Susan Johnson

Music Reviews – March, 2009

Jason Victor Serinus

This is fantastic stuff. Play the first track, Horace Silver's “Strollin',” and you're immediately catapulted into the bebop past, where movies are as black and white as the album cover. Mostly recorded on April 30, 2001, during the Jarrett/Peacock/DeJohnette Trio's historic gig in Metropolitan Festival Hall in Tokyo, pianist Keith Jarrett, double bassist Gary Peacock, and drummer Jack DeJohnette are in swinging form. Listen to them cut loose for nine minutes on Charlie Parker's “Scrapple from the Apple.” The occasional verbal exclamations are hardly gratuitous â€" these boys are flying. Presumably they were just high on life.

CD Music Reviews

Onkyo TX-SR706 7.1 A/V Receiver

Matthew Abel

At $899, the Onkyo TX-SR706 is Onkyo's least expensive THX certified model and an interesting product within Onkyo's range of receivers. It is the lowest priced receiver in Onkyo's line-up that offers all the features I want in a receiver including HDMI 1.3 inputs, HD audio processing, Audyssey room equalization and pre-amp outputs. With its solid feature set and reasonable price, I was excited to see how the TX-SR706 would perform.

Receivers

Theta Generation VIII Series 2 Digital-to-Analog Converter/Preamp

Jason Victor Serinus

Many moons ago, in March 2003, Secrets published one of the first reviews of Theta's then state-of-the-art two-channel DAC/preamp, the Generation VIII (aka Gen. VIII). Close to six years later, after umpteen advances in digital chip technology, Theta has released a significant, Series 2 upgrade to the original Gen. VIII. The upgrade, which can either be easily installed at home or purchased as part of a new unit, renders such significant improvements to the sound as to demand a new review.

DACs

Toshiba XD-E500 DVD Player – Benchmark

Brian Alvarez and Adrian Wittenberg

I can remember a time when Toshiba offered entry level DVD players and also high dollar flagship models like the SD-9200. As DVD players became a commodity Toshiba logically focused on mainstream consumer players much like the XD-E500 reviewed here.  The XD-E500 is a main stream DVD player priced at $99.99 and offering the features a player of this price offers. This includes the obvious DVD playback, the almost universal support amongst new DVD players for DivX playback, Mp3 and WMA.

DVD Players

Aperion Audio Intimus 6T-DB Hybrid XD 5.1 Speaker System

Chris Heinonen

When I was just getting started in hi-fi back in college, going to look for a new piece of equipment was both exciting, and annoying. Venturing out with a collection of CD's to evaluate speakers at different shops would often lead to two results: salespeople that would totally ignore me based on my perceived age and income, or salespeople that would try to steer me away from the speakers I could reasonable afford to something far more expensive. In those rare cases that I found a store with a salesperson that actually respected that I wanted a nice set of speakers but did have limited funds and tried to help, I would return there later as my finanaces allowed.

Surround Sound Speaker Systems

Focal XS 2.1 iPod Amplified Speaker Dock

Andrew Yang

The past seven years has seen rapid proliferation of the iPod dock market. Unfortunately, while many of the products have succeeded in following the Apple aesthetic, rarely is there substance behind the flash. Is the entry by Focal merely more eye candy or is there something more compelling? The XS 2.1 distinguishes itself by offering something beyond your typical iPod speaker dock.

Portable Audio

Sunfire Cinema Ribbon CRM-2 Bookshelf Speakers

Greg Mahoney

When I first heard about the Sunfire Cinema Ribbons, I was very intrigued with the product, as I own the 6' tall Carver Amazing Platinum IVs that are the acoustic benchmark the diminutive 8" tall Sunfire Cinema Ribbons are supposed to mimic. I have kept the Amazing Platinum IVs these last 19 years because I have not found a pair of stereo speakers under $10K that will outperform them in the areas of resolution, sound staging, bandwidth, and the ability to play at elevated levels with an extremely low level of distortion. The Cinema Ribbons use the same ribbon length as found in the Carver Amazings, and fold it so that it fits into a bookshelf size. How do they compare? Read Greg Mahoney's review and be enlightened.

Bookshelf Speakers

CES 2009 The Rest of The Story-New Updates!

Secrets Team

Builder's Showcase Home featuring Paradigm and other vendors just added......

More from Piero Gabucci.......

Another CES has come and gone. Although attendance was down, some would say that the people who did come really had business to conduct and that the quality of meetings being conducted was of a higher caliber for all manufacturers.

The primary buzz at the show centered on HDTV and the advent of 240 Hz refresh rates from all the majors, Sony, LG, Toshiba and Samsung in their new LCD and plasma sets. The 240 Hz refresh rate is demonstrable in the ability to produce a picture that is clearer and more defined when fast motion objects and very detailed still frames such as a test pattern are panned across the screen. Samsung had an excellent display of three monitors comparing 60, 120 and 240 Hz refresh rates and it is clear this technology works.

Show Reports, Film Festivals and Concerts

CES 2009 Day One

Cynthia Johnson

So I guess I jumped the gun when I said CES was packed. (For my personal taste, more then 5 people in a room is enough) It was only packed according to who had the latest model of whatever was on display. CES 2009 will definitely show lower numbers of attendees than in the past. But one thing is for sure. Home Theater and the latest electronics have a niche in the economy.

We are taking a different approach on our CES 2009 Show Report. We have asked our team to spend their time on overall impressions of the developments in hometheater and audio technology, take pictures along the way, and identify the best products for our review team over the next few months.

Show Reports, Film Festivals and Concerts

DVDO Edge Video Processor

Ofer LaOr

Many years ago, CRT projector owners had an annoying problem, if they increased their projection area, scan lines would become visible. The idea of line doubling – duplicating the number of lines to avoid the empty spaces between the scan lines became the first consumer video processing technique available. Since all of our video sources at the time were video, but were originally film – Yvves Faroudja introduced the world to the concept of 3:2 pulldown de-interlacing. De-interlacers were able to double lines but effectively turned the image into a progressive one – a single image that contained data from both interlaced fields at once. Many video processors have come to market since that time to improve on this basic technology, adding many more features than simply de-interlacing. Anchor Bay Technologies has produced numerous processors over the years, and the DVDO Edge is their latest model. It is priced at only $799. Ofer LaOr dissects this new processor and gives us his views on its performance.

Video Processors

Holiday Music Reviews – December, 2008

Jason Victor Serinus

Gloom is banished with this delightful collection of Leroy Anderson's holiday music. While some dismiss the American composer's achievements as second-rate, there's no question that classics such as “Sleigh Ride” and “Suite of Carols for Brass Choir” speak with irresistible color and sonority.

CD Music Reviews