range

Having spent time behind the steering wheels of the BMW X6 M, the Porsche Cayenne Turbo, the Infiniti FX50S, and the Range Rover Sport, I was fairly certain that I could predict the outcome of Autocar's drag race between the four sporty SUVs (is that a bit redundant?). And for the most part, I was right. I won't spoil the ending for you, but I can't help but to think that the outcome would be decidedly different and much more interesting if this race where held off-road! I mean, these are SUVs after all.

Place your bets … Read more

Every year product life cycles in the consumer marketplace grow ever shorter and we see ever faster turnover in cameras, phones computers, and so on. On the audio side, the latest and greatest receivers become yesterday's news faster than you can say "HDMI 1.4." It seems like no receiver can stay current for more than a year or so.

Speaker companies show a little more restraint and "refresh" their lines every few years, but even then new models rarely demonstrate actual performance improvements over the previous generations' models. Speaker manufacturer Magnepan doesn't play by those rules; it invests years of development in each of its models before introducing a new speaker. It has to sound better--a lot better--than the outgoing model before it's released to the world.

And not just in the opinion of the designers. New-model Magnepans undergo extensive "blind" listening tests with a wide range of audiophile and non-audiophile listeners (the listeners don't know whether they're hearing the old or new model). The new speaker must consistently score better than the old model before it goes into production.

When I first heard the Magneplanar 1.6 back in 2008 I said it was the best under-$2,000 speaker on the market. Incredibly enough it was 10 years old at the time! The Magneplanar 1.6 has stayed in production for 12 years, but now it's about to be replaced with the new Magneplanar 1.7.

Magnepan, based in White Bear Lake, Minn., builds nothing but panel (boxless) speakers. Not only that, Magnepan designs forgo conventional dome tweeters and cone-type woofers. As I pointed out in my August 14, 2008, blog that's why the company's Magneplanar 1.6 speaker mostly avoids sounding like a speaker. The speaker earned the top position in my Top 10 greatest audiophile speakers blog earlier this year.

The new Magneplanar 1.7 is also a flat-panel design, 64.5 inches tall and a mere 2 inches thick! The new speaker looks a little more contemporary, thanks to its aluminum, wrap-around edge molding. The old model was a two-way design, with a 48-inch-tall aluminum ribbon tweeter and a 442-square-inch mid/bass panel. The Magneplanar 1.7 is a three-way design, with a woofer, tweeter, and super-tweeter. The super-tweeter comes in around 10,000 hertz and is said to produce wider dispersion and better-resolved treble than the Magneplanar 1.6 did.

The other big difference is the Magneplanar 1.7 is a "full-range" ribbon design.… Read more

Plugging in your electric vehicle, or extended-range hybrid, may soon be a thing of the past. Evatran is developing a "hands-free" proximity charging system with the engineering team from Colorado company Syncroness.

The idea is to pull up to the Plugless Power system and get your car recharged. Evatran has a short animation depicting the process. The company will not have a product available until fall 2010, according to a press release.

This week, we've been taking a look at some of 2010's biggest gas-guzzlers. Not surprisingly, this list has been chock full of utility vehicles, and today's blog chalks up yet another entry for Land Rover. Yesterday, we got a look-see at the 2010 LR4, and our newest inductee into the Low Mileage Hall of Fame is the Land Rover Range Rover Sport (which also wins another award for the most redundant vehicle name ever). The LRRRS boasts average gas mileage of 12 mpg in the city and 17 mpg on the highway--not god awful, but certainly nothing … Read more

The U.S. Army is testing a new diesel hybrid vehicle called the Clandestine Extended Range Vehicle (CERV) designed for quick-paced special operations-type missions such as reconnaissance, surveillance, and targeting--all the while conserving fuel.

The vehicle was developed jointly by Quantum Fuel Systems Technologies Worldwide and the U.S. Army's Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center (TARDEC) National Automotive Center, with funding support through the U.S. Special Operations Command.

The CERV pairs the Quantum's new "Q-Force" advanced all-wheel-drive diesel hybrid electric power train with a light-weight chassis to produce a torque rating that exceeds … Read more

During this time of year, I'm never quite sure if I believe the various clocks scattered around my house. The alarm clock says one thing, the computer says another, the cell phone another, and the television can't agree with anything. It is of course, all part of this 'spring forward, fall back' messing with the clocks tradition we have, but at times, I just want one timepiece to stand up and assert itself. And then I saw this range hood.

The Ora from Barriviera is a kitchen range hood that Flavor Flav would be proud to call his … Read more

Suzuki is an automaker that we don't hear too much from in the U.S. However, when we do hear from it--such as with the two SX4s we've tested--we generally like what it has to say. So when we got word that a plug-in hybrid version of one of the smallest Suzukis, the Swift, would be on display at the 2009 Tokyo Motor Show, our interest was piqued.

The Suzuki Swift plug-in hybrid can be classified as a series gas-electric hybrid or an extended-range electric vehicle, depending on who you ask. The front wheels are turned by … Read more

Want to give your cooking some street cred? Spice up your kitchen with the 48-inch Residential Nova Burner (RNB) stove from BlueStar Cooking Equipment. Available in red (and 190 other colors) BlueStar's 22,000 BTUs of cooking power is the highest powered open burner on the residential market.

Not enough to impress your crew? Maybe they'll reconsider when they hear it's being used on season two of The Next Iron Chef, starting this Sunday on the Food Network.

For lighter cooking, the home chef will appreciate the 130-degree simmer burner, perfect for ensuring your delicate sauces don'… Read more

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