SVS recently launched their long awaited Prime Elevation Speakers. While brands like Elac, Klipsch and Definitive Technology subscribe to emerging audio formats such as Dolby Atmos®*, DTS:X® and Auro 3D®, Ed Mullen from SVS has made a different argument from the very beginning of height effect speakers. What’s interesting is that Gene DelaSalla from Audioholics is entirely on the same page and he’s not hiding it either.SVS recently launched their long awaited Prime Elevation Speakers.

So you have a bookcase full of CDs, you have thousands of songs downloaded on your computer at home, maybe you have spent some time ripping the CDs to your PC and subsequently you have a music streaming subscription such as TIDAL, or Spotify.  Here is your dilemma, you don’t want to totally forget about your beautiful, collection of Compact Discs, or disregard your iTunes collection of songs. This recent problem gave birth to a new type of hi fi component: The Network Audio Player.

Once the stuff of the future, these days laser projectors are becoming more and more commonplace in the world of home theatre. Sure, they are still quite a bit more expensive than traditional light bulb projectors. But a lot is moving when it comes to projectors. Terms such as “laser”, “LED” or “hybrid” are used commonly. But what is what?  What is worth your penny at this stage? And what does the future hold?Time to shed some light in the lay of the land in light-generation for projectors.

A headphone is just a headphone, right?  I mean, yes there are in-ears and the ones that go over your ears and some have wires and some don’t but… really how different can one headphone be from the next?There are many similar terms used to describe headphones, an everyday (almost commodity) item of technology. Categories such as noise isolating, noise cancelling, on-ear, over-ear, open-back, and closed-back seem to be pretty self-explanatory terms. You may understand the differences between all the different types, but why would you choose one over the other?  What makes one headphone better than the other? Is a $1,000 headphone really worth all that money? Why can’t I get by on a $80 pair? Which one is the best choice in your specific situation and  are the bells and whistles worth the extra spending? This blog will give you the basic rundown of the types of headphones, their variations, types of drivers, the different kinds of build-it technology and how to choose the right pair of headphones for your needs.

Most people equate subwoofers with the thump-thump they hear from other cars at stoplights. Volume at the expense of quality.  There is no sugarcoating the message: it’s called bad bass. In the world of the dedicated audiophile, this is what gave the subwoofer (and with it bass) a bad rep. But the idea with any speaker system is to accurately recreate all frequencies in the audio spectrum equally, including bass. What you want from a quality subwoofer, placed correctly in a room, is a deep realistic sound, not the thump-thump. So let’s be clear that a good subwoofer doesn’t make a boom sound, but just stronger (and lower) bass than is possible with normal speakers.

The world of amplifiers is riddled with terminology that-unless you been wandering the audiophile jungle for years- does your head in. It should come as no surprise really, considering amplifiers are complicated electronic devices where a lot goes on. While we have no intention whatsoever to make this blog a highly technical piece of reading that belongs in an electronics course syllabus, we do want to give you an idea what a lot of the words that get thrown around mean in layman’s terms. They are by no means scientifically accurate definition, but we really tried to keep it as close as possible to what a science purist could tolerate.

A few weeks ago we received a request from a customer who had balanced audio on his wish list. If you read much promotional literature for high-quality equipment, you’ll notice the phrase “balanced connection” tossed around. Balanced inputs and outputs are sort of a must for audio equipment that has any claim to quality. The word itself has promotional value, suggesting superiority over the long-established “unbalanced” connection.  But there are a lot of questions, and often confusion, surrounding balanced and unbalanced audio – What is balanced audio? Is balanced better than unbalanced? Why should I use balanced? How will balanced audio affect my system? What differences in sound quality can I expect to hear when using balanced? If balanced is so good, why isn’t everyone using it? …and the list goes on. What follows is some insight into balanced vs. unbalanced audio in an attempt to answer these questions.

If you’ve ever spent any time browsing the forums, the odds are good you’ve run into a discussion regarding the benefits of AV receivers versus separates. This rivalry has proponents and valid arguments on both sides of the table. Long story short: we can see valid arguments on both ends of the table. But what works best for you?  

The days of analogue music are long gone. ‘Yes, but vinyl is getting a revival’, I can hear you argue. True, but in the greater scheme of things, there is no going around the fact that while the vinyl market is growing, it is still a niche market reserved for the audiophiles and nostalgic few.  Digital music (with all its faults) on the other hand is everywhere. It doesn’t matter whether we talk about music on a CD or music streamed from Spotify, Apple Music, Google Play, and other corners of the cloud. Digital music has one main denominator: You can’t listen to it in its digital form. It needs to be ‘translated’ back to sound.

Twenty years ago, while living in the UK, a dream was born: James was living in an apartment with a simple CRT TV, as most of us did. But being an engineer and a lover of all things digital, he wasn’t satisfied with that. He was dreaming of a lot more. The day James drove 3.5 hours each way up to north of England to buy his first Denon AVR and 5.1 KEF Egg speaker package (available mid-end October), he knew he was getting seriously hooked on the idea of one day getting a dedicated home theatre. Small steps were taken along the road, but it wasn’t until the end of 2015 that he saw his chance of fulfilling his long held dream.