which is why I unpacked this system based around Monitor Audio’s Silver 300 tower speakers with great anticipation. Sound & Vision’s Thomas J. Norton reviewed the fifth generation of Monitor Audio’s Silver series for the magazine back in 2014. There have been several updates…

IT’S EASY to dismiss the recent resurgence of interest in vinyl records as a youth-driven phenomenon, with millennials embracing vinyl more for its hipness factor than for the great sound that it can deliver. But in the course of my day job setting up and maintaining high-end turntables, I’m finding that much of the rekindled attention is actually coming from my fellow Boomers and Gen-Xers. Some of us never stopped playing our records. Others, it seems, simply stashed theirs in the basement decades ago when CDs seemed so convenient and are just now pulling them out to appreciate all over again. Vinyl enthusiasts know that cleanliness is next to godliness when it comes to their records. So how do we deal with all the accumulated gunk resulting from decades of…

LINDA HAMILTON is back as pistol-packin’ mama Sarah Connor and badass as ever, her days dedicated to a familiar mission: ridding the world of killer robots. Dark Fate is James Cameron’s first active role in the franchise he created—here as a producer and co-writer—since 1996’s T2:3D theme park ride, which surely accounts for much of the movie’s old-shoe feel. It’s essentially a direct sequel to Terminator 2: Judgment Day, wherein Sarah saved humanity from a doomful destiny, but we learn that her happy ending was short-lived. Flash forward a couple of decades and now another young girl is being both targeted and protected by strangely capable soldiers. Yep, they’re from the future, with each seeking to ensure victory for his/her side in the war to come. The mayhem is over-the-top…

AROUND 1890, two lighthouse keepers—isolated on a remote New England island with just gulls, each other, and a large supply of liquor for company—begin to gradually lose their sense of reality, civility, and eventually their sanity in an atmospheric concoction not conveyed this intensely since The Shining. It all makes for a great (if grueling) two-handed drama. An odd 1.20:1 aspect ratio—noticeably narrower than the 1.375:1 Academy ratio of pre-widescreen movies—helps to set a disorientating tone. Director Robert Eggers and cinematographer Jarin Blaschke’s gorgeous, highly stylized compositions are similarly disconcerting, at times strongly balanced by shapes within shapes, and at others off-kilter or lurching around dizzily like the film’s drunken characters. Minimal lighting lends the black-and-white images a horror-film quality (think The Old Dark House), the two figures lit from…

Customer Service And Subscriptions soundandvision@emailcustomerservice.com Call (800) 666-3746 (international calls: 386-447-6383) or write to: Sound & Vision, P.O. Box 420235, Palm Coast, FL 32142-0235 Please include your full name, address, and phone number on any inquiries. A/V Evolution IN THIS ISSUE’S Letters section, long-time reader David K. Johnson laments the changes that have impacted the content of Sound & Vision in the years following its merger with Home Theater magazine back in 2013. My response to David attributes these changes to a resurgence of stereo-only gear due to high-res audio streaming and the vinyl revival, along with an explosion of compact wireless audio products such as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth speakers, not to mention headphones of every type. As the largest print magazine in the U.S. focused on providing comprehensive coverage…

CES over the past few years has become more about vision than sound, with statement TVs in booths lining the Las Vegas Convention Center’s Central Hall vying aggressively for the attention of show attendees. CES 2020 was no different, and in some ways was even more TV-centric due to the wide range of new products and prototypes on view from both established brands like LG, Samsung, and Sony, and relative newcomers such as Hisense, Konka, and TCL. Yes, LG once again had motorized rolling OLED TVs at the show—a product promised for 2019 that never materialized here—along with new OLED prototypes that roll down from the ceiling. But what most interested me was the sets that are likely to arrive in 2020, especially the innovative ones that will actually be…

A dedicated room represents the ultimate space to attain movie-watching nirvana. With the ability to minimize visual distractions, maximize acoustics, and optimally position seating and speakers, a dedicated room more easily lends itself to the creation of a no-holds-barred home theater than a space with an open floor plan. Other real benefits a dedicated home theater room offers include a single point of entry and no windows. This allows for total control over ambient lighting—a factor that elevates a good movie-viewing room to a great one. As any projector owner can tell you, the absolute best way to improve the contrast ratio of a projected image is to make the viewing environment as dark as possible. (Another contrast-boosting tip: paint the front wall where the screen is located as dark…

I OFTEN FEEL that the screen is the most overlooked component of a video projection system. That’s because the screen material itself lacks “wow” factor, and it typically doesn’t get tagged with the sexy marketing buzzwords associated with other home theater gear. But selecting the right screen for a video system is crucial since the screen ultimately will serve to either enhance or reduce your projector’s performance. While new screens rarely generate noise at trade shows like CEDIA, one news item at the 2019 show was the introduction of the fourth generation of Stewart Filmscreen’s popular StudioTek 130 (ST130) screen material. This certainly perked my ears up since I considered the previous generation ST130 to be one of the best screen materials on the market. Stewart claimed to have improved…

WHEN TIVO burst on the scene in 1999 it changed the way millions of people watched TV. Gone were the days of manually setting up a recording on your VCR and then having to wait for a program to finish. Now, by using TiVo’s DVR, you could not just record but pause Live TV in order to answer a phone call or take a bathroom break. The last TiVo DVR I reviewed was the Premiere back in 2010 and I felt the hardware had taken a major step back compared with the company’s previous Series 3—the first DVR with high-definition capability. Its user interface was poisonously slow, and while the box improved over the years with updates, it never reached a point where it outshined its predecessor. I have a…

To the annals of unique interpretations and iconic performances of The Clown Prince of Crime we must now add Joaquin Phoenix and his exquisitely tragic turn as Joker. The film’s Arthur Fleck is a new creation fully outside any established cinematic or literary continuity, a man barely able to function on the mean streets of Gotham City circa 1981. We can feel him barely hanging on as he goes about his daily grind: caring for an ailing mother, toiling as a professional clown, and dreaming of a career as a standup comedian. The casting of The King of Comedy’s Robert De Niro as the host of Fleck’s favored TV talk show is clever indeed, but Joker also draws undeniable inspiration from another De Niro/Scorsese affair, Taxi Driver, with its desperate…

ZOMBIELAND: DOUBLE TAP revisits the characters of Tallahassee, Columbus, Wichita, and Little Rock (played by Woody Harrelson, Jessie Eisenberg, Emma Stone, and Abigail Breslin, respectively) 10 years after the original Zombieland takes place. There is plenty of clever dialogue and zombie kills to keep the film moving at an entertaining pace, even though it lacks some of the freshness of the original. This latest version of the zombie apocalypse also benefits from an excellent supporting cast that includes Rosario Dawson, Thomas Middleditch, Luke Wilson, Avan Jogia, and Zoey Deutch in an especially humorous performance. Originally shot at 3.4k resolution and mastered in 2k, the IMAX Enhanced picture on this Ultra HD Blu-ray looks excellent. As you might expect from an apocalyptic wasteland, most of the outdoor scenes are overcast and dreary…

IT WOULD BE easy to characterize Chuck Berry, who passed away at age 90 in 2017, as one cantankerously acrimonious fellow, but after revisiting Taylor Hackford’s astute 1987 documentary Hail! Hail! Rock ’N’ Roll, now available on Blu-ray for the first time via Shout Select, I’m reminded of how captivating, creative, and downright business-savvy the pioneering, guitar-playing singer/songwriter actually was. In Hail! Hail!, Hackford’s always on-thespot lens follows Rolling Stones guitarist and early Berry acolyte Keith Richards’ holy mission to celebrate his hero’s 60th birthday with an all-star backing band at St. Louis’ fabled Fabulous Fox Theatre. Tense moments ensue during a tight-quartered rehearsal of “Carol,” with Berry negating some of Richards’ suggestions outright—Keef’s eye-daggers after turning his back following one particularly intense exchange are priceless—but once the pair achieve…

YES MAY HAVE hit the roundabout motherlode with November 1971’s Fragile, but their true zenith came with the following album, September 1972’s Close to the Edge. Edge was the perfect intersection of envelope-pushing, multi-movement compositions and beyond-heady lyrical mysticism, permanently cementing Yes’ status as top-tier progressive rock progenitors. Though Edge contains only three songs—the full-side, 18½-minute benchmark title track, the acoustic/electric synth-country hybrid “And You And I,” and the uber-cosmic mega-jam of “Siberian Khatru”—the 38-minute album set the tone for all prog-centric releases that followed in its wake. “It’s a bona-fide A-level masterpiece,” 5.1 guru Steven Wilson, a lifelong Yes fan and their eventual stereo- and surround-remixer, once told me about Edge—and I couldn’t agree more. I still have the original 1972 Atlantic vinyl LP that I played so often as…

You can tell the age of a tree by counting its rings. You can tell the age of a person by counting the number of times they say something anachronistic. For example, if I start talking about Compact Discs, kids will instantly identify me as being, uh, mature. They will make snide remarks about the La Brea Tar Pits and mastodons. Kids can be cruel. Ask me how I know. I want to spare you this kind of mortification. Thus, I have compiled a no-fly-zone list of audio/video language. This language contains trigger words and phrases and under no circumstances should be used around persons younger than you. For example, you can say, “Let’s record this.” But if you say, “Let’s tape this,” you’ll immediately wish you hadn’t. Here’s the…

DALI (Danish Audiophile Loudspeaker Industries) isn’t a well-known brand in the United States, but the company may get more notice once word of its Katch One soundbar gets out. Stylish and simple, DALI’s soundbar ($999) strikes an interesting balance between price and sound quality—it’s undeniably pricey, but since the Katch One fulfills the promise of an audiophile loudspeaker, you get what you pay for. The Katch One’s (not to be confused with the company’s Katch Bluetooth speaker) thin profile belies its powerful bass—a quality usually lacking in a soundbar. Although just 34 inches wide, 6.5-inches high, and 2.7 inches deep, the Katch One features six drivers powered by a 4 x 50-watt class-D amplifier, along with four passive radiators. Three color options—Ivory White, Mountain White, and Iron Black—allow it to…

A closed-off symmetrical, rectangular room with a flat ceiling may be the ideal space to optimize subwoofer performance, but homes with open floor plan spaces have become increasingly popular. The room used for my home theater setup, for instance, is 16 x 21 feet (with an oddly sloped ceiling) with one corner opening up to the front entryway and the right sidewall opening wide to a kitchen and small breakfast area. So even though the main space is 16 x 21 feet, the overall acoustical space the system must deal with is much larger and oddly shaped. Optimizing such a room requires extensive experimentation, and I wouldn’t attempt it without the use of the sort of measurement tools mentioned earlier. For the exercise here I used the OmniMic system. All…

THE PORTABLE video projector market is packed with options for anyone seeking a convenient, compact beamer to carry from room to room, indoors to outdoors, or home to vacation home. Most portable models top out at 1080p resolution, however, and feature only basic, and usually far from adequate, built-in audio capabilities. With its X10-4KE, ViewSonic is targeting a more discerning portable video viewer—one who expects 4K resolution and high dynamic range, along with better-than-average audio from the projector’s built-in speakers. I’ve handled many portable projectors in the past, and most of those had a toy-like quality. The ViewSonic X10-4KE, in contrast, is not a toy, and with a $1,500 street price, you wouldn’t expect it to be. (The X10-4KE is a replacement for the company’s previous X10-4K model, with upgrades…

After completing my StudioTek 130 G4 review, I found myself on a calibration tour in Southern California and took the opportunity to reach out to Stewart Filmscreen and arrange a visit to its headquarters and manufacturing facility in Torrance. I had never visited Stewart before, and Mark Robinson, Vice President of Customer Experience and the scientist behind the company’s screen materials, was gracious enough to spend a halfday taking me through the facilities and providing a look at the company’s manufacturing process. During the two decades I’ve been in this industry, I’ve heard a lot of enthusiasts mention the premium prices Stewart charges for its screens and make value comparisons to other brands. While I agree that Stewart charges a premium, I’ve also always felt that the company’s products set…

I LIKE SIMPLE. Simple is good. Simple works. Simple makes my job easier and helps me sleep at night. Parasound, a Bay Area maker with a half-century of success walking the parapet between high-end audiophilia and value-engineering design, apparently concurs. The company’s new NewClassic 200 Integrated is, as you might well guess, an integrated amplifier, with a high-quality onboard digitalto-analog converter section. The 200 Integrated was in fact derived by the simple expedient of sliding a class-D stereo power amp sourced from Danish class-D amp-module stalwart Pascal Audio into its otherwise-identical preamp stablemate. This slim, two-channel module delivers a claimed 110 watts per channel into either 4-ohm or 8-ohm loads with typical class-D efficiency, pulling only a modest 50 watts from the wall. Simple, in this case, does not mean…

THE TRUE STORY of sports car designer Carroll Shelby and driver Ken Miles’ partnership with the Ford Motor Company to challenge legendary Ferrari and perhaps win racing’s ultimate test of endurance, the 24 hours of Le Mans, is can’t-miss Hollywood gold. While not quite a David v Goliath tale—we learn that cash-strapped Ferrari was something of an underdog—the results here are a heartfelt ode to cars, speed, second chances and next chapters, and good old American ingenuity. The protagonists are fascinating (goodness, Henry Ford II must have been a piece of work), the antagonists infuriating, the stakes high, and the race scenes thrilling, with no shortage of gasp-out-loud moments when man or machine fails. Ford v Ferrari was shot with digital cameras and the 4K home presentation is strong. Faces…

WINNER OF the Cannes Palme d’Or and Academy Awards for Best Picture, Director, Original Screenplay, and International Feature, director, co-producer, and co-writer Bong Joon-ho’s classist farce, Parasite, focuses on the Kims, a family of poor but proud con artists. Presently scrabbling to get by on lowest-paid jobs in a bug-infested basement apartment in Seoul, South Korea, they dream of climbing up to a better life by tricking the rich using flattery, charm, and well-rehearsed scripts. After the son, Ki-woo, gets work as a home tutor based on Photoshop-forged university credentials and Google-searched knowledge, they settle on the wealthy Park family. With a foot in the door, each member of the Kim clan can then infiltrate the household one-by-one. Ki-woo recommends a talented art-therapist colleague (his sister), followed—after first sabotaging the…

PRINCE WAS DETERMINED. While he had made some inroads on both the sales charts and urban radio with his first four hot-button, mostly one-man-show albums of the late-’70s and early-’80s, an opening slot on The Rolling Stones’ 1981 tour exposed the narrowmindedness of many concertgoers who outright booed and/or threw things at Prince and his band while they were onstage. That negative reaction was something the Minneapolis native channeled into a much more positive vein when he returned to the studio not long afterward, recording as many songs as he could possibly lay down (and then some!) in the year that followed. What ultimately emerged from this relentless studio activity in October 1982 was Prince’s first double album—the 70-minute, 11-song masterstroke known as 1999. Featuring a more accessible multi-genre blend comprised…