LATEST ADDITIONS

No one could have predicted how a guitar band from Athens, Georgia would turn into the biggest international alt-rock darlings of the 1990s — and yet, that’s exactly what R.E.M. did. The lo-fi genius of their eternally mumbly/jangly first single, “Radio Free Europe” essentially reset the song-arrangement table for what became known as college rock. Year by year, R.E.M. planted more than enough sonic seeds about where the latest crop of DIY U.S. bands was heading on each of their ensuing mid-1980s LP releases on the indie I.R.S. Records label until they jumped to the majors with their November 1988 effort on Warner Bros., Green. Though Green’s expansive sound palette took full advantage of a much-bigger recording budget, R.E.M.’s world domination vision instead came to fruition on their more refined, more stripped-down second Warner Bros. release, the unequivocal worldwide smash hit, March 1991’s Out of Time.

California-based headphone specialist Audeze has partnered with Microsoft to develop a limited-edition “Ultraviolet” version of its popular Maxwell “ultra-low-latency” gaming headset.

PRICE $2,471

AT A GLANCE
Plus
Outstanding full-dome Atmos movie effects
Superb spatial audio music reproduction
Plays loud without distortion
Minus
Expensive
No spatial audio streaming from the Sonos Tidal app

THE VERDICT
Sonos has scored a knockout with the Era 300 spatial audio surround speaker, which finally brings the full promise of Dolby Atmos to their flagship soundbar.

Back in 2020 I reviewed the then-new Sonos Arc soundbar for Sound & Vision, and it never left my family room. It’s been swapped out multiple times while I reviewed other Atmos-compliant soundbars, and some of these were mighty impressive.

My long-suffering dad is probably still haunted by our trip to the cinema those many years ago, with me a wee lad and my sister — a naïve young fan of the musician David Bowie — eager to see what we thought would be perhaps a slightly offbeat sci-fi movie, The Man Who Fell to Earth. Two hours of nudity and jaw-dropping weirdness later, we were proven wrong as we were introduced to mysterious interplanetary traveler Thomas Newton (Bowie), an entrepreneurial genius who strikes it rich quick with a host of advanced technologies. He’s also quite thirsty, a clue to his secret intentions which become more difficult to bring to fruition as he is increasingly sidetracked by the new vice and excess of his wealthy American lifestyle.