John E. Johnson, Jr.

Home Theater Movie Renter’s Guide – August, 2010

John E. Johnson, Jr.

Brooklyn's Finest (Blu-ray), Unthinkable (Blu-ray), True Blood Season 2 (Blu-ray), Hot Tub Time Machine (Blu-ray), Jason and the Argonauts (Blu-ray), Big Trouble in Little China (Blu-ray), Jimmy Hollywood (Blu-ray), Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief (DVD), Black Narcissus (Blu-ray), The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad (Blu-ray), Greenberg (Blu-ray), The Breakfast Club (Blu-ray), Heroes Season 4 (Blu-ray), Henson's Place (DVD), Repo Men (Blu-ray), The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (Blu-ray), Battlestar Galactica: Season 3 (Blu-ray), Kick-Ass (Blu-ray)

Movie Reviews

Mystere ca21 Stereo Tube Preamplifier

John E. Johnson, Jr.

Following on our recent review of the Mystere pa21 stereo tube power amplifier, we now review the matching preamplifier, the ca21. It is a single gain stage design, with only one buffer and one capacitor in the signal path. It is as beautiful as its brother, and sounds great as well. Read on.

Preamplifiers

Burson HA-160 Headphone Amplifier

John E. Johnson, Jr.

While headphone amps are not in every audio enthusiast's system, they are still engineered with many of the same design choices as other more common components. One of the main choices to be made is whether to build a full featured but complicated component, or a simple, barebones component that has thrown all the nice but unnecessary features over the side. Burson Audio is an Australian company known for making the latter.

Headphone and Earphone Reviews

Screen Innovations Black Diamond II HD Front Projection Screen

John E. Johnson, Jr.

One of the major problems affecting those of us with projectors is the ambient room light that tends to desaturate colors of the images on the screen when we watch movies. Screen Innovations (SI) has designed a new material that helps solve this problem. It's called the Black Diamond II HD. The screen can be wall mounted, or ceiling mounted with or without motorized control.

The company also offers other types of screen material such as fabric that lets sound come through so you can place your speakers behind the screen.

Screens

Lamm LL1 Signature Stereo Tube Preamplifier – An Audiophile’s Dream

John E. Johnson, Jr.

Lamm introduces their LL1 Signature preamplifier, which is the partner to their ML3 Signature power amplifier. Both the LL1 and ML3 are cost-no-object products using only the finest parts that can be found anywhere in the world. The design is based on Vladimir Lamm's 50 year career in design of tube components that perform at the extreme limits of sonic perfection. The LL1 is a $43,000 four-chassis, 114 pound, state-of-the-art masterpiece.

Preamplifiers

Editorial: MP3 Music and Undersaturated Movies

John E. Johnson, Jr.

I received an interesting e-mail today, from a reader who was concerned about all the movies that have been released over the past few years with little to no color in the image.

I have been planning to write an editorial about why I think young consumers are into MP3 music and don't really care about the high quality of lossless digital music that the rest of us have been trying to get them to switch over to, or at least give it a listen.

Editor's DeskEditorial

Home Theater Movie Renter’s Guide – July, 2010

John E. Johnson, Jr.

Shutter Island (Blu-ray), The Book of Eli (Blu-ray), The Unborn (Blu-ray), Ladybugs (Blu-ray), The Man With No Name Trilogy - A Fistful of Dollars (Blu-ray), Darkman (Blu-ray), 12 Monkeys (Blu-ray),  The Man With No Name Trilogy - For A Few Dollars More (Blu-ray), Coach (DVD) , The Seventh Seal (Blu-ray) , Dog City: The Movie (DVD), The Man With No Name Trilogy - The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (Blu-ray), Green Zone (Blu-ray) , The Illusionist (Blu-ray)

Movie Reviews

Anthony Gallo Acoustics Reference Strada Speakers and TR3 Subwoofer

John E. Johnson, Jr.

Anthony Gallo Acoustics has been known for many years to make very unique, high performance loudspeakers that can deliver world-class performance at reasonable prices and in everyday rooms. I was so impressed with their Reference 3.1 speakers when I reviewed them in 2007 that I bought the review pair. In the past several months, Gallo has significantly upgraded their reference line. The Reference 3.1 has just been replaced with the much more expensive Reference 3.5, but a new speaker system has taken up a new position in the Gallo line at a price point very close to the old Reference 3.1.

Bookshelf Speakers

Mystere pa21 Stereo Tube Power Amplifier

John E. Johnson, Jr.

Durob Audio is a company in the Netherlands that markets PrimaLuna tubed audio components, including integrated amplifiers, power amplifiers, and a CD player that has a tube-based clock. It also has a discrete output stage with triodes running in pure Class A. Conventional CD players use op-amps in the output stage. Although the tube output stage and op-amp output stage sound different, one doesn't necessarily sound "better" than the other, although tubeophiles would all opt for the "better". We reviewed the PrimaLuna DiaLogue Two integrated amplifier in December, 2009.

With the introduction of Durob Audio's Mysterè line, we now review the Mysterè pa21, which is a 55 watt per channel stereo tube power amplifier. The Mysterè line goes beyond the PrimaLuna line with larger transformers, more power supply capacitance, and an auto-bias circuit that lets the consumer choose between using KT88's or EL34's as the output tubes.

Power Amplifiers

Kordz EVO, EVS, and EVX HDMI Cables

John E. Johnson, Jr.

HDMI cables have two basic issues that are somewhat different than with audio cables, namely that they tend to be much longer, and also, the HDMI connector has turned out not to be very robust. So, if the HDMI cable that came with your new HDTV or DVD player is not doing the job for you, Kordz makes cables that will deliver the goods under any conditions. We review here their pure copper model, the EVO, as well as the EVS which has a thin coating of pure silver, and the EVX, which has a thicker coating of silver.

Audio Cables

Home Theater Movie Renter’s Guide – June, 2010

John E. Johnson, Jr.

The Wolfman (Blu- ray), From Paris with Love (Blu-ray), The Edge (Blu-ray), Marked For Death (Blu-ray), Armageddon (Blu-ray), Do The Right Thing (Blu-ray), Invictus (Blu-ray), Alice in Wonderland (2010) (Blu-ray), Carlito's Way (Blu-ray), Edge of Darkness (Blu-ray), Saving Private Ryan (Blu-ray), Daybreakers (Blu-ray), Robin Hood: Men In Tights (Blu-ray), Tetro (Blu-ray), High Anxiety (Blu-ray), Dirty Dancing (Blu-ray), Elektra (Blu-ray), History of the World- Part 1 (Blu-ray), Wolverine and the X-Men (DVD), Heroes: Season 3 (Blu-ray), Battlestar Galactica- Season 2.0 (Blu-ray), Wizards of Waverly Place: The Movie (DVD), Dune (Blu-ray)

Movie Reviews

JVC GZ-HM550 High Definition Video Camera

John E. Johnson, Jr.

JVC's new GZ-HM550 has full 1920 x 1080 resolution, records up to 2 hours, 57 minutes in its highest quality mode, has a built-in 32 GB SD card, and is the smallest high definition video camera we have ever tested. At $799.95 MSRP, it will not only fit in your shirt pocket, but won't strain the wallet in your hip pocket.

Video Accessories Misc