Secrets of Home Theater and High Fidelity Home Page

Show Report

CEDIA 2003

Page 2

	This projector even has an anamorphic lens, like a commercial theater, because the display chip is 4:3.
Harman Kardon has released a slew of new receivers. They also have a new look with silver as a base color, a classy black face, and a soft blue light from within the volume control. The newest feature to be included in this line is the addition of Dolby Headphone, something that is long overdue from receivers.
	Immersive Technologies never stops with new products. Shown here is the Virtuoso an HD2 DLP projector with a 16:9 native aspect ration and a 1280x720 native resolution. The projector come pre-calibrated for a color temperature of 6500K and includes Faroudja DCDi processing. Immersive was also showing some other impressive products like a combination Video processor, DVD-V, DVD-Audio, SACD player and a Receiver (yes a receiver) with some of the most advanced video processing ever put in a surround processing unit.
Induction Dynamics veneer is unique. Notice the soft dome midrange driver, which is becoming more popular in speaker designs.
	Here are a couple of Induction Dynamics subwoofers. Both the SWC1 and SWC2 shown here have two drivers mounted in a push-pull configuration.
Ceiling mount is the way to go for digital projectors, even though they are small enough to sit on a coffee table.
	Onkyo's Integra line introduced a couple of new THX Select receivers the DTR-8.4 and DTR-7.4. The new receivers have video processing on board and support Netune.
JVC's new three-chip D-ILA projector is sold only by installers.
	JVC showed a new THX Ultra2 receiver. While I have not heard this unit it looks to be will built, and I am sure THX put it through its paces before they allowed it to go to market.
Almost every manufacturer has adopted the RS232 control. Here is a Kenwood receiver and Sirus radio system being controlled by a Crestron unit.
	Krix loudspeakers were showing off some very nicely finished Brix2 (left) and Equinox (right) models.
Krix has also released some in-wall speakers. It seems everyone is producing in-wall speakers these days. We just need to find some reviewers willing to cut their walls up, so we can see how good they all are.
	Being a tube fan, I would love to have a couple of these in my house. It is an 845/300B tubed monoblock from Marantz that retails for $25,000.
Marantz had quite a display of all their classic products from the last 60 years or so for everyone to take a look at. You can see some of this classic look in Marantz's new high-end two-channel equipment.
	Marantz is keeping up with the competition with the release of several new lower end receivers. You can see here that even their SR-6400 supports RS232. Marantz also included headphone surround like Harman Kardon in its new lineup. Marantz chose SRS over Dolby for the headphone surround in these units and hopefully we will have a review on one in the next few months to let you know how they sound. Headphone surround is not meant to replace 5.1 speakers, but is for listening to surround sound late at night when the kids are asleep.
Mark Levinson showed their new surround processor and video processor. They also had a Lexus with a nice sounding Mark Levinson car stereo system in it.
	There were blue UV meters all over the show floor at the McIntosh booth. This is McIntosh's new MC252 power amplifier with 250 watts a channel into 2,4, or 8 ohms with less than 0.005% distortion. In mono the amp will deliver 500 watts into a 16, 8, 4, 2, or 1 ohm load.
McIntosh also showed off its new C45 audio control center designed for the music lover who plans on spending most of their time listening to SACDs and DVD-Audio discs. The C45 has 2-6 channel inputs and is optimized for audio performance including short signal paths and tone control defeats.
	Meridian displayed its new more affordable line of audio equipment. Shown here is the G68 surround processor. Notice how white chassis and rounded corners is the hot look this year.
As always, Meridian is one company that will allow you to have your equipment in any color of the rainbow, and now not just the speakers but the components as well.
	Mirage released their Incognita line of in-wall speakers. This includes changeable crossovers for mounting in different locations like near boundary walls or corners.
This gives an excellent view of the Mirage in-wall speakers from behind. The white mounting brackets are a patented design that increase the rigidity of the surrounding wall to improve sound. Alex from Mirage showed me some other devices that ship with their in-wall speakers to stiffen the surrounding drywall and remove buzzes and vibrations from the existing structure.
	Here is something we never thought we would see. M&K has released a ported full range speaker. They assure us it come with foam plugs for the ports so you can still have that nice smooth 80 Hz roll-off.
Shown here is the Home Theater Master MX-3000 remote control. If you are used to playing games on your X-Box or PS2, this should feel very comfortable in terms of use. It can control up to 255 devices and is a combo IR/RF remote. It also has a 65K color screen.
	Have you seen . . .
. . .enough projectors yet? Look at the lens on this thing.
	Nordost is releasing three new power cables at the end of September, 2003. They include the Shiva which will retail for $300, the Vishnu which will retail for $600, and the Valhalla at $2500, all for a two meter length. The two lower end cables have propagation speeds of 81% of the speed of light, and the Valhalla has a speed of 91% of the speed of light.
The Valkyrja speaker cables shown here were a big hit with our Director of Marketing Cynthia. She felt these purple cables would really add to the sound quality of her home system. I am not sure if she was aware at the time they list for $2800.

About Secrets

Terms and Conditions of Use

Advontemedia