LATEST ADDITIONS

The Connected Life
How to Plan Your AV Budget Part 2
John Sciacca  |  Mar 16, 2021
In my previous blog, I considered areas in your A/V budget where you should consider splurging when building a system. If you’re fortunate enough to have the budget for a high-end home entertainment system, then absolutely pursue the best gear available. Premium gear does offer premium performance — plus pride of ownership — and it’s hard to put a price on the joy a top-notch system can deliver. But for the bulk of us who need to carefully allocate our A/V budget, here are some suggestions on where to consider saving, or even scrimping.
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Signals
Ottens and Máaz
Ken C. Pohlmann  |  Mar 15, 2021
Juxtaposition: noun. The fact of two things being seen or placed close together with contrasting effect. The Dutch inventor of the Compact Cassette tape recorder has died. The Perseverance rover has transmitted an acoustic recording of laser shots on Mars.

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Music and Soundtrack FeaturesThe S&V Interview
Pat & Deborah Mastelotto Reveal How They Romanticized King Crimson
Mike Mettler  |  Mar 12, 2021
It's not a complete misnomer to observe the audience for King Crimson music tends to skew more towards the male side of the listening ledger—but that statement in no way means their forward-thinking music holds little or no sway with female music aficionados and audiophiles alike. In fact, far from it.
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Custom Installation How-ToAudio Video News
Building a Home Theater? Avoid these Pitfalls
Bob Ankosko  |  Mar 11, 2021
Are you thinking about building a home theater — or maybe converting an existing mixed-use media room into a space dedicated to movie viewing? If so, there are a whole host of things to consider before you break ground, so to speak. Drawing on its 40-plus years of experience as a home audio and video specialist, North Carolina’s Audio Advice has identified the most common mistakes home theater builders make — from picking a screen that’s too small to ignoring room acoustics — and come up with meaningful advice on how to avoid these pitfalls to ensure a great home theater experience.
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Ask S&V
TV Testing: How Do You Measure Brightness?
Al Griffin  |  Mar 11, 2021
Got a tech question for Sound & Vision? Email us at AskSandV@gmail.com

Q How do you measure the brightness of a TV and convert that number to nits? —Gary Eickmeier, Lakeland, FL

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SmartStream
Hands On: Paramount+ Streaming Service
Barb Gonzalez  |  Mar 10, 2021
Paramount+ launched last week, absorbing and adding to the CBS All Access app. The newly rebranded service adds content from several channels brought to CBS following the 2019 merger of CBS and Viacom. Find out more about the expanded streaming service.
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Headphone Reviews
Monolith by Monoprice M-TWE True Wireless Earbuds Review
Leslie Shapiro  |  Mar 10, 2021

Performance
Features
Ergonomics
Value
PRICE $130

AT A GLANCE
Plus
Long battery life
Comfortable fit
Compatible with SonarWorks SoundID app
Minus
Complicated LED indicators
No track controls on touchpads
Sound quality reduction with ANC off

THE VERDICT
Affordable true wire- less earbuds that work with the SonarWorks SoundID app might seem too good to be true, but that’s exactly what you get with the Monolith M-TWE.

Monoprice is an affordable direct-to-consumer brand, and its Monolith product line features sophisticated A/V gear including speakers, amps, surround sound processors, and now the new Monolith M-TWE earbuds. The M-TWE touts aptX Bluetooth audio, active noise cancellation (with cVc Echo Cancelling and Noise Suppression for phone calls), and SonorWorks SoundID, a feature that lets you customize sound to your preference, all at a very budget-friendly $130.

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New Products
Sonos Introduces Roam Portable Smart Speaker
SV Staff  |  Mar 09, 2021
Spring has nearly sprung, and that means people will soon be heading outdoors for socially distanced adventures. More good news: Your adventures can be soundtracked by the Roam, a new $169 ultra-portable smart speaker from Sonos that connects via Bluetooth and Wi-Fi and has an IP67 rating to make it both dust- and water-proof.
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A/V Veteran
Dune, Theaters, and Streaming
Thomas J. Norton  |  Mar 09, 2021
The changes to how we watch media resulting from the closing of theaters due to the Covid-19 pandemic have been unprecedented. True, not all theaters are closed. Here in the wilds of Florida my local AMC has been open for some time. But its current slate of movies is hardly the stuff of dreams: Boogie, Chaos Walking, The Mauritanian (not The Mandalorian!), The Little Things, The Marksman, The Croods: A New Age, and Raya and the Last Dragon. The latter is the only one tempting me to break my year long hiatus from that theater's Dolby Vision and IMAX auditoriums, but not quite enough for me to do so even though I've now joined the few, the proud, and the vaccinated.

A whole spate of potential blockbusters have either been released to streaming or are being held over until the studios are confident that if they show them (in theaters) they will come.

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Audio Video News
Epson, Philips Agree on Industry Standard Projector Specs
Al Griffin  |  Mar 08, 2021
Epson wants to protect you, the consumer, from misleading brightness claims in projector advertising. To that end, the company has reached an agreement with Philips and Screeneo Innovation that all future Philips NeoPix projectors designed, manufactured, and sold by Screeneo will use industry standard specifications (ISO 21118:2020) for brightness claims. The agreement is the latest chapter in Epson’s ongoing effort to cast light on deceptive advertising—a particular problem with cheap models sold on Amazon’s e-commerce site.
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