Home Theater Movie Renter’s Guide – March, 2011

SECRETS Movie Review Team

Sword of War (DVD), The Last Unicorn (Blu-ray), Bambi (Blu-ray), Memento (Blu-ray), Dances with Wolves (Blu-ray), For Colored Girls (Blu-ray), Thelma & Louise (Blu-ray), Raging Bull (Blu-ray), Skyline (Blu-ray), Les Miserables: The 25th Anniversary Concert (Blu-ray), The Miracle Maker (Blu-ray), Rainman (Blu-ray), The Switch (Blu-ray), Last Tango In Paris (Blu-ray), Moonstruck (Blu-ray)

Movie Reviews

Paradigm Mini-Monitor 5.1 Speaker System

Andrew Yang

Paradigm is increasingly becoming a unique entity in the world of audio equipment manufacturers. The industry continues to conglomerate itself into ever larger multinational corporations in the hopes of leveraging economies of scale, and optimizing cost of goods by outsourcing components and sub-assemblies. Paradigm, by contrast, remains thoroughly vertically integrated. With rare exceptions, the entirety of any given product, from the voice coil to the enclosure, is manufactured on-site at Paradigm's headquarters in Ontario, Canada.

Surround Sound Speaker Systems

Zildjian 18″ A Custom EFX Crash Cymbal

John E. Johnson, Jr.

It used to be that about the only special effects cymbal available was the China. All that changed in the past few years when lasers acquired the capability of cutting holes in metal. Recently, there has been an explosion of cymbals with several shapes of holes as well as the number of holes. In a few cases, it almost looks like there is more hole than cymbal. The Zildjian A Custom EFX has its own personality, and it is very agreeable. I suppose "trashy" is appropriate, but that word is used with a lot of cymbals that don't have holes in them, nor are they classified as special effects cymbals. You just have to listen for yourself. This one is 18" in diameter and thin in weight.

Cymbals

Matt Nolan 22″ Bronze Heavy Ride Cymbal

John E. Johnson, Jr.

Well, sooner or later, I figured I would get around to purchasing one of the cymbals forged by specialty cymbal smiths who make them by hand, one at a time. Matt Nolan, of the UK, is a very well known and respected cymbal smith, and I have been browsing various websites to find one of his cymbals that I would like to have. So, I chanced upon this beauty, which is a 22" heavy bronze ride cymbal, weighing 3583 grams (7.9 pounds). I purchased it for $500.

Cymbals

Earthquake Titan Tigris Floor-standing Speakers

John E. Johnson, Jr.

Earthquake Sound is a company best known for producing knock your socks off subwoofers and amplifiers for home theater. They also manufacture several lines of speakers, including the Titans. The Titan Tigris weighs 89 pounds each and stands nearly 5 feet high, with an MSRP of $9,500 per pair. They are certainly imposing speakers that look the part, and are priced to compete with the crème-de-la-crème of tower speakers. In this review we'll see how they perform.

Floor Standing Speakers

An Interview with Conductor Alondra De La Parra

Jason Victor Serinus

Less than nine months after her dynamic 2009 San Francisco Symphony debut conducting the symphony's annual Day of the Dead concert, conductor Alondra de la Parra, 29, returned to lead four consecutive concerts with the orchestra. Her wide-ranging repertoire â€" two nights of American and America-associated music, one all-Russian eve, and a refreshing Dolores Park afternoon that mixed Dvorak's New World Symphony with some of Mexico's finest compositions â€" was as diverse as her roster of top-flight soloists.

Musician and Vocalist Artist Interviews

Classe CA-M600 Monoblock Power Amplifier

John E. Johnson, Jr.

Classé updated their Delta power amplifier series in late 2010, including the CA-M400 which is now the CA-M600. The entire amplification signal passes on a single circuit board, and they have introduced a new cooling system called ICTunnel™, which utilizes a fan on the inside front panel of the amplifier that draws aire into the chassis and over some fins that absorb heat fromt the circuit boards. In use, I found the fan to be whisper quiet, with just a gentle breeze coming from the front amplifier port. This kept the entire chassis cool, but also, the temperature of the circuit board is electronically controlled by adjusting the fan speed, to optimize the performance, which turned out to be stellar.

Power Amplifiers

Sundance Film Festival 2011

Rick Schmidt

The news out of Sundance this year was that business is once again booming. We could tell that things were hopping well before the festival too because the online ticket system was showing many shows as sold out. We may have compounded the effect by shifting our attendance to the opening week of the festival. For the past couple of Sundance's we had attended the less populated second half. This year, for the first half anyway, it was just plain hard to get tickets. Using the online system during our allotted time slot, weeks in advance of the festival, there were many movies already sold out. Red State, the new movie from Kevin Smith (Clerks) sold out in all time slots in 1 day, including a showing at 8:30 am on a Monday morning.

Show Reports, Film Festivals and Concerts

NextGen Copperhead Xtreme HDMI Cables

Chris Eberle

Ah HDMI. This now commonplace interface has had a storied history of controversy and confusion. Now evolved, it is still far from perfect but at least we A/V enthusiasts are living with it now. The most misunderstood part of the equation has traditionally been the cable. How long can it be and not cause signal deterioration, or even drop the signal altogether? NexGen addresses these questions with their Copperhead Xtreme HDMI Cable.

Audio Cables