High-End Audio

Does the average Joe Six-Pack reader of Car and Driver magazine ever think he's going to buy a Ferrari or Lamborghini? Probably not, so why are most car magazine covers graced with only the most exotic rides?

The New York Times readership may be an upscale group, but I doubt too many of them are buyers of $26,500 Hermes Sable-and-Crocodile Kelly Muffs or $23,155 Yves Saint Laurent sweaters embroidered by Lesage. Especially nowadays, shouldn't the Times (Sunday) Magazine be running lavish spreads of affordable clothes? No, that would be boring!

Let's face it, uber goods … Read more

Yeah, I get it, big displays garner oohs and aahs; but why are big speakers always portrayed as hideous things only an audiophile could love?

Thing is, tiny speakers cheat you out of more than half the experience. On a return-on-investment basis, home audio is more accurate than video. A 50-inch display may be sharp and clear, but it can't approach the majestic scale of a movie theater screen. A decent home theater sound system will blow away most movie theater systems.

How large is a large speaker? For the purpose of this blog, 20-inch high bookshelf speakers with … Read more

The Denon AH-D5000, Grado Labs GS-1000, and Ultrasone Edition 9 are all over-the-ear "circumaural" headphones, primarily intended for home use, but that didn't stop me from plugging them into my iPod.

With its lightweight magnesium frame, real mahogany wood earcups and oh-so soft leather ear pads, the Denon AH-D5000 is a real charmer. It's the most comfortable headphone I've ever used, and Its microfiber low-mass diaphragms deliver lightning-fast, detailed sound. Audiophile mavens who crave visceral mojo will go ga-ga over the AH-D5000. This headphone makes a lot of bass. It was equally accomplished with music and home theater.

For the home theater trials I checked out The Flight of the Phoenix DVD, and the plane crash scene fully exploited the headphones' dynamic prowess. The AH-D5000's detailed and airy treble kept my attention glued to the onscreen action.

Plugged into a 4GB iPod Nano rock was acceptable, but the Denon lacked conviction over the Nano. The even more expensive AH-D7000 wasn't yet available when I wrote this review, hope to get my hands on it soon.

John Grado's latest and greatest headphone is a break from his past designs. The retro, World War II "cans" look is gone. The GS-1000 is still unmistakably Grado, but with more contemporary styled, hand-crafted mahogany earcups with much larger foam ear pads. The headband is covered in real leather.

As much as I love Grado's sound, I've found previous generations Grado headphones' comfort level was below par. The GS-1000 is a vast improvement; the larger ear pad's pressure is low, and the headphones feel light on my head. … Read more

I've reviewed a gazillion speakers, and I can't remember more than a few dozen of them. They're just a string of big and little boxes; some sounded really nice, most were merely OK, and surprisingly few were truly awful.

Magnepan's speakers stand out from the crowd first because they're so thin, the MG 3.6/R is 1.5 inches thick, and standing 71 inches high, it's really tall. But it was the sound that blew me away. It's an incredibly clear, high-resolution sound, and sounds decidedly unspeakerlike. That's why it's the Audiophiliac's Speaker of the Year.

As I said in my Home Entertainment magazine review "That's why the MG 3.6/R will sound like a revelation to first-time listeners; the gap between the sound of real, live music and recorded music feels a whole lot smaller. The speaker projects a more full-bodied, three-dimensional soundstage than any box can; correction, the MG 3.6/R's sound was bigger and deeper than I've ever heard from a speaker retailing for less than $50,000. With the MG 3.6/R instruments and voices emerge closer to their real-life scale and size. Clearly, Magnepan engineers changed the way speakers move air."

Instead of the usual woofer and tweeter, the MG 3.6/R uses three "planar-magnetic" drivers: a 55-inch tall aluminum foil "ribbon" tweeter; a 199-square-inch 0.5-mil-thick Mylar midrange diaphragm; and a 500 square inch Mylar woofer. The speaker is essentially a panel that moves air, and projects sound from its front and rear surfaces. The drivers are Magnepan patented designs, all manufactured at the company's factory in White Bear Lake, Minnesota. American hi-fi at its best.… Read more

Let's face it, setting up a home theater with five speakers and a subwoofer is a hassle.

Home-theater-in-a-box systems ease the pain somewhat, but you still have to run wires to five speakers and a subwoofer. Single-speaker sound bar systems? Sure, they eliminate the tangle of wires, but they're just glorified stereo bars and never really sound all that good. You can get much better sound from a decent set of stereo speakers.

You could put together a much better sounding system with Integra's DSR-4.8 DVD/AV receiver ($600) and a nice pair of speakers and possibly a subwoofer. It's a stereo receiver with 50 watts per channel with a built-in DVD/DVD-Audio/SACD player; video connectivity includes a 1080p HDMI output, one HDMI input, and two composite inputs. (You can multiply the usefulness of that single HDMI input by adding an inexpensive HDMI switcher that multiplies the number of available outputs.)

Let's compare and contrast an Integra DSR-4.8 based system with Yamaha's YSP-4000 single-speaker surround system ($1,800). The Yamaha is self-powered so it doesn't need an AV receiver, but it doesn't make much bass. So, you'll need to add a subwoofer, like Yamaha's YST-FSW150 ($280) and a DVD or Blu-ray player.

Fifty watts may not seem like much, but Integra components sound pretty good; pair the DSR-4.8 with efficient speakers you'd get a big sound. Klipsch's RB-61 bookshelf speakers ($499/pair) would be ideal and make better and more powerful bass than the YSP-4000, so some of you won't have to get a sub. But if you're thinking about going whole hog, I like Klipsch's Sub-12 subwoofer ($500). That's all together a $1,600 MSRP system, so it's at least $500 less expensive than the Yamaha system.

The Integra/Klipsch system would be way, way more dynamic, with vastly greater clarity for movies and music (single-speaker systems never quite sound right for music). To be fair, the Yamaha big claim to fame is its ability to produce a facsimile of surround sound from the single speaker, and it's the best of its type (I've reviewed a ton of single-speaker surround systems for CNET--both units with built-in video connectivity and those without--so I should know). The Integra/Klipsch is strictly stereo, but it'll be really good stereo. Big and wide, with a great sense of depth and spatiality.… Read more

Times are tough, and even high-end speaker manufacturers are feeling the pinch.

Take Magico, for instance. Its soon to be released V2 speaker is $9,000 less expensive than the current entry-level model, the V3. The brand's probably most famous for its Mini II monitors that go for $29,600. The top of the range Ultimates run, gulp, $329,000! Don't worry, all prices are per pair.

The V2 is certainly built like a Magico; its got the solid aircraft grade aluminum front baffle attached to a 17-ply, vertically stacked Baltic Birch wood cabinet. The entire cabinet is … Read more

Listen, if you're buying speakers, the best thing to do is listen to them. If you can't, you'll learn a lot perusing specifications.

Online shoppers need the most info, but even brick-and-mortar buyers can predict quite a lot about a prospective speaker's performance and system compatibility by looking at the numbers. Tech talk gets you woozy? No problem, the main points of interest would be the dimensions of the speaker and how much the thing weighs.

Hint: bigger and heavier speakers almost always sound better than small, lightweight ones.

So far, so good, but woofer size also provides clues about how much bass a speaker will produce. Bigger woofers make more bass than smaller ones, but the cabinet's size is almost as important a factor as woofer size in determining bass quality/quantity. Multiple woofers may look impressive, but they're less reliable predictors of bass oomph; we've tested lots of skinny speakers with two, three, four, or more drivers that didn't make much bass. The cabinets were too damned small, four 3-inch woofers don't make as much bass as one 6-inch woofer in a larger box.

You might hope the frequency response specification, "38 Hertz -- 22,000 Hertz," would predict how much bass the speaker would make. The first part of that spec, "38 Hertz" refers to the bass output--the lower the number--the deeper the bass. Ah, but since there wasn't any reference to the tolerance of the spec, it's just about useless. Some manufacturers include a "+/-" after the frequency response number, something like 38 Hertz - 22,000 Hertz +/- 3 dB, and that helps a bit. Any speaker that reaches 50 Hz or lower can be considered "full range" and doesn't necessarily need to be partnered with a subwoofer--for music. Multichannel (5.1, 6.1, 7.1) home Theater applications almost always require subwoofers.

I have less to say about tweeters, other than to recommend buying speakers with tweeters; a fair number of pricey "sound bar" speakers are tweeterless. That's not to say they will sound bad, just not as detailed and clear as speakers with decent tweeters. … Read more

Sony's XDR-F1HD HD Radio has developed a real buzz among my audiophile pals; on second thought maybe buzz isn't the right word. It's the quietest, noise-free radio I've ever used.

These guys can be real snobs and only listen to ultra-high-end components, and some wouldn't be caught dead using mainstream gear with their hi-fis, and yet they're all going ga-ga over the Sony. We're all thinking it's too good to be true.

I originally heard about the Sony from Steven Stone, a writer friend, and then from an engineer at an American high-end audio company known for making awesome tuners that sell for thousands of dollars. The engineer was positively gushing about how good the XDR-F1HD is; not just that it sounded great, but also because it pulls in tough-to-receive analog stations with lower noise and distortion than tuners that sell for big bucks. You can read my full CNET review here.

I rushed right out and bought an XDR-F1HD from Amazon, and sure nuff, it's true, the little Sony is no baloney. Analog FM stations came in like gangbusters, clean as a whistle, and HD stations, like my favorite jazz station WBGO had "CD quality" sound. That phrase is tossed around a lot, but this time it's for real. I listened to WBGO with the Sony over my high-end system with Magnepan 3.6/R speakers, and the sound was amazing. It's day and night better than what I get from Sirius Satellite Radio, which is almost unlistenable over those speakers. … Read more

"Everything that can be invented has been invented." --Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. patent office, 1899.

This infamous quote has been bandied about forever, but let's try to apply it to our times. Sure, the old commissioner was off by a bunch of decades, but what's left to be invented in audio and video now?

Yes, there will be higher than high-definition video, HDMI 1.4, and speakers that sound like real life, but those are refinements of already existing technologies.

Perhaps we've hit an impasse and we're not going to see any really new products for a few decades. What will a 2012 Blu-ray player do that a 2008 player cannot? Oh right, there may not be any Blu-ray players by 2012, there may a new format by then. But what will it do that a 2008 Blu-ray player cannot?

How about an iPod small enough to be injected into your bloodstream? You would just think about a song or movie, and it would play back in your head.

Who knows, maybe by 2012 there will be wireless speakers that don't have any wires. But it might take until 2022 before someone figures out how to make totally wireless speakers that actually sound good. … Read more