Samsung BD-D5500 Blu-ray Player

Chris Heinonen

At the CEDIA Expo last fall, the big push for everyone was 3D and online connectivity. We all knew that 3D was going to be everywhere, but also, everyone seemed to have an iPhone or Android Application, and was trying to offer as much online content to the user as possible. Samsung's new BD-D5500 is 3D-capable, and does a pretty good job with regular Blu-ray movies as well, all for less than $200.

Blu-ray Players

Supernatural 18″ Divine Crash Cymbal

John E. Johnson, Jr.

Supernatural Cymbals is one of several small companies that have emerged during the past few years, who are based in Turkey, and who still make cymbals the way they have been made for centuries (except for the electric motor that turns the lathing machine). The cymbals start out as cast bronze discs, which are heated, rolled, cut into the desired diameter for the cymbal, hand hammered, and hand lathed. There is no machining at all. The results are quite distinguishable from machine hammered and lathed cymbals. It is not that one way is better than the other, but rather, you now have several additional choices in sound, and some of them are due to the old world ways of producing them. This review covers the Supernatural 18" Divine Crash. It has a very fast response, and somewhat higher pitch than the Supernatural Universal Crash Cymbal we reviewed a few weeks ago.

Cymbals

An Interview with French Countertenor Philippe Jaroussky

Jason Victor Serinus

In a relatively short amount of time, Philippe Jaroussky, 33, has built an international reputation as a leading countertenor. Jaroussky came to prominence in 2004, when his first solo recording for Virgin Classics caught fire. Since then, his light, soprano-like sound, facility with coloratura, boyish looks, and rare dynamic flare have made him equally popular on stage and YouTube.

Musician and Vocalist Artist Interviews

Runco LS-10i 3-Chip DLP Projector

Chris Eberle

I am often asked when recommending projectors why some models cost upwards of $20,000. The simple answer is – light output. You can get a state-of-the-art projector for $8000 and have a superb image, as well as excellent build quality. But you won't be able to fill a 180-inch screen from 25 feet away and achieve 20 foot-Lamberts. For this you need a high output model, preferably a 3-chip DLP like Runco's new LS-10i. But, you will need that $20,000.

Projectors

Pioneer BDP-43FD Blu-ray Player

Chris Heinonen

The first Blu-ray players that I reviewed for Secrets many years ago were Pioneer models. Up until then, the only player I had used was a PlayStation 3, and was looking forward to a regular box that my universal remote could control and would be easier for my wife to operate. While the Pioneer players did fulfill those requirements, they were also far slower in use than the PS3 was, and as was common for most players then offered no online capability at all. Skip ahead a few years and at the CEDIA Expo, Pioneer was displaying players that were not only much faster and smaller that those early models, but had online streaming capabilities and other features as well. I asked them to send along a unit as soon as they could, and they happily provided me with their BDP-43FD model from their Elite line.

Blu-ray Players

Klipsch Reference II 5.1 Home Theater Speaker System

Jim Clements

At last year's CEDIA Expo in Atlanta, Klipsch set up their demo in a room that was more than just a little bit off the beaten path. Undaunted, I was able to find my way there and boy was I glad that I took the extra time to seek them out! The Klipsch Group, Inc. owns a total of four speaker companies – Klipsch, Jamo, Mirage and Energy. Each company had some new products on display. In this review, we take a look at the Klipsch Reference II 5.1 Speaker System, which includes RF-82 II floor-standers (towers) as the Mains, an RC-62 II Center, RS-52 II Surrounds, and SW-311 Subwoofer.

Surround Sound Speaker Systems

Home Theater Movie Renter’s Guide – July, 2011

The SECRETS Movie Review Team

The Adjustment Bureau (Blu-ray), Happy Gilmore (Blu-ray), Red Riding Hood (Blu-ray), The Outlaw Josey Wales (Blu-ray), Hall Pass (Blu-ray), Blue Crush 2 (Blu-ray), American: The Bill Hicks Story (Blu-ray), 13 Assassins (Blu-ray), Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (Extended Edition) (Blu-ray), Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (Extended Edition) (Blu-ray), Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (Extended Edition) (Blu-ray), Ocean Wonderland 3D (3D Blu-ray), Sharks 3D (3D Blu-ray), The Eagle (Blu-ray), Source Code (Blu-ray)

Movie Reviews
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Atlona Soars at InfoComm 2011

Secrets

Company Honored With Commercial Integrator BEST Award and AV Technology End-User Award SUNNYVALE, Calif. -- June 23, 2011 -- Atlona Technologies(R), a leading ...

Press

TVs? We Don’t Need no Stinking TVs – Third-Generation Multi-channel Audio – Part 3

David A. Rich, Ph.D.

It is useful to have the Blu-ray player read downloaded MP3, FLAC, and WAV files off a memory stick. If the player is well designed, the MP3 files should display information on the work and the performer on the TV screen. FLAC files encoded at sampling rates of 96kHz, or a sampling rate or 192kHz, should be bit-accurate at the both the S/PDIF or HDMI outputs. Be careful; many Blu-ray players do not support FLAC data files.

Most Blu-ray players USB ports will also work with Hard Drives. Another option on many Blu-ray players is to find music across a computer network if you establish an Ethernet connection for the Blu-ray player to your computer router. Special software must be resident on the computers. How to do this is way out of the scope of this article.

It is most important that your Blu-ray player should read MP3, FLAC or WAV files that are burned to DVD on a computer.......

See Sidebar: The Impracticality of Analog or DSD signal-transfer in multichannel

Editor's DeskEditorial

Bryston BDP-1 Music Server and BDA-1 DAC

John E. Johnson, Jr.

Media servers usually contain a hard drive on which you store your music (ripped CDs). Bryston's new BDP-1 Music Server utililzes USB thumb drives or external USB hard drive. This way, you can carry your music around with you on a thumb drive and use with multiple devices to play the music. This music server is actually a computer with full operating system, and can be connected wirelessly to your iPod or iPad to choose and play albums. In fact, it really is designed to be used that way, so that the server itself can be a low profile component in your equipment rack. In this review, we test the BDP-1 along with Bryston's BDA-1 DAC, which is capable of handling 24/192 bitstreams.

Media Servers