Expertise

Contrast ratio vs black level
Tied together, but not the same importance.
The Connected Car: 2013 Edition
New in-dash receivers play nice with smartphones. Plus: Sync and MyLink app updates.
The "mad scientist" of Sony audio
The engineer who guides development of Sony audio electronics—right down to the choice of solder

What's New

Doing Superman Justice

The following is an uncut version of the interview with Richard Donner that ran as part of “Souped-Up Superman” in the June 2001 issue of /Sound & Vision/.
- By Josef Krebs
- Posted June 27, 2001
Besides Superman, director Richard Donner's films include the Lethal Weapon series, Scrooged, and The Omen.

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Beyond the Black Box

Off the Air (Originally published in: Sound & Vision, May 2001)
- By Michael Antonoff
- Posted June 13, 2001
Stroll through any large store that sells audio and video equipment, and it's mind-numbing how similar the products in each category look. If you close your eyes, point to any receiver or DVD player, and guess "black and boxy," you'll almost certainly be right.
Conventional wisdom dictates that there are good reasons why A/V design is so homogeneous.

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Quick Takes: Digisette Duo-Aria MP3 Player

Semi-Compatible Digisette Duo-Aria MP3 flash-memory player (Originally published in: Sound & Vision, May 2001)
- By Michael Antonoff
- Posted June 12, 2001
Backward-compatibility can come at the expense of innovation, as we learned from the failure of the Digital Compact Cassette in the early '90s. The DCC format enabled a new generation of hardware both to record digital tape cassettes and to play standard analog cassettes.

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The Setup: Speakers

What You Need to Know to Get the Most from Your Stereo, 5.1-Channel or 6.1-Channel System (Originally published in: Sound & Vision, May 2001)
- By Frank Doris
- Posted June 7, 2001
You probably already know that good speakers are essential to putting together a high-quality stereo or multichannel music system or home theater. You can invest several months' mortgage payments in first-rate audio/video components, but without good speakers you're simply not going to hear your system's full potential.

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The Skinny on the New Skinny

When it comes to flat panels at CES, thin is in! Check out our gallery of anorexic tellys, present and future.
- Posted January 9, 2001
How thin are the displays on display at this year's CES? They're so thin, you don't know whether to watch them, or fold them up and toss them like paper airplanes.

Most of these anorexic flat panels will be available some time in the future, though one model (Sony's XEL-1 OLED) can be bought right now.

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Land of the Giants
- Posted February 10, 2000
Test
CES 2008 (BROKEN)
- Posted February 1, 2000
S&V hit the 2008 Consumer Electronics Show in full force, reporting live from Las Vegas! Check out our archive of photos, news, and blog matter below . . .

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Get 6.1 Channels Now!
- By David Ranada
- Posted February 1, 1999
I felt as stupid as Dorothy must have felt near the end of The Wizard of Oz when Glinda, the Witch of the North, tells her that she always had the power to get back to Kansas.
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The Amp/Speaker Interface

Are your speakers turning your amplifier into a tone control?
- Posted June 4, 1991
This is a classic article from the June 1991 Stereo Review, one of the predecessors of Sound & Vision.
Click to read PDF.