Technical Reviews

Impedance is the extension of the idea of electrical resistance to AC signals (like music). In high school, we all likely learned Ohm's law at some time or another. Whether we remember it or not is another story! Luckily, the refresher course is easy. Resistance is a way of relating voltage and current in a simple DC circuit.

I will start out by saying that this is a feature article primarily for fellow geeks interested in the process of building or rebuilding an A/V system. My home isn't exactly a showcase in design or high fashion, and the A/V system that's going back in is aiming for function ...

Even though we've discussed video resolution in the pages of Secrets more than once, a real understanding of it still eludes a large number of people that I've encountered recently . . .

The Secrets DVD Benchmark has been remarkably popular, but in an of itself not all that remarkable or unexpected. What took us off guard is that it has been equally popular with our readers and manufacturers of the equipment.

When humans hear two simultaneous arrivals of the same sound from different directions at the same amplitude, the "stereo" illusion is that the source is not from two different directions (i.e., from two separate speakers), but from a "phantom" location between those speakers.

John E. Johnson, Jr. holds four university degrees, and has published numerous scientific books (three in 2014 and one in 2015), along with dozens of scientif...

Many surround sound receivers and processors these days offer an "Auto" set-up routine that attempts to configure the basic set-up for the consumer, including whether a speaker should be high-passed or not, which frequency to high-pass it at if applicable . . .

Recently I have had a barrage of e-mails from friends and readers asking why HDTV connectivity is so complicated. I found myself sending out the same advice and comments over and over, so I wanted to share some of this advice. DVI (Digital Video Interface) . . .

What we covered in Parts 1 and 2 are the most commonly looked at aspects of DVD players. In Part 3 we take a look at another area of performance that I believe has been seriously neglected by everyone, including us (up until now)...

One of the areas that gets short shrift from many DVD player reviews is the actual usability of the players. Sure, some reviewers talk about the layout of the remote, but only indirectly communicate usability issues...

It has long been our feeling that one can learn much more about the quality of a DVD player by watching lousy DVD movie material than you can learn by watching great material. Great material tends to look fine on just about every player...