Cambridge Audio has come up with a product that has wowed everyone: the DacMagic. For $479, you get a DAC that is fully differential (a stereo DAC on each of the two channels), upsampling to 24/192, very low specified distortion, and selectable output filters. Does it perform as claimed? Read our review to see for yourself.
Underworld: Rise of the Lycans (Blu-ray), Direct Contact (Blu-ray), Ronin (Blu-ray), Defiance (Blu-ray), Confessions of a Shopaholic (Blu-ray), The Code (Blu-ray)
Welcome to the Secrets May 2009 Newsletter. Recently, I had to one of my reference two-channel preamplifiers, a Balanced Audio Technology VK-5i to a different room for a certain project.
Seven Pounds (Blu-ray), Doubt (Blu-ray), Incendiary (Blu-ray), The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (Blu-ray), Taken (Blu-ray), The Matrix 10th Anniversary Edition (Blu-ray), Driven to Kill (Blu-ray), The Uninvited (Blu-ray)
ButtKicker has been making tactile transducers (shakers) for several years now. These are devices that make your chair, couch, or floor vibrate when low frequency material is playing. They were always very powerful, and in fact, more intense than many consumers wanted. You could always just turn down the volume, but then, you were paying for high power shaking that you were not using. So, ButtKicker decided to produce a shaker that is smaller, with less maximum shaking potential, and include a smaller amplifier. The BK-KIT-4 is the result.
The Wrestler (Blu-ray), Slumdog Millionaire (Blu-ray), Marley & Me (Blu-ray), The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008) (Blu-ray), Valkyrie (SD DVD), Frost/Nixon (Blu-ray), Punisher: War Zone (Blu-ray), Sin City (Blu-ray), What Doesn't Kill You (Blu-ray)
Earthquake Sound, renown for powerful subwoofers, unleashes their Supernova MKVI, with its 15" driver, 15" passive radiator, and 600 watt amplifier. It will produce 110 dB at 15 Hz, and has low distortion. And did I mention it is in a not so huge enclosure?
There are plenty of iPod Docks out there for you to plug in your iPod and listen to your music using speakers instead of earphones. Some of them are very inexpensive and others somewhat more, but what sets the Earthquake Sound iQuake IQ-52B apart from the rest are its sound quality and features. Read our review to see how flexible this little package really is.
The Midnight Meat Train (Blu-ray), Donnie Darko (Blu-ray), Milk (Blu-ray), What Just Happened (Blu-ray), Australia (Blu-ray), JCVD (Blu-ray), In the Electric Mist (Blu-ray), The Robe (Blu-ray), Transporter 3 (Blu-ray), Quantum of Solace (Blu-ray)
UPDATED November 16, 2009 - We have all noticed the proliferation of media servers on the market over the past several years. The problem is, they are quite expensive, usually in the thousands of dollars, and some in the tens of thousands. Well, finally, there are some products that will let you play your music in any of those rooms you want, by ripping your CDs to a music directory on your PC and using a wireless "Streamer" in the room where you want to listen to them. There are several music streamers on the market, including Squeezebox, which has several models. Their newest entry is the Squeezebox Duet, which is the subject of this review.
Please take a particular look at the end of the review where I updated my opinion about this product on November 16, 2009.
Hancock (Blu-ray), Swing Vote (Blu-ray), The Bourne Trilogy (Blu-ray), The Express (The Ernie Davis Story) (Blu-ray), King Kong (2005) (Blu-ray), Universal Soldier (Blu-ray), My Best Friend's Girl (Blu-ray), Max Payne (Blu-ray), Saw V (Blu-ray), Space Buddies (Blu-ray), Bangkok Dangerous (Blu-ray), Righteous Kill (Blu-ray), Dexter: The First Season (Blu-ray)
Everyone would like a "good deal" in the world of audio, but there's usually a lot of skepticism involved because of the tendency for such products to be made with cheaper components and outsourced labor.
Welcome to the Secrets December 2008 Newsletter. In reading our reviews that contain bench tests, you may have noticed in the past that we usually had a large number of graphs.
Kung Fu Panda (Blu-ray), Mama Mia (Blu-ray), Event Horizon (Blu-ray), The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) (Blu-ray), Serenity (Blu-ray), The Cheetah Girls: One World (Blu-ray), The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (Blu-ray), Burn After Reading (Blu-ray), The Duchess (Blu-ray), The Dark Knight (Blu-ray)
Editor-in-Chief Emeritus. John E. Johnson, Jr. founded Secrets of Home Theater and High Fidelity in 1994, shortly after publishing a hardcopy book of the same title. He served as Editor-in-Chief of Secrets of Home Theater and High Fidelity until 2022. John has been involved in audio and video for more than 50 years, having built radio transmitters, amplifiers, turntables, and speakers from scratch. He was also one of the founders of the Northern California Audio Video Association, now The Bay Area Audio Society.
John holds four university degrees, including a Ph.D. in Neuroscience, and has published numerous scientific books, along with dozens of scientific articles on biomedical research topics as well as imaging technology. He was the founder and Editor-in-Chief of two medical/scientific journals for 20 years. John holds several patents, including one on high resolution image analysis and one on a surgical instrument. He has been affiliated with NASA, The National Institutes of Health, The Johns Hopkins University, Stanford Research Institute, and The University of California at Berkeley. He is President of the consulting firm Scientific Design and Information, Inc., which is based in Redwood City, California.
John resides in the San Francisco Bay area with his wife and multiple kitties! His daughter, Cynthia, who was an integral part of SECRETS for many years, resides in San Francisco.
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