home theater magazine

The greatest audio and video products of the 20th century

It's hard to imagine now, but there was a time when audio and video products were introduced that were so revolutionary that their impact was felt literally decades after their introduction.

Take the JBL L100 Century. It was the first speaker I fell in love with. Its brilliant orange "waffle" foam grille and white 12-inch woofer looked so cool in the early 1970s when the competition's speakers were all drab brown boxes with boring cloth grilles. The JBL was the ultimate "rock" speaker of the era, so my Hendrix and Led Zeppelin LPs never … Read more

For really deep bass, you need a real subwoofer

There are a number of terrific small subwoofers on the market, but all of the best subs are big. The little ones can certainly make bass, but the quality and quantity of the larger subs' deep bass is considerably better. You can literally feel the difference -- deep bass is as much felt as it is heard.

I remember the impact a big sub made when I reviewed the Outlaw LFM-1 (now upgraded to the LFM-1 Plus, $549). The LFM-1 weighs 58 pounds and measures 21.75 inches tall, 15 inches wide, and a whopping 22 inches deep. It had … Read more

With AV receivers is sound quality more important than features?

A couple of years ago I wrote a blog post about AV receiver feature glut. Today's receiver manufacturers put an inordinate amount of time and money into designing feature-laden receivers, and feature glut might be part of the reason why today's receivers don't sound as good as receivers did in the 1980s. I get it, today's consumers rarely compare one receiver's sound with another receiver, but they can count HDMI connections, so that's where the money goes.

It's not that Denon, Onkyo, Pioneer, Sony, and Yamaha aren't trying to make great-sounding receivers, … Read more

Hi-fi vs. home theater speakers; what's the difference?

A lot of people think good sound is good sound, but music and movies have very different requirements. Starting with home theater, remember that today's films have nearly unlimited soft-to-loud dynamic range; dialogue is mixed to the center channel; surround effects may be ambient or point-sourced; and deep bass demands can be extreme. Just about every feature film released over the last 20 years has a multichannel soundtrack.

How different is music? Let me count the ways: an exceedingly small number of new music recordings are available in multichannel sound; stereo rules in the music world; most, probably 99 … Read more

A bona fide high-end home theater speaker system that won't break the bank

A few months ago I had the pleasure of reviewing GoldenEar Technology's least expensive home theater system. The SuperCinema 3 ($1,750) comes with five small satellite speakers and a smallish subwoofer, but the sound was big and beautiful. More than that, the sound was distinctly high-end in its flavor. It was easy to tell it was designed primarily for home theater, but for those buyers who also have a hankering for audiophile-quality sound.

Home Theater magazine's Darryl Wilkinson recently reviewed a large GoldenEar system, the TritonCinema Two, which retails for $3,495. The five-piece system consists of … Read more

Buying a home theater system? Read this book

Keeping up to date with home theater technology isn't easy, buyers need all the help they can get.

Mark Fleischmann covers LCD, OLED, plasma displays, LED backlighting, DLP projection, 3D TV, AV receivers, speakers, connectivity issues, and the never-ending blizzard of features in his recently revised book, "Practical Home Theater: A Guide to Audio and Video Systems" (268 pages, $19.95). It's chock full of useful information.

Do HDMI connections confound you? Fleischmann delves deep into the continuously evolving "standard," from the original 1.0 version all the way up to version 1.4. THX certification is another one of those barely understood terms used in reviews, the book gets you up to speed on what THX certification entails. All of the various Dolby and DTS surround schemes are explained. There's a wealth of information about VCRs; right, some people still watch video tapes! The chapters on home theater setup and troubleshooting are excellent. … Read more

Shock and awe: A $6 million home theater

If your typical high-end home theater with rows of plush seats, velvet wallpaper, and popcorn machines offers Cadillac levels of performance and luxury, then Jeremy Kipnis' $6 million ultimate home theater is more like a fire-breathing Ferrari 599 GTB Fiorano, the fastest production Ferrari ever built.

This home theater is all about aggressively advancing the state of the art of picture and sound presentation. Yes, it's comfortable and beautiful, but its prime directive is a quest for the very best. Nothing, and I mean nothing, is overlooked. Kipnis won't settle for second best. … Read more

Sunfire CRM-2 Cinema Ribbon: The biggest sounding tiny speaker you can buy

Nowadays it seems like everybody wants tiny speakers. Catch is, most small speakers sound small--they squash dynamic range, can't play at all loud, and produce a lot more distortion than large speakers. I've always been frustrated by the sound of really tiny speakers--until I reviewed Sunfire's CRM-2 satellite ($800 each) in the May, 2007 issue of Home Theater magazine .

With its grille removed you notice something unusual: the CRM-2's front baffle is almost completely covered by a 6-inch "ribbon" tweeter (essentially a lightweight aluminum foil, suspended between neodymium magnets). The ribbon's ultra-low moving … Read more