Too many jacks?
Today's receivers are so jam-packed with features they can be a hassle to set up and use. Even entry-level models boast features that flagship models from even just five years ago never had.
Is that a good thing? No manufacturer offers a receiver that's dead simple to use, sounds great, and has adequate connectivity to hook up a cable box, Blu-ray player, and one or two other sources.
Do you base your buying decision on the features lineup? Does the one with the most features win? Does your receiver really need to be THX Ultra2 Plus-certified, with four or more 1080p HDMI compatible inputs, and have Internet radio streaming, Pandora, Rhapsody, Sirius Internet Radio, Dolby TrueHD, Dolby PLIIz, Dolby Volume, DTS Master Audio, Audyssey DSX surround processing, Audyssey MultEQ, Dynamic EQ and Dynamic Volume, iPod-dock-ready--plus front and rear USB inputs?
Sure, it's tempting to go for more rather than less stuff, but at what point does the technology interfere with actually using the thing? And no matter how much stuff is in there, next year's models will have more. Have you used even half of the features your receiver has right now?
Can you slog through the hassles of "auto" setup, or even manual setup? Or do you even try? Today's receivers are incredibly sophisticated devices, so getting them to just do the basics--playing a CD or a movie--can be a trial. Or it worked yesterday, but now, even with the correct input selected, you're not getting what you wanted.
So would a receiver with fewer, but easier-to-use features be an attractive alternative? Or do I have this all wrong and you want even more stuff in your next receiver?
If you have any horror stories about receiver setup or just getting the damn thing to play, please share them in the Comments section below.
Sure, you can probably score a better price buying audio gear online, and it's certainly easier, but is it a smart way to go? I don't think so.
First, buying hi-fi without listening to it is a bad idea. Smart buyers compare one product to another, it's simply the best way to learn what your choices are. Granted, it's not the same as hearing speakers in your own room, but at least you're hearing them in comparison to each other under the same conditions.
An Innovative Audio listening room in New York City.
(Credit: Steve Guttenberg)Online reviews, including the ones I write for CNET and print magazines offer my opinions about sound. But reviews by me or anyone else can't predict about how, say a speaker, works with a receiver that's similar to yours. I have no idea about your specific needs, your room size, acoustics, taste in music, etc.
Use my reviews as a starting point and then try and listen for yourself.
User reviews? Hey, I make my living writing audio reviews and my opinions are drawn from my experiences with literally thousands of audio products. I can point you in the right direction, but at the end of the day, its your ears and your money. Buy what you like; just make sure you've heard it.
A good salesperson can offer sound advice based on your specific needs. That's a huge advantage online sales outlets can't duplicate. Yes, finding the right store or salesperson can take time, but that's true for doctors, lawyers, plumbers, and contractors, but once you've found a good one, their advice and council can be a huge asset. If you're spending $500 or more for speakers or a receiver try to make the effort to hear the thing. A successful salesperson has lots of happy customers, there's no other way to be successful. I sold audio for 16 years, I know from where I speak.
... Read more
The rarely photographed Harry Pearson.
(Credit: Steve Guttenberg)Harry Pearson, who coined the term "high end," spoke at the Rocky Mountain Audio Fest 2009, held last week in Denver. "High end" has long since spread to cars, cameras, jewelry, real estate, boats, and a gazillion other categories, but audio is where it all started.
Pearson's magazine The Absolute Sound, The High End Journal, and J. Gordon Holt's Stereophile magazine created an audiophile community.
Starting in 1973, Pearson's flamboyant writing style and deep love of gear and music helped prod the state of the art forward through the 1980s. The Absolute Sound's tiny circulation and sporadic publishing schedule didn't hurt its prestige and importance in the industry. A rave review, especially by Pearson, could put a start-up company on the map.
Pearson made people curious about, well, the absolute sound. That is, the sound of musicians and vocalists, recorded in an appropriate acoustic space. We all wanted a hi-fi system good enough to put us in that space. That's impossible, but the goal, reproducing the absolute sound, still drives at least some audiophiles.
... Read more
Compression squeezes the life out of music!
Dynamic range compression isn't new, it's been used by recording, mixing, and mastering engineers for many decades. A little bit of compression is fine, but over-compression can sound downright ugly. Most of today's music, whether it's on LP, CD, the radio or iTunes is over-compressed. Most remastered CDs are over-compressed.
Before we go any further, I'm not referring to the lossy compression used in MP3s, or lossless compression used in Apple Lossless. They've got their own set of problems, but dynamic range compression is a very different predicament.
To the casual listener compression can sound "good," mostly because it makes the music seem louder and punchier, and once music's natural soft-loud dynamic shifts are squashed flat music is easier to hear in noisy environments like cars or over iPods. Compression reduces the need to adjust playback volume--because it's always nearly the same volume--loud.
Engineers worry that if they don't compress their recordings the music would seem too soft and low. That is, if a music listener went from really loud, compressed music to quieter, uncompressed music they probably wouldn't like uncompressed music--unless they turned it up! That way they would hear the music's natural soft-loud dynamics.
Unfortunately, that's not an acceptable scenario to most engineers or record labels. They're addicted to over-compression, it's a hard habit to break.
But the unnatural onslaught of compressed sound obliterates musical nuance, delicacy and emotional power. Compression's loud-all-the-time nature sucks the life out of music.
Here's a great video that demonstrates the evils of compression.
... Read more
What a mess!
(Credit: Gateway)The Gateway KAS-203 home-theater-in-a-box was an exercise in poor design.
I gave it a 5 rating, the lowest CNET score I've ever "awarded" any product I've reviewed. I'll get to the best HTIBs in the next Audiophiliac.
I liked the Euro style receiver/DVD player and the powered subwoofer, but as soon as I heard the KAS-203 it sounded so bad I thought it was broken. A second KAS-203 sounded identical to the first one, so I concluded the first KAS-203 was representative of what people were buying in stores.
On paper at least Gateway's KAS series home theater systems stood out in a field crowded with chintzy, plastic designs. The KAS speaker package featured a bevy of interesting ideas and a subwoofer designed by Hsu Research, a high-value company known for its exemplary subs. The receiver/DVD player boasted the build quality and looks of a serious component, but slipshod engineering and substandard quality control resulted in the most poorly executed $699 HTIB ever.
The sound of the four 5.75 inch tall sats were bolstered by a large center speaker, 16.75 inches wide, 9 deep, and 5.25 high. Rounding out the system was a 17 inch tall, 100 watt powered subwoofer. The entire sub/sat system came in a black ash finish, definitely a step up from the standard sliver plastic HTIB fare.
... Read more
I bought a ticket and was ready to go to Woodstock; however, my ride chickened out and I missed the seminal musical event of the 1960s.
The thing is, over the course of those three days in August 1969, I, even a 20-year-old, was glad I missed it.
Sure, three days of peace and music sounds nice, but Woodstock was an instant media legend. Granted, great bands were there by the helicopter load; but the sound, as best as I could tell, was awful for the crowd gathered. Unlike today's high-powered concert sound systems that can easily play sound loud enough to cause hearing loss, the Woodstock system was probably pretty low intensity volumewise. Then again, I'm sure most of the 500,000 Woodstock Nation attendees were grooving under their own power.
That, combined with the rain, mud, and less than stellar lavatories would have made me pretty miserable.
I bought the "Woodstock: Music from the original Soundtrack" LP when it came out, and I saw the film--in 70mm in Manhattan. For me, those were a lot better than being there. I listened to the best music of the three days and didn't have to endure the rest of ordeal.
Think about it: The edited, perfected versions of the event are the ways most folks have experienced Woodstock. Most people were either too young to go in the first place, and most boomers, like myself, didn't get there. For us, Woodstock is the movie or music.
I just wonder for those who were there, have the movie and soundtrack albums replaced their memories of the actual event? There seems to be an endless stream of Woodstock titles coming out.
... Read more
Jackson's flick sure to be "bad?"
Bring out your dead: a Michael Jackson movie is in the works.
I'm just amazed it took this long to surface. Details are sketchy, but there are murmurs of a $60 million deal with Columbia Pictures to make the movie using video of Jackson rehearsing for his "This Is It" concerts in London.
The film, possibly in 3D, will be assembled from hundreds of hours of rehearsal and behind-the-scenes footage. So sure, expect lots of "extras" on Blu-ray. I'm sure the film will make oodles of cash, but that's par for the course for dead stars.
The dead rock star thing started on February 3, 1959, when a plane crash near Clear Lake, Iowa, killed three first-generation rock musicians: Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J. P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson. It was "The Day the Music Died," but the dead-star business really kicked into high gear when Elvis Presley died of an overdose in 1977. The King was dead, but his career was in great shape.
He's been one of the top earners on dead celebrities lists for decades. In 2007, 40 years after his death, Presley-related products pulled in $49 million. Kurt Cobain and John Lennon are also strong "performers." But Jackson looks likely to top this year's list.
Dying is a great way to kick a lagging career into pure profit mode. And it's so easy, just dredge up "lost" tapes and live performances that were deemed sub par while the artist was alive, and devout fans devour them.
... Read more
This is one pair of Ultimates!
(Credit: Transmission Audio)High-end audio prices are getting crazy lately, but this $1,000,000 speaker--the Ultimate--may be the most expensive speaker in the world.
Please understand that $1 million buys one speaker, so you'll need to shell out $2 million for stereo, and at least $5 million for your Ultimate home theater.
The Ultimate is a rather large speaker--each one consists of six, seven-foot tall panels. Each Ultimate houses a total of forty 15-inch subwoofers, twenty-four 8-inch woofers, and massive arrays of 2-inch wide and 1-inch wide ribbon tweeters. All of this is for a single channel/speaker, double those numbers for stereo! A pair of Ultimates are nearly forty feet wide!
That pretty much rules out my chances of getting the Ultimate for review in my Brooklyn apartment, oh well.
Each Ultimate speaker comes with its own power amplifiers, with an output of 31,000 watts, and the manufacturer claims the Ultimate can generate up to 146dB SPL, that's a lot louder than a jet plane taking off. And just because it can play that loud, doesn't mean it has to. Just because a Ferrari can go 200 mph, doesn't mean it can't cruise at 55.
... Read more
The Audiophiliac with a high-end Klipsch speaker.
(Credit: Steve Guttenberg)CNET Poll
I know what's wrong with high-end audio: it's a secret.
Unlike high-end cars, watches, clothing, etc., 99 percent of potential high-end audio buyers are completely unaware of its existence. It's interesting, car magazines regularly plaster shots of cars that only a miniscule number of readers could ever buy, apparently because guys who drive Dodge Caravans love to read about Ferraris. Even the New York Times runs fawning features about the glories of exotic cars and not a peep about high-end audio.
High-end audio magazines and Web sites are only read by folks already in the game; the Audiophiliac's primary mission is bringing awareness of the better stuff to the wider world.
Sure, a lot of high-end audio is silly expensive, but there's a lot of good stuff that's fairly affordable. And the price of entry plummets when you buy used gear on eBay or Audiogon. Chances are your five year old Sony receiver is nearly worthless, so it may actually cost more to own than a high-end amplifier that you can use for decades.
When you factor in just how long a great set of speakers or electronics can last, it's easier to swallow the investment. A good friend is still using a Linn LP-12 turntable he bought more than 30 years ago. If you really love music, don't you want to hear it sound as good as it can?
Let us know by voting.
There are lots of very expensive parts inside this high-end CD player
(Credit: Steve Guttenberg)We've all read those blogs that "reveal" the parts cost of a fill-in-the-blank, Kindle, iPod, or Palm Pre. If you ask me, this simplistic, by-the-numbers gambit overlooks most of the costs of bringing a product to market.
First and foremost, products, all products, are priced to what the market will pay. I don't care if it's a 16-ounce bottle of Poland Spring water, Coldplay concert tickets, or a Ferrari 599 GTB Fiorano, retail prices are determined by what the market will pay. And luxury products have higher profit margins than mass market stuff. Oh really?
But the mindless rash of blogs that purport to add up the parts costs, for example $39.51 for the display, $15.96 for 8 gigabytes of flash memory, $15.41 for components, and $12.39 for the 3-megapixel camera, to calculate the cost of anything are hugely misleading. The writer merely subtracts the parts cost from the retail price and concludes the difference is the "profit."
Does the writer assume the company's factory doesn't pay rent or for electricity or heating and air conditioning? And that the factory labor force works for free?
These articles completely ignore other costs, such as research and development and engineering expenses associated with creating say, a Kindle. Manufacturers also pay significant licensing fees for technology used in their products.
Shipping costs of large products such as flat-screen TVs must be factored in before determining the final cost to the consumer.
Oh, and what about the online or brick and mortar retailer? They have their own set of expenses for rent and employees. Some of whom might need health insurance.
... Read more
