Home theater

How to make your speakers sound better than ever

Since most people listen to music on free earbuds, plastic computer speakers, or car audio systems, it's easy to understand why great-sounding new recordings are rare. Even so, exceptional ones sneak through from time to time, and when I have a stack of candidates, I cover the best new releases here.

"The Raconteurs: Live in Montreux 2008" (Blu-ray) The Raconteurs were formed in 2005 by Jack White of the White Stripes, but this show from 2008 has just been released. The band's ferocious performances sound great here in DTS Master Audio. I like the two Raconteurs … Read more

How to share your iTunes music library on a home network

The built-in sharing tools on iTunes make it easy to listen to a single library of music on several machines on your home or office network.

By tweaking a few settings through iTunes preference panes, you can control who can access your network, what they'll find there, and how your own remote listening habits can update your shared playlists and stats.

Traditional network sharing This was the first -- and at one time the only -- choice if you wanted to share your iTunes library. It's a simple one-click operation, with a few options that let you control … Read more

Tag your music files correctly with MusicBrainz Picard

Once your music library expands beyond a few thousand tracks, you're likely to find that some of those tracks have incorrect or missing information, like artist, album, year, genre, and so on. Sometimes this doesn't matter much, but if you are having a hard time searching or your obsessive side is dominant, MusicBrainz Picard can help you get your music files back in shape. Here's how to use it:

Download and install the application here for Linux, Mac, and Windows. Run Musicbrainz Picard. Add a folder containing music files. The application will also search subfolders, so if … Read more

How to ban the banner ads from Panasonic Smart TVs

When I reviewed the Panasonic TC-PVT50 series, I was annoyed to see that the latest software update caused a banner ad to appear for a few seconds whenever I turned on the TV. It disappeared quickly and only popped up upon power-on, but it was still obnoxious. The first thing I wondered was whether I could turn it off.

Happily, Panasonic built in a way to disable the advertising. It's a simple, albeit buried, menu command. Here it is in a nutshell.

Hit the main Menu button on the remote (not the "Internet" or "VieraCast" … Read more

Denon's awesome new headphones

I've always been a big fan of Denon receivers' sound quality, but now the company's really getting serious about headphones. Yes, it's made headphones for years, including some really nice ones, so I was unprepared for the radical rethinking of Denon's headphone line. I was treated to an advance preview of upcoming Denon, Marantz, and Boston Acoustics products on Tuesday in Mahwah, N.J.… Read more

Get more from your sound bar by using your TV as a switcher

Many sound bars offer a shockingly small number of inputs, with often just a single digital and analog audio input on the back to handle your gear. That's hardly enough for a modern home theater packed with a DVR, game console, Blu-ray player, and streaming-media box.

Luckily, you can get around your sound bar's limited selection of inputs by using your TV as a switcher. You'll be able to connect as many devices as your TV supports, and it will even simplify the input selection process.

Here's how to do it:… Read more

Onkyo to offer Dolby TrueHD 5.1 channel music downloads

At the end of May, Onkyo will start selling Dolby TrueHD 5.1-channel music downloads, first in Japan, and by the fall of this year worldwide. That's either a brave or foolhardy move.

Multichannel music formats -- starting with quadraphonic LPs and tapes in the early 1970s, DTS encoded surround CDs in the 1990s, and DVD Audio and SACD in the early 2000s -- have all suffered from a lack of consumer demand. Very, very few surround releases were initially recorded in surround; most rock and jazz titles are remixed from older stereo recordings. The Blu-ray format has now … Read more

Audiophiliac readers' favorite headphones, speakers, and receivers

Audiophiliac readers have strong opinions about the gear I cover in this blog, so last month I asked for Readers' Choice nominations in a variety of categories, including headphones, speakers, receivers, etc.. I've sorted through all the comments, and here's what I found: there's a wide range of gear you love, but it was in the headphone category where the clearest winners stood out.

The Klipsch Image S4 in-ear headphones were the single most popular product in the survey, you people really love 'em! Grado SR60, SR80, and SR225 full-size headphones also drew raves, and Koss' PortaPro … Read more

How to scrobble to Last.fm from iTunes, Spotify, and more

Long before Mark Zuckerberg dropped out of Harvard to found Facebook, Last.fm allowed music fans to keep an online record of the music they had been listening to in all sorts of music players, including iTunes, Winamp, and more. Last.fm's feature for this is called "scrobbling," based on the fact that it had acquired a company called AudioScrobbler in order to add it.

Now, Facebook does pretty much the same thing (except for with iTunes). All you have to do to send your playback history to your Facebook Timeline is use your Facebook identity to … Read more