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June 27th: Watching Blu-ray anywhere |
With the (very gradual) shift from DVD to Blu-ray, we had originally hoped that the movie industry would put aside the dumb region codes, which prevent you from watching a European film in North America, or vice versa. But no, Blu-ray has the codes too. With DVD, of course, there are ways around this. You can buy region-free players, you can (sometimes) de-regionalize your own player (which might turn it into a brick, but at the price DVD players sell for today...). You could also copy software (illegal in the US, and perhaps soon to be illegal in Canada) to make a region-free copy of your offshore film. Now there's a company, Blu-ray Mods, which offers dezoned Panasonic Blu-ray players. The model is a Panasonic DMP-BD30, which you can order for 499 Euro. Or you can get a mod-kit for your own Panasonic for 89 Euro (but the kit includes solder, sobe warned). The company says the mods can survive all future firmware modifications from Panasonic, though we wonder how they know that.Where is the company? It doesn't say. Payment is by PayPal or the ever-reliable wire transfer, and the phone contact is a Skype number, so it could be anywhere in the world, including Nigeria. Speaking of Panasonic, it's official. The parent company, Matsushita, is now Panasonic Inc. On the NYSE the symbol will change from MC to PC. |
June 18th: Finishing up our reviews |
We're running a little behind on our schedule, but issue No. 84 will be done soon. We[re aiming at some time next week, and we'll confirm the date as soon as we can. Among the products reviewed is the Linn Klimax DS, which is a new category of music sources: it pulls in music from a hard drive somewhere on your home network, and delivers it in pristine form to your stereo system. Control is done through the LinnGUI software shown here.Frankly, the present-day software left us cooler than cool, but fortunately the standard is open. There will be updated software, and indeed there is an SDK, if you want to write your own for your iPhone, say. The Klimax DS is an expensive piece, but Linn has other "DS" components starting at under $2000. What we can say is that streaming your music in this way doesn't seem to involve compromises. All the details in the next issue. |
June 17th: XRCD recordings at lower than ever prices |
We always thought that JVC's XRCD recordings were exceptional, and they don't even require special decoding. We were less impressed with the prices, which once soared to an awesome $58. Now our Audiophile Store brings back its JVC page, with new titles at prices we haven't ever been able to offer before: $29.95 Canadian (about the same amount in US dollars, though that fluctuates from day to day)We have singer Carmen Lundy (one of whose albums is shown at right), André Previn, Shelly Manne, Arthur Rubinstein, and more. We even have the Boston Pops version of Offenbach's Gaîeté Parisienne, which has never been equalled. Check out our JVC page for yourself. We do have to caution you that quantities may be limited, but on the other hand we can probably get you any other JVC titles. Let us know what you're looking for. |
June 15th: Can you help beat the copyright bill? |
 We are not against copyright, quite the contrary, and indeed we have our own copyrights to protect. However, for a number of reasons it seems to us that the new Canadian copyright bill, tabled on June 12th, is wrongheaded, and downright abusive.But don't take our word for it. You can go here to read the bill for yourself. For analysis by law professor Michael Geist, who often writes on copyright and privacy issues, you can visit his blog. If you agree and you want to get involved, Canadian author Cory Doctorow over at the BoingBoing site, has some links: 1. Write to your MP, the Industry Minister, the Canadian Heritage Minister, and the Prime Minister. If you send an email, be sure to print it out and drop a copy in the mail (no stamp is needed - c/o House of Commons, Ottawa, ON, K1A0A6). If you are looking for a sample letter, visit Copyright for Canadians. We emphasize again that we are not against copyright, and we know an updated copyright law is inevitable no matter what government takes power. We also believe that this bill, if passed, would be a bad law. See if you agree. |
June 13th: Canadian copyright bill slated to die? |
 Yesterday, Canadian Industry Minister Jim Prentice (that's his official photo at right) tabled a new copyright bill that has critics positively rabid. It contains oddities, too, seeming to make it illegal to time shift a TV program unless you destroy the recording as soon as you have watched it (no more recording Citizen Kane from the Late Show). If you have a taste for legalese, you can read the entire bill on Industry Canada's site. Both English and French versions can be found in parallel.And you may want to read it for yourself, because, as some critics have pointed out, what the proposed law gives, it takes away in the fine print. One of the more cogent analyses is that of the University of Ottawa's Michael Geist, found on his blog. But what will happen to the bill? Its future is uncertain. Canada is bound by international treaty to toughen up its copyright law, so there will be a new law sooner or later. The previous (Liberal) government had introduced its own bill, but it died on the order paper after it was discovered that the minister presenting it had received substantial campaign funds from the entertainment industry. There's no such scandal on the horizon this time, but Jim Prentice may not be the minister for long. The problem is not him, but the rest of the cabinet, which is short on talent. The present Finance Minister has alienated Ontario, on which the Conservatives was counting for votes, and he could well be replaced in the next few days by Prentice, or so goes the gossip. In any case, the present minority government may not be long for this world. Parliament will soon prorogue for the Summer, and a bill this complex will be under a lot of scrutiny in parliamentary committee, starting next Fall. By then, it is widely believed an election will be called. The Conservatives may not want to go to the country with a law that criminalizes people with iPods. So...be afraid, be very afraid, but take a deep breath. |
June 12th: Sprinting to finish issue 84, new Canadian copyright bill |
| All of the listening sessions are done, and we've come up with a pretty good list of audio products that are worth your time, and possibly your money. The Linn Klimax DS, shown in the previous posting, is worth a good chunk of your money, truth to tell, with a price tag well into five digits. But that's not the point to our review. The question we wanted to answer was: if you decide to stack all your music on a hard drive, are you therefore accepting a sonic compromise that you'll never be able to move beyond? The answer, we believe, is no. And now we wait for a possibly related event. Today the Canadian government will table a new copyright law, which critics fear will be a replica of the US law. The most fearful critics believe it could even criminalize transferring music from a CD to a hard drive or an iPod. In the US, you'll recall, the music industry does consider such transfer to be an infringement of copyright, though that interpretation has yet to be tested by the courts. We're standing by for news... UPDATE: The news has landed. As we rather thought, a number of people are angry about it, even talking about the future law setting up a police state. The reason? The proposed law makes it illegal to defeat an anti-copy system on copyrighted material. CDs of course have no such protection, but movies do. Putting a movie you paid for on your iPod will cost you dearly. |
June 3rd: Listening sessions wind up Thursday |
We have just one product left to review, and we'll be spending most of Thursday with it. It's the Linn Klimax DS, shown here. It looks identical to the Klimax Kontrol preamplifier we reviewed in UHF No. 80, but it isn't a preamplifier at all. The "DS" stands for "digital streaming." What it does is pick up music from a hard drive anywhere on your home network, and make it available to your stereo system in what is claimed to be pristine quality. At the Montreal show (which is also covered in the new issue), it was played alongside the (alas, discontinued) CD-12 player.This has been more than a little difficult to set up. The link between music source and Klimax is a Windows computer, running programs like LinnGUI, LinnConfig, and Twonky. There are some esoteric settings to be done too, and some unexpected incompatibilities. Linn is not married to Windows forever, apparently, and other options will appear eventually. A first listen, however, confirms what Linn claims: this really is a serious competitor for the standalone CD player. More shortly. |
May 30th: The return of the DVD that goes "poof" |
Remember DIVX? No, not the present-day DivX codec, but the similarly-named self-destructing DVD. Break it out of its pouch, and ambient oxygen consumes it in 48 hours. So you don't have to go back to the video store, you just watch it and add the now useless polycarbonate puck to the landfill. Can you believe that Staples, the international office supply chain, is planning to bring back this exceptionally stupid (if not ecologically criminal) idea? So says the site of TWICE magazine. Oh yes, there will be recycling centres somewhere, maybe, perhaps, or at least it would be nice.Of course it didn't work the first time around. It was then proposed by another large US chain, Circuit City, and perhaps you know how healthy that company is today. And that was back in the 20th Century, before the days of downloadable movies, whose existence would seem to make the auto-destructing disc seem quaint at the very least. Either this is insanity, or Staples knows something about business that we just can't get our heads around. Our feeling is that Staples will issue a quick denial, saying that it was merely "considering" the possibility, but that nothing has been decided, etc. If not, they might consider changing their easily-parodied motto, as per our modest suggestion in the illustration. |
May 29th: See the cover of our next issue |
 Work is advancing on the production of UHF No. 84, and you can already see the cover and the table of contents of that issue over at The Reading Room. A miniature of the cover is shown here.In the meantime, we're winding down our listening sessions. Part of today will be spent listening to an updated Aurum Acoustics CDP...that's the combination preamplifier and CD player. It now has a phono stage and a headphone amplifier (they cost extra, we're sorry to say, but then don't we all? We will also be spending time shortly with Linn's Klimax DS, which promises to make CD players obsolete. That's it on our new cover (the speaker behind it is a Harbeth HL5, which frankly astonished us). This week we'll be selecting a press date, and we'll let you know as soon as know. |
May 23rd: Free Advice updated |
 We've updated our ongoing Free Advice section -- can you believe it has now been going for 26 years? Of course it began in our print issue, where it still lives, but moved onto the Web in 1996. Let's see, in dog years that's...We continue to dish out advice for free on all matters pertaining to hi-fi, home theatre and related topics. We're not afraid to name names, nor are we afraid to say we don't know. You can write us on any of these topics, but please recall the ground rules. We need your name and home city, and we reserve the right to use your letter (and our answer) both on our site and in the magazine. As we head into the weekend, we are preparing for the final round of review sessions for our next issue. This week we spent time with Simaudio's new Moon components, the i-1 amp and the CD-1 player. Pretty sweet, we thought, and refreshingly affordable. |
May 21st: Bad times for Bösendorfer |
Like many other high-end companies, Bösendorfer had its state-of-the-art showroom in Manhattan. Had? Yes, indeed. The Web site still announces the 5th anniversary party, but it will turn out to be a wake. It's not a surprise that the US economy is not in the best shape it has ever been in, and in bad times luxury products are what you cut back on. The Bösendorfer at left is an extra fancy one, decorated with hundreds of Swarowski crystals. Bösendorfer is also in the high end loudspeaker business, though that part of its activities had yet to catch fire.Indeed, this is not the first sign of trouble at the fabled German company. It wasn't the company itself that paid to set up the New York showroom, but Gerhard Feldmann, a concert technician and piano maker of international renown, along with Lisa Feldmann. When Bösendorfer was bought up by Yamaha, the partners hoped that the new owner would use the venue to develop the brand. Instead, Yamaha's CEO simply told them it was all over. “What is most disturbing to us" says Lisa Feldmann, "is that this vortex we have created for Bösendorfer in New York City, a vortex of global reach, is just being discarded – together with the network of new owners, artists and aficionados; but most importantly, the knowledge and vast experience of our technical department. What does this mean for the future of the Bösendorfer piano?” The loudspeakers, we assume, are history. |
May 20th: Busy with product reviews |
We've been busy the past few days...busy listening to products whose reviews will appear in our next magazine issue. Oh yes...and the photography for the issue is all done too. We spent quite a lot of time with the Harbeth HL5 loudspeakers, shown here. They're unlike most other speakers you may be familiar with. Instead of having thick, massive, rigid enclosures, theirs have light, thin walls. But go figure...we had a really good time with them. We'll let you know all the (delicious) details in the coming issue.We also spent time with the Off-Ramp from Steve Nugent's Empirical Audio. Like the Blue Circle Thingee already reviewed, The Off-Ramp is a device for connecting a computer to an audio system, at least one with a DAC. Could it be one more nail in the CD's coffin? Could be. And there will be one more nail too. The listening sessions continue Thursday, with a couple of products from Simaudio. That company is of course known for upscale products (we own five of them among our three reference systems), but these are different: an integrated amplifier and a CD player costing $1500 each. We're not talking Wal-Mart prices, obviously, but these are products you don't need huge amounts of imagination to dream about. |
May 2nd: Target stands at The Audiophile Store |
We've been busy adding new products to The Audiophile Store, our popular on-line and catalog shopping venue. As usual, the products at the store are ones we would recommend to our best friends. The latest: the Target MR24 speaker stand, as well as the slightly taller MR28. Long-time audiophiles will remember this hefty four-pillar stand as the R-4, which was once made in England and cost something like $800 a pair. It's down to $299 a pair now, for reasons that go beyond the country of manufacture. It now comes in a flat pack, much cheaper to ship, yet easy to assemble.The four pillars are hollow, and you add mass by pouring in kiln-dried sand, or whatever magic damping material you may prefer. But be careful, because once you do that they won't be so easy to move around anymore. You can find the two Target stands on our Miscellaneous Accessories page. There you'll also see what we consider to be the ultimate loudspeaker stand, the Foundation. It looks much like the target, but is made from the densest, most immovable material of any stand we know of. The price is more than four times higher, but it would be our choice for the very best speakers. That "miscellaneous" page, by the way, could almost be dubbed the "support" page. It also includes the two wall-mounted equipment tables from Target, the innovative Smarter Speaker Support for off-wall mounting, Superspikes, Tenderfeet, and the ever useful Audio-Tak. The only reason we haven't renamed it: our best-selling Super Antenna (for FM and TV) is also there. |
May 1st: Linking your computer to your stereo |
| It's widely believed that your future hi-fi audio source is not a CD player but your computer. We've written extensively about using a hard disc as a repository for music...and we don't mean lossy compressed music either. But the cheap sound card in your computer is not what will give you the best of computer-stored music. In UHF No. 82, we reviewed a Blue Circle product called the Thingee. Simple, inexpensive, and effective.  This neat device has its own (surprisingly good) DAC, two digital outputs (coaxial and balanced), and even a headphone jack. Just plug it into the USB connector of your computer, and in your computer's preference or setup panel, choose the Thingee for audio output.We gave the Thingee a warm review, and Blue Circle offered it to us for The Audiophile Store. We've accepted. The Thingee is just C$189.95, and is available now over on our digital page. High quality digital cables are available from the same page. |
April 22nd: Who misses vinyl? |
Apparently the members (and hangers-on, like us) of the Consumer Electronics Association do. CEA ran an Internet poll asking the question...well, you can see it in the illustration.
Even among these presumably savvy purveyors of the latest in electronic gadgets, the appeal of vinyl still resonates. Of course, CEA does say that the poll is not scientific, etc. |
April 19th: Turntables added to The Audiophile Boutique |
It was several years ago that we added a new division to our (very small) empire. We have of course The Audiophile Store, a section we set up 20 years ago to offer recordings and accessories (it began with one label). The Audiophile Boutique has a slightly different mission: it offers actual audio components, brand new but at clearance prices. That is where you can find, for example, the outstanding amplifiers and preamplifiers from Van den Hul. Now the boutique has a couple of turntables. They bear the Goldring brand, but they are designed and built by Rega. There are two of them, starting at $399. Yes, that's a complete price, with a Rega tone arm and the Goldring Elektra cartridge, whose own list price is $117 if you buy it by itself. The pages include links to two past UHF reviews, when the turntables cost far more.Although The Audiophile Boutique is a distinct division, it shares the shopping cart the other sections of UHF uses, so you can mix and match an order: with a turntable and some LPs to play on it, for example. |
April 16th: Preparing the next issue |
| We may as well admit it. We've been rather distracted of late by what befell us...or what fell on us: in early March, a major storm flattened our large garage and storage space. Yes, on top of a car and a few tens of thousands of dollars of stock. We got most of it out all right, and we may even have the car back by tomorrow. The structure is partly rebuilt, but there is some uncertainty concerning the outside. Did we mention that Château Hi-Fi is 160 years old and is in a historic area? We'll be sharing more (sad) pictures with you, but in the meantime we are busy laying out the next issue of UHF. Among the products to be reviewed will be the Harbeth HL5 speakers shown at right. They caused a bit of a buzz at the Montreal Festival, and we're looking forward to listening to them in our Omega reference system. Among other products liened up for review are the low-cost ($1500 each) CD player and amp from Simaudio. We'll have two products to help you get music intact from a computer hard disc to the audio components you've chosen so carefully. And we'll listen again to Aurum's impressive CDP player/preamplifier, which now has a couple of optional additions. One is a phono input, and the other is a headphone amplifier. That will come in handy, since we are also lending an ear to two expensive headphones. They're meant for such devices as iPods, but the maker claims far more ambitious specs. Should be fun. |
April 9th: Yet another HDTV technology? |
At the moment it's the liquid crystal display (LCD) that is selling big time. The LCD doesn't offer all the color and luminosity range you might wish for, but it's cheap, at least in smaller sizes. For upscale HDTV, there's plasma, and the best of those are really good. But what else is there? There's DLP, there's D-ILA, and (if only in our dreams) there's SED. But now Mitsubishi, not known as a major player in HDTV, is planning to launch another technology: the laser screen. This will be essentially a DLP screen, much like the ones it and Samsung build, but with a key difference. Instead of a tungsten bulb and a spinning color wheel, the display will use three lasers, in red, green and blue. The company says the screen will have brighter whites, blacker blacks, and be able to reproduce some 90% of the color gamut. That last figure is so much better than anything you can get with other technologies that you'd figure it has to be the future. The new technology will use two-thirds less energy than a plasma screen. What's not to like?Still, there are some skeptics. Red lasers are off-the-shelf components, but green and blue lasers are another matter (the laser used for Blu-ray and the late HD DVD is actually blue-violet). It's believed the green and blue are produced by a form of frequency doubling -- essentially using the harmonics of the main color rather than the color itself. The performance from a frequency-doubled laser may not be as good as claimed. Besides, aren't lasers dangerous for the eye? True, the screen surface will diffuse the light, but won't that cause the interference pattern known as speckling? We shall see. in the meantime, Mitsubishi has definitely grabbed our interest. |
April 5th: Covering the Montreal show |
We're spending four days (ending tomorrow) at Montreal's Festival Son et Image. You can drop by our daily coverage of the show by clicking here. We've always said that it's not a Montreal show if it doesn't snow, and...guess what! This is what we saw out the window Friday afternoon!But not to worry, it quickly melted, and sunshine is predicted for the days ahead. No, we don't have a room at the show, and we haven't had for three years now. But we do have a virtual room on the Internet. It will open through mid-April, and we're told there are bargains to be had. Come by and see us. |
April 4th: The top music store is now virtual |
| It was just last June that Apple's iTunes music store was the number three music retailer in the US. Number one was, as you might expect, Wal-Mart. No more, according to the NPD Group's MusicWatch project. The iTunes store has vaulted to first place, with 19% of music sales. Wal-Mart is now second, a position it is not used to occupying. Best Buy is third, and Amazon and Target share fourth spot. Here's the complete list, leaked by the Ars Technica Web site.  MusicWatch tracks the number of sales, not their dollar value. It also considers the sale of a single song at iTunes or other virtual retailer to be equivalent to one twelfth of an album. Whatever quibbles we might have with the MusicWatch methodology, we acknowledge that the trend is clear: the sale of music over the Internet is growing, and it is clearly the future. We have no problem with that, and indeed we predicted this in some detail some 15 years ago. But what troubled us then, and still does, is that on-line music sales consist almost entirely of compressed music. People don't know what they're missing. Our job -- and your assignment too should you wish to accept it -- is to let them know. |
April 1st: Montreal show opens Friday |
Yes, it's that time again, when audiophiles (and videophiles too) converge on Montreal for the large high end and video show called Le Festival Son et Image. The convergence will include us. As usual, we will be covering the show in detail right on our Web site. What's different this year? Well, check the Festival logo. Stereophile isn't holding its own show this year, and so is sponsoring this one. For all the other details, you can already check out our Festival preview. Daily reports, with words and pictures, will be posted at the end of each day.
UPDATE: As in previous years we have a virtual room (not) at the show. It's already open, with bargains in CDs, LPs and accessories, plus virtual visits to two of our reference systems. The room remains open through April 20th. Special prices may not be combined with other offers. And some items are available in limited quantities, with no rain checks available. Visit the Virtual Room by clicking here. |
March 31st: Hi-def via downloads? Yeah, right! |
| It was just over a month ago that Toshiba and its HD DVD partners cried "uncle," and the spoils of victory went to Blu-ray. Or did they? A number of observers weren't so sure. We all knew that the high-definition format war had gone on too long, hurting both formats. Was the winner, Sony's Blu-ray, going to die smiling on the field of battle, like William the Conqueror? Was the way now clear for downloadable video to be the real winner? In fact no, and events of the past few days have made that plain. There just isn't room for everyone to start downloading films even in imitation high-definition (which is the only option at the moment). As it is, the use of BitTorrent and other P2P (peer-to-peer) systems is squeezing the Internet, and the companies running the pipelines are squeezing back.  The story began in the US, where the huge Internet service provider Comcast has been "shaping" its bandwidth. That means it gives priority to certain services (such as services it markets itself, if you believe the critics) while throttling back service to customers who download large files. "Throttling back" sounds like slowing it down, though some irate customers claim it actually means "accidentally" dropping the connection altogether.Comcast says it will stop doing that by the end of the year, but check the action in Canada. Rogers is going beyond merely "shaping" its bandwidth, to limit service to those whom it considers bandwidth hogs. Customers with "unlimited" service plans will be limited after all, to a maximum of 95 Gb downloads a month even with the most expensive plan. Unlimited?. It seems you're unlimited as to how long you're hooked up, just as long as you don't actually use the Internet. In the meantime Bell, another major ISP, is using traffic shaping and makes no bones about it. But Bell resells service to individual ISPs, which have been claiming connection speeds that Bell will refuse to sustain. They're steaming mad. We'll be talking about this more as the story develops, but consider what brought this on. A lot of people are using the Net to download highly compressed, audio and video. So, do you really figure you can push the 30 Gb of a true high-definition movie through the increasingly squeezed pipeline? We figure Blu-ray has nothing to fear. |
March 22nd: Free PDF version of UHF 83 |
 It's the usual: though we have paid versions of the new issue of UHF Magazine, either print or electronic, we also have a free version. It's a PDF, and looks just like the complete version, except that not all of the articles are quite complete.As usual, it's interactive. Click on a title in the table of contents, and you are whisked to the article itself. Click on an ad, and if you are connected to the Internet you'll find yourself on the company Web site. To get it, go over to The Reading Room (whose page is shown here), and click on the thumbnail of the issue 83 cover. You can, of course, get the full PDF version from MagZee for $4.30 (anywhere in the world, all taxes included), or you can get the printed version by air mail from our order page. Copies will be on their way to subscribers Monday. |
March 21st: The electronic version of UHF 83 now available |
 The full electronic version of UHF 83 is now available to subscribers at MagZee (if you have a current subscription, you should have received an e-mail reminder). You can also buy the electronic issue, or subscribe. A single issue costs $4.30 (Canadian), with all taxes, if any, included. Viewing an issue requires Acrobat Reader (on either Windows or Mac OS X), plus a plug-in also available from MagZee.We are working on the free version of the issue, which as usual will be not quite complete, but will nonetheless have lots to read in it. At the start of the week, the renewal reminders will be in the mail, but you don't have to wait. You can renew right on line. Or of course you can subscribe. Last but hardly least, you can order the print issue, which will be mailed right out to you. As usual, there's no mailing charge. The distributor for Canada and the US got the issue Thursday, and copies will be on their way to regional distributors and then newsstands Monday. The issues for subscribers to the print issue will also go out Monday. |
March 20th: UHF 83 published, and the saga of the sagging garage |
 Actually it isn't just sagging. The roof fell in on it. The first victim is a Nissan Altima, which is probably mortally wounded (we'll know next week), but the rather large building is more than a garage, it is also one of UHF's storage areas. Some stock seems to have survived, but that is also something we will see about next week.In the meantime, UHF 83 arrived this morning, and is being prepared for mailing to subscribers. The electronic issue from MagZee should be on line tonight, and the free (but incomplete) PDF edition should arrive before the end of the long weekend. Speaking of the long weekend, we will be taking the whole four days off. Monday morning the electricians will be cutting off power to Château Hi-Fi in order to re-route the electrical entrance temporarily -- at the moment it goes through the garage wall. And on Wednesday, when the demolition crew arrives, there may be some interruptions in our telephone lines, brief we hope. We have more pictures, enough to depress us, but really depressing is that the insurance company has a clever exclusion clause (did you know that a garage is not a "dependence"?), and won't be paying. But then it's only money, right? |
March 17th: International shipping rates going up |
 It's been a long, long time since air mail was "five cents for the first ounce." Our mailing and shipping costs keep rising, but none as quickly as what Canada Post calls "international shipping rates," which is to say rates for countries other than Canada and the United States.There have been several cases recently in which we have shipped an inexpensive product to Europe or Latin America, and actually lost money. Hence the change, effective immediately. We are keeping the same calculated rates, based on a percentage of the product value, but there is now a floor price of $6 (Canadian). The floor price does not apply in Canada or the US, and it applies only to products from The Audiophile Store. It does not apply to subscriptions, magazines or books, none of which we charge shipping for. And of course it will affect only small orders. We hope you'll continue to consider our catalog to be a treasure house of products for the audiophile. |
March 13th: B&W goes mobile |
 Buying a new car? We mean a really upscale car. If you have your eye on a Jag XKR, for instance, you can get it equipped with what are billed as high end speakers from a familiar company: Bower & Wilkins. The engineers at B&W have worked with Ford's Jaguar division to figure out just the right place for 14 speakers.Is that a lot? Isn't it strange to see a high end audio company getting into car audio. The answers are respectively possibly and no. Anyone remember the James Bond Aston Martin with the Linn 12.1 channel system aboard? The 14 speakers include four metal-dome tweeters, nine Kevlar-diaphragm woofer and mid/bass units, including a solo front-center and rear-surround pair, and a single, rear-mounted subwoofer. Each amplifier channel is tailored to its respective speaker with digital signal processing. Did we forget to mention the 440 watts of amplifier power? Let's see, 440 watts divided by 12 volts equals 36.7 amperes. Ouch! |
March 12th: Target equipment tables at The Audiophile Store |
 Another interesting pair of products over at The Audiophile Store: Target wall tables. We first installed one of these when the magazine was young, and we quickly bought two more. We don't know of any other solution to vibration affecting your equipment. It's the perfect place for your turntable, CD player, preamp, etc. Black MDF shelves sitting on spikes.You can see then over at our Miscellaneous Accessories page. |
March 12th: New cables at The Audiophile Store |
This grew out of another of those blind test sessions for UHF No. 83: we listened to a new pair of cables from Atlas, called Mavros. This is the new top of the line. We had been disappointed by some expensive cables before, and not just those of Atlas, but not this time. Indeed, we liked the Mavros biwire-ready speaker cable so much we added it to our Alpha system. There is also a Mavros interconnect, which we have added too: it is between our phono stage and preamp in our Omega system.
Of course we do have access to Atlas cables, and we have added the two Mavros products to the cable page of our Audiophile Store. On that page you can also download the review in PDF form. |