sound

What's New

Are 24-Bit Downloads Good for Digital Music?

Will the rumored shift to high-resolution 24-bit downloads make for a difference you can hear?
- By Brent Butterworth
- Posted February 24, 2011
- 7
The Internet has come alive with cheers of audiophiles and jeers of audiophobes since CNN.com reported unconfirmed rumors that download services such as iTunes and Amazon MP3 would soon begin offering music files with 24-bit resolution.

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Review: So-Na-Wall SonaPod Speakers

These little pods make your home theater sound a lot bigger.
- By Brent Butterworth
- Posted September 30, 2010
A home theater can sound great, but there's a certain excitement that comes with watching a movie in a large theater packed with giant professional speakers. The sound is just bigger — more like what we expect movies to sound like.

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Test Report: Definitive Technology Mythos XTR-50 Speakers

Surprising depth of sound from strikingly skinny on-wall speakers.
- By Brent Butterworth
- Posted August 31, 2010
I don't know who said, "You can never be too rich or too thin," but it wasn't a speaker engineer. Thinness is the enemy of good sound because in order to produce sound, a diaphragm of some sort has to move back and forth. The lower the frequency of sound, the farther back and forth that diaphragm has to move.

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Review: B&W P5 Headphones

B&W's new headphones are aimed at the business class crowd.
- By Michael Trei
- Posted August 9, 2010
- 2
With its enviable reputation for creating speakers that push the technological envelope, you might expect a company like B&W to burst on to the headphone market with an all-out effort that aims to rewrite the rulebook.

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Inside Dolby Surround 7.1

This new sound format is intended for commercial cinemas-but it may benefit home theaters even more.
- By Brent Butterworth
- Posted August 4, 2010
- 1
Just when you think they're all done adding more channels to sound systems, they add a couple more. The June 18 premiere of Toy Story 3 also marked the premiere of Dolby Surround 7.1, a technology that allows a commercial cinema to add two additional channels of sound to the 5.1 channels they already have.

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Review: Micromega AirStream WM-10

CD-quality performance from a iTunes streaming solution.
- By Daniel Kumin
- Posted July 9, 2010
It has long been axiomatic that Apple changed the world forever when it unveiled the iTunes online Music Store.

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