Sonos Roam Portable Wireless Speaker

Roam on the Range

Bluesound Pulse Sub+ Subwoofer

Out of Sight Sound What’s the one thing lacking in even the best soundbar? If you said “deep, realistic, room-filling, floor-pounding bass,” then you are absolutely correct.

Evolution of the App

The introduction of the iPhone in 2007—or, more specifically, Apple opening its App Store to third-party developers in 2008—turned out to be one of the most consequential developments ever to hit the home automation market.

Got Livestream If You Want It

A year into the pandemic, the improved quality of livestream concerts is helping to bridge the gap between artists and their socially distanced fans.

A Mighty Mini

Mankind has steadily sought to produce more and deeper bass from smaller and smaller enclosures ever since the first Neolithic audiophile blew through a conch shell and thought, “Damn, I wish this thing went lower, louder!”

TV TRENDS OF CES 2021

THE ANNUAL CES trade show put on by the Consumer Technology Association was an “all-digital” event for 2021. On the plus side, that allowed us to report on the show from the comfort of our homes dressed in hoodies and sweatpants instead of suits.

Mini-LED Made Affordable

IN LATE 2019, TCL flew me to the company’s U.S. offices in California to spend an afternoon with its new flagship, the 75Q825 8-Series Roku LCD Ultra HDTV, a 75-inch 4K model.

Monolith by Monoprice M-TWE True Wireless Earbuds

Noise Cancellation Customized Monoprice is an affordable direct-to-consumer brand, and its Monolith product line features sophisticated A/V gear including speakers, amps, surround sound processors, and now the new Monolith M-TWE earbuds.

The End of Analog

Q Over the years, I’ve discovered that sound and vision are two distinct camps in the home theater realm, and it’s best to keep them separated due to constantly changing video formats.

HEADPHONES AT CES 2021

Once upon a time, CES was a huge show for audio but those days are long gone and showed no signs of returning in the virtual world that was CES 2021, with one possible exception: wireless headphones, a category that has made incredible strides in just the past year or so.

Control Central

ANY NEW surround sound processor circa-2021 is bound to have a heap of demands placed upon it. Along with support for the latest immersive audio formats—Dolby Atmos, DTS:X, etc.—there’s music streaming, Auto EQ/room correction, and HDMI video switching of the latest 4K/ high dynamic range video formats.

How Napoleon Bonaparte Invented the Compact Disc

You can admit it. You are intrigued. Of course, it can’t be true. But is it purely nonsensical? Is it a “pigs can fly” kind of declaration? Or is there someway, somehow, a grain of truth in it? And if that’s the case, how on earth could you conceivably connect the dots between the Little Corporal and the Compact Disc?

Bass is the Place

AS SOMEONE who appreciates the benefit deep bass brings to music and movie soundtracks, I’ve come to accept that having a box the size of a small refrigerator in my living room is a reality of life I need to contend with.

The World Of Raised By Wolves

A behind-the-scenes look at director Ridley’s Scott’s HBO Max sci-fi series

Headphones

Headphones

Wireless Speakers

Wireless Speakers

Subwoofers

Subwoofers

Extras

Extras

The Rolling Stones: Goats Head Soup Super Deluxe Edition

Show of hands, please—how many of you rate August 1973’s Goats Head Soup as your favorite Rolling Stones album? Anyone? No? Can’t say I blame you.

Home electronics – Buy Once, Cry Once

PART 2. In my previous column (Buy Once, Cry Once), I considered areas in your A/V budget where you should consider splurging when building a system. The categories I listed—projection screens, amplifiers, speakers—are ones that can provide years of enjoyment, but don’t see regular or major upgrades. I also covered categories like subwoofers that have a real impact on a system’s overall performance, and ones like pre-wiring that can strongly affect a system’s future serviceability.

Supersized TV

Remember the rear-projection TV (RPTV)? RPTVs were big, boxy contraptions housing a projector that beamed an image at the rear of a screen mounted on the set’s front surface.

Fractured Fairy Tales

Okay, children! Time for a bedtime story! Once upon a time, there was a little girl named Goldilocks. While walking through the forest, she came upon a quaint little village. In that village, there were three ways to watch movies.

The Sound of Silver

THERE ARE quite literally hundreds of small, two-way loudspeakers you can buy priced from under $100 to well north of $10,000 per pair.

Qello Hooray

Qello seeks to corner the market on streaming concerts and music documentaries. Do they have enough diverse material in their coffers to satisfy our consumptive hunger for content?

New Bronze Age

BRITAIN-BASED Monitor Audio offers a wide range of loudspeakers at prices spanning from the bargain basement up to the penthouse that are cleverly named for a variety of metals: Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze.

Class-D-elightful

Whether you fall into the “all well-designed amps sound the same when used within their limits” camp or the “amp selection is critical” army of true believers, it’s arguable that prior to the turn of the millennium amps designed for high-performance audio had fallen into a rut.

The Next Generation

The big car companies refresh their lineups on a pretty regular schedule. Honda, for example, brings out all-new versions of its models every four to five years, and it makes smaller upgrades and improvements in the years between the big changes.

John Lennon Reimagined

The Making of Gimme Some Truth. The Ultimate Mixes

The 300 Spartans - Ultra HD Blu-ray

Inspired by the 1962 Cinemascope epic The 300 Spartans that he saw as a lad, writer/artist Frank Miller would go on to create the five-issue graphic novel 300, a wildly stylized, heavily fictionalized account of the Battle of Thermopylae.

Meet the New Boss

VPL-VW885ES, a 4K LCOS projector with a laser light engine