LATEST ADDITIONS

A veritable houseful of tracks by L.A. legends The Doors came onto the Dolby Atmos marketplace last week. Being a consummate fan of the legendary envelope-pushing ’60s band, I just had to check them out, most especially one of my absolute favorite tracks of theirs—“Riders on the Storm,” the last cut on Side 2 of their April 1971 swan song of sorts, L.A. Woman. I say “swan song” only because it was their last album with vocalist/lyricist/shaman-in-chief Jim Morrison as frontman. (Sadly, and somewhat mysteriously, Morrison passed away in Paris, France just three short months after L.A Woman was released.)

PRICE $7,000/pair (R5t tower), $5,000 (D15s subwoofer)

AT A GLANCE
Plus
Clean, uncolored sound (R5t)
Surprisingly powerful bass (R5t)
Excellent build quality (R5t)
Stunningly dynamic performance (D15s)
Excellent build quality (D15s)
Minus
Pricey (both)
Not the best option for very large rooms (R5t)

THE VERDICT
Perlisten Audio's R5t towers and D15s subwoofer offer stunning performance and good looks, but in this case the great sound and build quality will cost you.

Even the most veteran A/V enthusiast is unlikely to have heard of Perlisten (short for Perceptual Listening) Audio, but that situation should soon change. Founded by a group of audio industry veterans, the company was formally launched in 2021. For a new speaker outfit, the number of Perlisten models is astonishingly long and encompasses towers, standmounts, center and surround speakers, in-walls, and subwoofers, all of them engineered in the U.S. and manufactured in China.

Bluesound, the sister company of Canada’s NAD and PSB specializing in wireless streaming gear, has announced an accessory hub that turns any wired analog or digital audio source into an app-controllable multiroom streaming player.

Nostalgia--that "twinge in your heart, far more powerful than memory alone" as Don Draper famously explained it--can be a potent ally to the modern filmmaker. With its risky and highly publicized meta-twist (which I won't spoil here, just in case), Spider-Man: No Way Home managed to complete director Jon Watts' arachno-trilogy on an epic scale, capping not only this story arc but one far grander, much as Avengers: Endgame did for the whole of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.