Sound

Today's receivers are jam-packed with features, but the one thing they lack is power.

In fact, most $500 receivers never come close to delivering their rated power into all channels.

Some can barely manage a third of their claimed wattage. Right now, your 100 watt per channel receiver might be pumping out only 30 something watts.

People ask me about this stuff all the time--"Steve, Denon, Onkyo, Pioneer, Sony and Yamaha receivers all boast up to the nanosecond surround processing modes, connectivity options up the whazoo, and fancy shamncy remotes--so what exactly would a brawny multichannel amplifier get me?" My answer to these queries is always the same: "Just two things, the power and the glory."

The problem: Receivers, even big ticket, $2,000+ models can't spare enough internal real estate to house humongous transformers and hefty power supply capacitors--the compromises inevitably start there. Separate power amplifiers have room for all of that good stuff.

Enter Emotiva Audio's XPA 200 watt, five-channel amplifier ($799), 1,000 watts total. It's actually a lot more powerful than just double your average 100 watt per channel receiver; the XPA amplifier can deliver up to 350 watts to each of its five channels with four-ohm speaker loads. You'll look far and wide to find a receiver that can drive low-impedance speakers like a separate power amp can. And it'll cost a whole lot more than the Emotiva XPA will.

Oh, and please don't worry that the XPA is too powerful for your speakers. Too much power doesn't harm speakers, playing them too loud with an underpowered receiver is far more likely to do your speakers in. … Read more

I don't care how many people get their music online, it'll never replace the joys of perusing CDs and LPs in brick-and-mortar record stores.

My Morning Jacket's Jim James apparently agrees with me. He said recently, "I think the thing that people forget about is the community and the memories that are created when you come to an independent and locally owned record store that you can only get in that town."

That's right. There are other humans there, looking at and buying music. The store, if it's any good, plays great stuff … Read more

Rhino mastered the remastering game long ago; it seeks out the best sounding tapes, locates killer unreleased tracks, and spruces up the packaging. I must own a hundred Rhino CDs, and they're always in heavy rotation.

"The Sound of the Smiths" 45 track, best-of collection totally trumps the sound of my old Smiths "Louder Than Bombs" LP. The Smiths recordings tended to have thin, sometimes even harsh tonal balances. The new CD set corrects that. Morrissey's vocals are beautifully fleshed out, and the rhythm section now packs a wallop that lights up the music. The remastered CD even has better dynamic kick than the LP, which sounds compressed and lifeless by comparison.

There's no previously unreleased bonus tracks, but this two-disc collection's wealth of B-sides and live material should satisfy Smiths fans. The booklet's bevy of photos of the band are simply gorgeous.

"The Ry Cooder Anthology: The UFO has Landed" is another two-disc best-of collection. He somehow fuses Tex-Mex, rock, blues, country, folk, with a mess of other stuff in his music, but it all comes out sounding like Ry Cooder. It's a pleasure to hear music as good as this, mastered without the wretched compression that squashes the life out of so many contemporary recordings.

For "Warren Zevon: The Collector's Edition" Rhino refreshed the sonics of the original album, and there's a second disc of rarities. Disc one sounds splendid, again with more of LP-like analogness of the original recordings intact. Older Zevon CDs sound leaner, more ragged than this new remaster. But it's disc two's demos that present literally another side of Zevon's music. A solo piano take of "Mohammed's Radio" is reason enough to get this collection.

An early take of "Desperados Under the Eaves" feels more desperate than the one found on the album. I'm thrilled that it's included here. … Read more

Buying music or books online makes a lot of sense, but I'd draw the line at speakers.

Maybe there's no place close enough to go to for an in-store demo--a lot of shops closed their doors--precisely because too many people used their service to audition gear, and then bought online to get a lower price.

Nice, so now there are fewer places to hear speakers before you buy them. So even if you're reasonably happy with what you bought online you never had the luxury of comparing one speaker against another and picking the best of your choices. Good enough is good enough.

Over the past 30 years--16 as a high-end audio salesman and 14 as a paid audio reviewer--I've listened to thousands of speakers. My sales experience gave me a deep understanding of how all sorts of people, not just audiophiles, listen to and buy speakers.

Some buyers need to touch the speaker, get a sense of its build quality, and some buyers, even after reading a review, are surprised by the speaker's size or some other quality. It's one thing to read about a speaker or peruse its specifications, seeing and hearing it for yourself is so much better.

I draw upon those experiences when I review speakers, but I still can't predict how each reader will react to their sound. Everyone hears differently, and preferences are all over the place.

Some customers want lots of bass, some just want to play loud, or quietly, some care most abut stereo imaging. One guy plays dance music, another only opera. But most speaker shoppers can't articulate what they want from a speaker. That's the rub, and why reviews, even ones as well written as mine for CNET and magazines, may not be the best possible guide to the right speaker. … Read more

That's right--five speakers for $299--and we're not talking about one of those flyweight packages with itsy-bitsy speakers.

The Fluance SXHTB system features a pair of floor-standing tower speakers, a full-size center-channel speaker, and very decent two-way surround speakers. There's no subwoofer, but the Fluance towers make a lot more bass than tiny satellites, so some buyers won't need to add a sub. I reviewed this system for CNET in 2005, but it's still available.

I'm not claiming the system is a bona-fide giant killer or offers the sort of refined sound you'll find on much more expensive systems. But if you're on a limited budget and have the room for a full-size speaker set, the Fluance SXHTB's combination of credible sound quality and solid construction represent an amazing value.

The entire ensemble is finished in a durable natural beech vinyl wrap (the only finish option). The speakers' robust MDF wood construction cabinets are built to a high standard.

Standing 38.8 inches tall, the towers definitely qualify as full-size speakers, and each one weighs a hefty 33.4 pounds. Each tower's elegantly proportioned cabinet rests on an integrated base, which in turn features adjustable brass feet. The 15.8-wide center speaker is no less impressive, and the surround speakers, which also include bases, are wall-mountable. They're the babies of the package--just 8.8 inches high.

The towers feature dual 6.5-inch poly-coated woofers and a 1-inch silk-dome tweeter. The center channel speaker sports a pair of 4-inch poly-coated woofers and a 1-inch plastic tweeter, while the surround speakers include the same type of woofer and tweeter. All of the speakers are ported designs.… Read more

Some of today's DVD and Blu-ray soundtracks are so densely mixed that dialogue can be hard to understand.

When actors' lines are obscured by onscreen mayhem, you may miss important plot details. The dialogue intelligibility problem is even worse for people who are hard of hearing.

Here's a simple fix to improve intelligibility that also works like a charm for quiet, late-night movie watching.

Turn up the center channel volume level. Please understand, that's not the same thing as cranking up your receiver's volume control. Raising the center channel volume relative to the left/right and surround channels makes dialogue louder than the music and sound effects, so it's easier to understand what the actors are saying.

The easiest way to make the adjustment is with your receiver or home theater-in-a-box system's remote control. Check and see if your remote has a button marked "Channel Select." My Onkyo TX-SR805 receiver's remote has such a control, marked "CH SEL". It toggles through left, right, center, etc., and once I got to the center I used the "Level -" and "Level +" buttons to adjust the center channel volume.

Experiment to figure out how much louder you want the center channel speaker to be, but start with turning it up by three decibels. That might be enough, but don't hesitate to turn it up higher if that's what you need.

Of course, you can also use the CH SEL feature to boost subwoofer volume to taste whenever you switch movies or CDs. Or adjust the surround channels volume. … Read more

Well, not exactly weep, but while I was reviewing these incredible speakers an executive from a respected American speaker company dropped by my apartment. To say he was bowled over by the mighty Krells is an understatement; he couldn't take his eyes off them. Then he ran his fingers over the exquisitely machined metalwork and asked to play a couple of tunes. Talk about shock and awe; he said, "They're $65,000? [EXPLETIVE DELETED], they're really good!" I've never seen one manufacturer so visibly shaken by another's wares.

The Krell Modulari Duo Reference has that sort of effect on people. Even folks who couldn't care less about high-end audio "get" these speakers. The sound all but reaches out and grabs your most sensitive parts and shakes them. My full review is in Home Entertainment magazine. … Read more

Atlantic Technology's new 1400 SR-z speaker was designed with Dolby's Pro Logic IIz "height" surround processor in mind

The new speaker's compact size and shallow profile allow it to be unobtrusively mounted high on the wall above the system's front left and right main speakers. The 1400 SR-z sells for $425/pair MSRP.

The company claims that the 1400 SR-z's "voicing" and timbre will match all of Atlantic Technology's speaker systems.

Each 1400 SR-z uses a pair of 3.5-inch full-range polymer-treated cone drivers. The wedge-shaped speaker disperses sound laterally … Read more

Audiophiles are on a quest; we're always lusting after the perfect fill-in-the-blank (speaker, amplifier, turntable, CD player, etc).

Catch is, perfect gear wouldn't automatically make every recording sound life-like. At that point the gear wouldn't have a sound per-se; the recordings' sound would be laid bare.

I wrote "How high do you want your fi?" for the April 2009 issue of Stereophile magazine, and I'm still getting a wide range of feedback about that piece from readers and friends.

I'm defining a "perfect" hi-fi as one that's indistinguishable from the sound of live instruments. No hi-fi has ever fully recreated the sound of a symphony orchestra, jazz group, or rock 'n' roll band. Solo instruments fare better, i.e. guitars, flutes, and vocals; you can almost get a glimpse of their sounds over the best high-end systems. But a drum kit? Piano? No way!

Audio components are far from perfect, so it's no surprise their sounds aren't 100 percent convincing. As imperfect as the gear is, the recordings themselves are even further away from documenting the sound of vocals and instruments.

The age-old analog/digital divide is the least of it. The musicians do their thing, and then the microphones, their positions relative to the instruments, the skill and imagination of the engineer/producer/mastering team's use of equalization, compression, processing, etc., create the sound we hear.

Pop or rock music is rarely played by the complete band, with vocals, live in the studio. Out-of-tune singers and players are pitch-corrected, drummers' off-kilter rhythms are tweaked, there's not a lot of there there to reproduce. Most recordings are so heavily processed they could never sound real.… Read more