October 2011

Cover Story

Cover Story:

October | Issue #6

Roundup: Super Soundbars

How much fidelity can you cram into the smallest possible space? We see who does the most with the least.

By Ken C. Pohlmann
Posted September 21, 2011
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For many years, the mantra in hi-fi design was “bigger is better.” Your system didn’t measure up unless you had a lofty stack of electronics and your speakers were tall enough to be called towers. Today, the reverse is true. It’s a post-iPod world, where smaller is cooler. » Read Full Story

Review: Arcam FMJ AVR400 A/V Receiver

Sound quality first, foremost, and forever.

By Daniel Kumin
Posted September 20, 2011

Once, all you needed to enter the receiver business was audio-engineering chops, competence in packaging efficiency, and a sharp pencil over the bottom line. That was then — before the digital audio/video revolution and the birth of the A/V receiver as we know it. Today, you need at least as much smartsin the computer, DSP, and software/firmware fieldsas you do in plain ol’ audio, a fact that has thinned,and continues to thin, the herd of receiver makers noticeably.

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Tested: RSL Speaker Systems 5.1 Theater System

The SoCal speaker kings are back — and performing above their size and price point once again

By Daniel Kumin
Posted September 20, 2011
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RSL Speaker Systems is the current manifestation of Rogersound Labs, a SoCal company that goes back a few years — 30 or so, in fact. Like many speaker makers, RSL got its start through garage tinkering, in this case by Howard Rodgers, owner of a well-known retail chain of the same name. (How the “d” got dropped from the company name is a story for another day.)

Despite a long, successful run, the original RSL, again like many other speaker companies, eventually faded away. But after regaining rights to the company name just last year, the firm was reincarnated after a long hiatus by its founder and his family.

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Review: BG Radia's Supersized Surround System

Some of the finest movie sound you'll hear outside a movie theater

By Brent Butterworth
Posted September 20, 2011

The speaker world is anything but conservative. Think of the different types you can buy: good ol’ cones ’n’ domes, electrostatics, planar magnetics, ribbons, horns, pulsating spheres, and more, mounted in all sorts of enclosures or in no enclosures at all.

The world of custom home theater is less daring. Installers want speaker systems that sound great, play loud as hell for hours on end, place reasonable demands on amplifiers, and install easily. This is why you rarely see anything but cone ’n’ dome speakers used in custom home theaters.

Of the companies catering to the custom market, BG Radia is one of the few that does things differently.

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Review: Panasonic TC-P55VT30 3D Plasma HDTV

An evolution in performance — and style.

By Al Griffin
Posted September 20, 2011
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While Panasonic plasmas traditionally excel on the picture-quality front, they’ve lagged a bit behind other flat-panel TVs when it comes to style. Take last year’s VT25 series. The picture on those sets was hard to fault (the 50-incher we reviewed won our 2010 Video Product of the Year award), but when positioned alongside new, ultra-slim plasmas from companies like Samsung, the Panasonic’s 3-inch panel depth and thick gloss-black bezel rendered it caveman-like by comparison.

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Review: LG 50PZ950 3D Plasma HDTV

A Kuro challenger? Maybe — but it is one of the best TVs going.

By Geoffrey Morrison
Posted September 20, 2011
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For a time, there was Kuro, and Kuro was king. Kuro made other TVs envious of its awesomeness. Then. . . there was no Kuro. TV reviewers wept; everyone else bought LCDs. Under-intelligenced “pundits” foretold the end of plasma TVs — but Panasonic, Samsung, and LG quietly coughed and politely said, “Umm, we still make plasmas.”

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