LATEST ADDITIONS

Steve Guttenberg  |  May 23, 2017
Performance
Build Quality
Comfort
Value
PRICE $399

AT A GLANCE
Plus
Brilliant styling
Built-in headphone amp
Click-on bass boost
Minus
Not super transparent

THE VERDICT
The Blue Sadie is one of the more unique headphones on the market. The look and feel are mighty impressive. The sound is up to snuff too!

Blue is known primarily as a high-end studio and consumer microphone manufacturer, but they broke into the headphone scene with their radically designed Mo-Fi back in 2014. I liked that headphone well enough, but it was heavy, and the sound balance struck me as a little too Beats inspired. Mo-Fi is history, but Blue’s new one goes by the name Sadie, and her sound is more in tune with audiophile tastes.

SV Staff  |  May 23, 2017
Marantz has packed a full suite of home theater and multiroom features into a pair of slimline AV receivers designed for tight spaces.
Ken C. Pohlmann  |  May 23, 2017
In recent years, market trends have not been kind to Sony. The company has struggled to adapt to changing technologies and consumer tastes. Once a powerhouse, it slipped in stature and lost billions. But now, in its most recent corporate announcements, there may be a glimmer of hope.

SV Staff  |  May 23, 2017
Nearly half of all Americans consider themselves to be tech-savvy, according a new survey by ReportLinker. Zero in on millennials and, not surprisingly, the figure rises to 58 percent.
SV Staff  |  May 22, 2017
Integra has introduced two 7.2-channel AV receivers with features designed to ease custom installation.
SV Staff  |  May 22, 2017
Interest in buying an internet-connected smart TV goes up when consumers learn about the capabilities of the next-generation ATSC 3.0 broadcast TV standard, according to the findings of a national survey conducted by market research firm SmithGeiger.
Leslie Shapiro  |  May 22, 2017
Thanks to Apple, there’s a surge of Bluetooth headphones hitting the market. Apple users are practically forced to go wireless, and other users find it convenient to ditch the cords. However, besides the sound quality issue of going wireless, there is also a comfort factor. Because more electronics have to be jammed into earphones, most Bluetooth earbuds are heavy, making them uncomfortable for many users. Jam Audio’s Comfort Buds is a solution for those sensitive listeners. Is comfort worth the sacrifice in sound quality?

Geoffrey Morrison  |  May 20, 2017
It’s so pretty.
Fred Kaplan  |  May 19, 2017
Picture
Sound
Extras
McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Robert Altman’s best film by far, has often been called an “anti-Western,” but that’s a bit off. The plot is pure Western: A stranger comes to a frontier town, builds it up; bad guys come to kill him and take it away; he tracks them down on the street and kills them first; and oh, yes, there’s a whore with a heart of gold. The difference here is that the plot is infused with circa-1900 realism: The stranger’s a bit of a dunce; the town is a muddy mess; the bad guys are corporate poachers; our man kills them by shooting them in the back, and afterward he dies in the snow from gunshot wounds while the townsfolk put out a fire in an unused church; and, oh, the whore is also a shrewd merchant with an opium habit.
David Vaughn  |  May 19, 2017
Picture
Sound
Extras
April 20, 2010 started out like any other day for oil rig chief of maintenance Mike Williams (Mark Wahlberg) and superintendent Jimmy Harrell (Kurt Russell). As its shore leave ends, the crew boards a helicopter for the flight out into the Gulf of Mexico to begin their duty on Deepwater Horizon, an offshore rig. Standard protocol is broken when the old crew leaves and the new one arrives, raising the suspicions of Harrell that something is amiss. The project is overdue and over budget, and BP is doing whatever it can to cut costs—penny wise, pound foolish.

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