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Arcam AVR550 AV Receiver Review

Glenn Young

The Arcam AVR550 AV Receiver is in the middle of Arcam’s Full Metal Jacket (FMJ) line. It shares many features with Arcam’s flagship model, the AVR850, but for a lower price tag. The AVR550 sports a full complement of the latest surround decoding abilities including Dolby Atmos and DTS:X. It also sports audiophile quality DACs and some surprisingly good power amplifiers.

Receiver and Processor 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

Optoma HD33 3D DLP Projector

Chris Eberle

In the two years since 3D displays first became commonplace, I've seen many demos; and only a few of them really impressed me. When you watch for a few minutes and you get that "gotta have it" feeling, you know you've seen something special. So far I've seen exactly zero flat panels that affected me that way. They just don't immerse the viewer the way a projector does. I've found for the 3D effect to be truly convincing, the edges of the screen have to be outside my peripheral vision. Front projection is, of course, the answer; but 3D capable models are only just now trickling down to the affordable level. The Optoma HD33 is a DLP projector with 3D capabilities and has full 1920x1080p native resolution. All for less than $1,500.

Projectors

Telluride Film Festival 2011

Rick Schmidt

The place to be over Labor Day Weekend, if you love movies and want to have an advance look at the films that will be released over the next few months, was this years Telluride Film Festival.  Rick Schmidt from the SECRETS team and and Festival Photographer Ray Keller made it to 18 films over four days at the 2011 Telluride Film Festival.  Most of these films will be making their way to theaters over the next weeks and months and Rick and Ray are thinking that a number of these will be Oscar contenders.


See the full report of the Telluride Festival and the film reviews.

Show Reports, Film Festivals and Concerts

Anthony Gallo Acoustics Reference Strada Speakers and TR3 Subwoofer

John E. Johnson, Jr.

Anthony Gallo Acoustics has been known for many years to make very unique, high performance loudspeakers that can deliver world-class performance at reasonable prices and in everyday rooms. I was so impressed with their Reference 3.1 speakers when I reviewed them in 2007 that I bought the review pair. In the past several months, Gallo has significantly upgraded their reference line. The Reference 3.1 has just been replaced with the much more expensive Reference 3.5, but a new speaker system has taken up a new position in the Gallo line at a price point very close to the old Reference 3.1.

Bookshelf Speakers