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Reviews

D-Sonic M3-5400-7 Class D Seven-Channel Power Amplifier

Mark Vignola

D-Sonic is a company that I had been tangentially aware of for many years due to their direct marketing efforts on websites like Audiogon. The brainchild of Dennis Deacon, D-Sonic was founded in 2006 to make high quality Class D based amplifiers marketed directly to consumers. I had the pleasure of having D?Sonic's new top of the line 7-channel multi-channel amp in house for a few weeks and am excited to pass on my thoughts.

Power Amplifiers

Bryston Mini-T Monitor Speakers

Jared Rachwalski

Bryston has a long history of manufacturing high quality amplifiers and digital components. Their products come with an industry leading warranty, reference-level sound quality, and above average build quality. For years their electronics have been paired with high end speakers at various shows, Thiel, Magnepan, PMC and other serious loudspeaker manufactures have chosen Bryston electronics to showcase their sound so I was very interested to hear that they were producing their own speakers.

Bookshelf Speakers

Parasound Halo CD 1 Player

Rick Schmidt

The Halo CD 1 is a flagship CD Player from the well regarded, San Francisco based, Parasound. CD Player? Surely I mean 'DAC with Transport'. Nope. CD player, put your CD in, music comes out. No, you mean it's part of a server system, the data is stored for later retrieval by a computer system. Well, only if you count the internal buffering and Intel ITX computer running Linux inside the CD 1. In implementation then the CD 1 is quite modern, it's a computer, dedicated to CD playback only. In practice, it's an old fashioned (and in this case, that's good) CD player.

CD Players

Pass Labs INT-150 Integrated Stereo Amplifier

John E. Johnson, Jr.

Pass Labs is renown for their high end preamplifiers and power amplifiers, but they also have integrated amplifiers as well, which include the INT-30A and the INT-150. Here, we review the INT-150, which, as you can imagine from the model number, outputs 150 watts x 2 (into 8 ohms). It has the same massive build quality as the other Pass components I have reviewed, and also, its own distinctive sound, as I have found with the others.

Integrated Amplifiers

Sony BDP-S5100 Blu-ray Player

Chris Heinonen

Last year, Sony's Blu-ray players did a great job of hitting these goals. Their initial firmware had an issue decoding Blu-ray discs to RGB that we discovered, but that was quickly remedied and after that the players performed very well. Sony elected to keep the BDP-S790 at the top of their lineup this year, and it remains one of my favorite Blu-ray players, but the other models have been replaced. One new model is the BDP-S5100, which replaces the BDP-S590 model that I looked at in 2012. Has Sony kept with their winning model from last year, or have updates brought us changes?

Blu-ray Players

Marantz AV7701 7.2 A/V Preamp/Processor

Chris Heinonen

Marantz came out with their AV7005 processor a few years ago, which contains almost all of the high-end processing and features that people wanted, but at a lower price-point than almost any processor out there. Now Marantz has some back with the AV7701, a replacement for the AV7005 that brings it up to date with the modern streaming functions of current receivers and processors, and adds a few nice other touches as well while keeping that aggressive price-point. Has this update let Marantz keep this little niche to themselves again? I swapped the AV7701 in for my AV7005 to see if I could tell a difference between the two.

Processors

GoldenEar Technology Aon2 Bookshelf Speakers

Chris Heinonen

As GoldenEar president Sandy Gross says, his desire is to take the sound he manages to get from far more expensive speakers, and engineer that into his own products at a much lower price. With his Triton line of towers he has certainly succeeded, but how good could he really make a $400 bookshelf speaker? They sure sounded good when I heard them at the CEDIA Expo, but those shows are never an environment in which to make any final declarations. With a pair in hand, I was ready to find out.

Bookshelf Speakers

JVC X55 Three-Chip D-ILA Projector

Chris Heinonen

With their updated e-shift technology, a full-featured CMS, and black levels that are untouched by other projector manufacturers, the new JVC X55 projector is capable of some truly stunning images. The kind of images that will likely have you painting that room, covering the carpet up with a dark rug, and putting electrical tape over the LEDs on your system components to prevent any little thing from entering the room to distract from its performance.

Projectors

Pro-Ject Xtension 10 Superpack Turntable System

Jim Clements

This beautiful turntable from Pro-Ject Audio Systems is dubbed the Xtension 10. This new model is a smaller version of the highly acclaimed Xtension 12. Pro-Ject retained most of the design features of the Xtension 12 to include a built-in precision speed control, a balanced sandwich platter, adjustable magnetic feet and a precision inverted ceramic main bearing. The over-designed Xtension 10 weighs in at a healthy 48-1/2 lbs net! It comes with a heavy record clamp and acrylic dust cover included.

TurntablesTurntables

Epson PowerLite Home Cinema 5020UBE 3D LCD Projector

Chris Eberle

Recently I reviewed Epson's new Home Cinema 3020e projector and found it to be a tremendous value in the under $2000 class. It offers killer 3D, wireless HDMI, and superb image for less than the price of a 60-inch TV. It was only natural that I should also check out its big brother, the Home Cinema 5020UBE.

Projectors

Dune HD – Base3D and TV-303D High Definition Media Streamers

Ofer LaOr

Streamers have been around for quite a few years. It took them quite a while to reach maturity. When this field was at its infancy, HD was just starting to get popular and Streamers offered a way to play back a DIVX or TS file without requiring a Home Theater PC in your living room. The beginning was very slow and tedious, early streamers were buggy and often had serious image, sound and build quality issues. Typically, you had to place your content in a hard drive inside the unit, or even burn a DVD containing your desired content - not exactly something that most people are prone to do.

HDTV

SVS SB13-Ultra Subwoofer

Jim Clements

The SVS SB13-Ultra powered subwoofer features a 13.5" driver with 50mm peak excursion.  It is driven by a 1,000 watt RMS Class D amplifier (3,600 watts peak).  This amp has a dual band parametric equalizer and a unique limiter circuit that retains dynamic shadings even when pushed hard.  The sub is a sealed box design with tight and clean bass.  In fact, my nearfield (1 foot) THD+N measurements were all under 0.33% from 28 - 100Hz at 100dB!

Subwoofers

Axiom LFR1100 Omnidirectional Speakers and ADA-1500 Power Amplifier

Chris Eberle

About a year ago, Ian Colquhoun, founder of Axiom Audio, contacted me to talk about an exciting new design he was working on. It was the LFR1100 omnidirectional tower speaker and it represented a radical departure from not only their other products, but from traditional speaker construction. Needless to say I jumped at the chance to review them, but tremendous customer demand prevented me from getting a pair right away. When a surprise phone call came recently asking where I'd like the speakers delivered, I couldn't help but get excited!

Floor Standing Speakers

Bryston BP17 Stereo Preamplifier

John E. Johnson, Jr.

Bryston is the only high-end audio company I know of that offers a 20 year warranty on its products. They manufacture some very expensive preamps and power amps, but even the least expensive product carries that warranty. Why? Because they have massive build quality. The BP17 stereo preamplifier exemplifies that approach, and it is in the middle of their preamplifier line-up, which includes the BP6 and BP26.

Preamplifiers