Archives: A/V

Theta Carmen DVD Player

Hi-Fi News 9/2000 and posted in Reviews - Digital Sources, A/V

Bless Theta’s sense of humour. By naming one player ‘Miles’ and another ‘Pearl’, the company showed how to appeal to a wide cross-section of customers and music tastes. The former could have been named for, say, Miles Davis or Buddy … Continue reading →

Natural Born Kessler: Surround Sound Matters

Home Entertainment 11/1995 and posted in Columns, A/V

So all is well in Surround-Sound Land, eh? For once, the home entertainment merchants have standardised, right? Not. Huh? Isn’t the world of home cinema already and emphatically Dolby-Surrounded? Stop and smell the matrices, or at least look at the … Continue reading →

Hi-Fi News Back Page – Multi-Channel

Hi-Fi News & Record Review 4/2001 and posted in Hi-Fi, Columns, A/V

To demonstrate that multi-channel sucks for pure music, just pull out any studio albums mastered for the original 4-channel formats, circa-1970. You and I know that this is fraudulent, though, because those recordings have the same validity relative to modern … Continue reading →

Boston VR12 Center Channel Speaker Review

Sound & Image and posted in Miscellaneous, Hi-Fi, Reviews - Loudspeakers, A/V

Still wary of this industry’s THX sermonizing, I’m at a loss to explain but happy about the proliferation of center-channel speakers that are something other than horizontally-mounted versions of a given manufacturer’s main left-and-right speakers. Weren’t we told time and … Continue reading →