Editor's Eye

I received an e-mail recently from reader Francesco Tenti in Huntington, NY, politely complaining about the speed with which AV technology seems to be progressing.

“Back in the old days, when you purchased a good audio system, you were set for years to enjoy high-quality music,” he wrote. “You were not attacked by new technology and pushed to update your equipment every other day. With the digital revolution, it seems that whatever is new today is kind of outdated the minute you take your new gear home.”

He went on to say, “We went from 5.1-channel surround systems to 7.1, 7.2, 9.2, 11.2, and now Dolby Atmos systems, for which you need new electronics and speakers. Traditional HDTVs are becoming obsolete; the new 4K is here, but there are no products to view through it, so people will have to wait for new programming, buy new disc players, and so on. Is it really worth it? Is it really worth it to have a new technology where the human eye cannot see the difference? The list of new and evolving technology is endless, but does it really provide more visual and listening pleasure, or is it just self-serving?”

Lest you think Francesco comes at this as a reticent Scrooge unwilling to part with a few shekels to update his ’70s-era gear, he went on to describe a modern system any of us would be proud of, including a Cambridge Audio AV receiver, GoldenEar speakers mated with an SVS sub, an Oppo Blu-ray player, and a 50-inch Panasonic plasma TV. But having invested in that, I can perhaps understand his frustration and guess it might strike a chord among other readers.

There will always be something new around the corner.

It’s a fair question. We at Sound & Vision plead guilty to planting those seeds of upgradeitis, though we don’t automatically get behind every new thing the industry shoves down our throats. Until Atmos came along with its discrete, object-based height channels, we told readers not to bother with 9.1-channel and 11.1-channel systems; and until Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio came along with discrete 7.1-channel soundtracks, we said pretty much the same thing about 7.1- and 6.1-channel systems. We’ve not been boosters of curved TVs, nor fans of the poor-quality 3D playback that has plagued that technology since its introduction.

But it’s true that the advances seem to have accelerated in recent years, and we’ve come to accept that there will always be something new around the corner, often just after you’ve updated your system. So, is it worth it? The answer is always “sometimes,” but more often than not lately, it’s been “yes.” It’s worth it to have the experience I just had testing Panasonic’s top-of-the-line, 65-inch 4K television which, from 7 feet away, blew my socks off with its picture quality on a native 4K download of Men in Black 3.

It’s worth it to actually remodel your living room to accommodate Atmos ceiling speakers, as our own David Vaughn did (“Atmos Makeover: A Space Odyssey”, and to hear that bird in the Atmos “Amaze” trailer flap fully around your room above your head and have everyone in the family flip out at how cool it is. It is worth it to strap on a decent pair of headphones, plug them into a standalone asynchronous USB DAC, and hear for the first time what’s really in a well-mastered hi-res audio file.

Will there be other things coming up behind these technologies? No doubt. Will they be worth it? We don’t know yet. But for now, anyway, we’ve got plenty enough upgrades to keep us busy.