LATEST ADDITIONS

The new Thiel 3.7 prototypes, while otherwise superb, sounded lean in the bass. Blame it on the room or the newness of the design. By the time they come out (I heard in the fall), I'm sure the bass issue will be corrected. From the midrange up, they were solid and coherent – a Thiel signature. Sure, the unusual drivers look like spinners you'd see driving around LA, but they sure sounded great. Oh yeah, the reason for the update to Shane's previous blog – rumored price is just under $10,000.

Sony proudly announced the imminent birth of their newest STR-series receiver, a home theater gizmo Sony says is "the final link in the HD chain". The new STR-DG1000 is described as having 1080p pass-through, eight channels of uncompressed audio, smooth video switching, and a simplified surround sound set up with automatic adjustment. (Well, it's not totally automatic. You still have to hook up the microphone and push a button.)

Shown above is the special microphone configuration Neural Audio came up with so XM can capture all the channels for a surround sound broadcast of a live performance from a single position.

Maybe I'm just someone who's easily impressed, but the whole idea of sending audio and video data tens of thousands of miles into space to hit satellites that then send the data back to earth amazes

The Pioneer S-1EX, first seen and heard at CES, were in a much larger room at HE2006 and were singing a very happy tune. They were, for me, among the best-sounding speakers at the show, and while the expansive environment probably helped, the speakers may have had a bit to do with it as well. The only disappointment here was that Pioneer chose to do a 2-channel setup, leaving the matching center and surrounds looking a little left out in the back of the room. Look for a review of the full system later this summer in <I>UAV</I>