Ears On

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Ears On
Sennheiser PXC 300 Noise-Canceling Headphones
Mark Fleischmann  |  Mar 03, 2006  | 
Why would anyone pay the price of an iPod nano for a pair of headphones? Better sound is one reason—Apple's earbuds are wretchedly tinny. Sennheiser provides another good reason with the PXC 300 headphones. These midsized cans have noise cancellation, resulting in both better sound and greater safety for those most precious and irreplacable audio components, your ears.
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Sgt. Pepper Meets Dolby Atmos
Mark Fleischmann  |  Jun 02, 2017  | 
If you're a Beatlemaniac, by now you've heard all about the 50th anniversary reissue of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Perhaps you've even read our interview with producer Giles Martin. What remains to be said about this milestone about a milestone? How about Sgt. Pepper in Dolby Atmos?

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Sharp Stands Behind Its Product
Mark Fleischmann  |  Jan 29, 2010  | 
Just when I was about to ship my four-year-old Sharp LC-32D4U to my parents, who are still using an analog TV, the 32-inch TV's speakers went silent. According to this guy, the problem is "a design flaw by Sharp in which the silicon grease they used to cool the audio IC tends to break down and melt after a couple years, shorting out the audio." I've spent this week reviewing a JVC sound bar, so at least I didn't have to do without my local 10 o'clock newscast--the TV's analog line output still worked well enough to feed a signal to the bar. But I wanted to fix the TV before it went off to its new home. My parents have been good to me. I didn't want to send them a less than fully functional TV.
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Should HD DVD Turn to the Dark Side?
Mark Fleischmann  |  Jan 23, 2008  | 
Abandonment by Warner and Fox has left HD DVD with shrinking support among the motion picture studios. If HD DVD survives at all, it will have to do so with little or eventually no major-studio support. So maybe this is the time to ask a potentially controversial question: Does HD DVD have a future as a niche format--or possibly even an outlaw format? The following suggestions range from possible to distasteful to downright illegal. But since the future of a promising young format is at stake, let's think, um, creatively.
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Shuffle Goes Over the Rainbow
Mark Fleischmann  |  Jan 30, 2007  | 
Somewhere over the rainbow there's an iPod color we haven't seen before. It's orange. And it's one of four new Apple iPod shuffle color options. The others are already familiar to second-generation nano enthusiasts. They include pink, lime, sky blue, and "silver." Cue Jerry Seinfeld voice: Have you ever noticed that manufacturers say silver when they really mean aluminum or grey? What's up with that? If I can't melt it down and make jewelry out of it, it's not really silver, is it? Noticeably absent is the red used for special-edition nanos. And if you've been holding out for yellow or, ah, "gold," keep dreaming. Capacity remains one gigabyte, price is still $79, and earbuds have been upgraded to the new and supposedly better-sounding ones. Me, I've still got a first-generation nano that's in good health, thank you. But if you're a completist, don't let that stop you from grabbing that new orange shuffle. Mind if I borrow it for a day or two?
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Shure i4c Sound-Isolating Earbuds
Mark Fleischmann  |  Aug 18, 2006  | 
Cynical Steve Jobs is marketing one of the worst-sounding audio products ever. As an audiophile, I can view this only with alarm and outrage. No, I'm not talking about the iPod, you foolish thing. I enjoy my nano as much as the next person. I'm talking about the earbuds that come with the iPod. They don't even come close to taking advantage of the sound quality that the deliriously popular music player is capable of delivering.
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Sierra Sound iN STUDIO 5.0 Smart Speakers
Mark Fleischmann  |  Jul 25, 2007  | 
What size would you like your iPod-compatible speakers to be? Do you want Baby Bear, Mama Bear, or Papa Bear? Sierra Sound's iN STUDIO 5.0 fits into the middle category, as a monitor-sized pair of speakers with an iPod dock atop the left one. The review sample came in festive high-gloss Ferrari red, pleasing me no end, though you can have basic black or boring old traditional iPod white if you prefer.
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Sir, Step Away from the Game Console
Mark Fleischmann  |  Dec 13, 2006  | 
If you live in Germany, blowing away virtual baddies may soon do more than stress your thumb joints. Pending legislation in Bavaria and Lower Saxony would give creators, distributors, and--yes--players of violent video games up to a year in the slammer. To be specific, it would penalize "cruel violence on humans or human-looking characters." The move in the world's third-largest gaming market follows a horrific school shooting in a town on the Dutch border, where an 18-year-old gamer wounded 37 people before killing himself. Officials blame the rampage on the teen's fondness for the game "Counter Strike," although his video suicide note cites school, anarchist politics, bullying, a desire for revenge, social isolation, and the joy of gun possession--everything but video games. Even so, insists Bavarian interior minister Günther Beckstein: "It is absolutely beyond any doubt that such killer games desensitize unstable characters and can have a stimulating effect." Digg readers retorted: "Computer games don't kill people. It's the nutters with guns that kill people." And: "I propose a ban on bad parenting." But the outlawing of virtual crimes literally crosses the line between fantasy and reality. Maybe the best solution for virtual violence is a virtual prison sentence.
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Slow Growth, Combis Seen for Next-Gen DVD
Mark Fleischmann  |  Oct 12, 2006  | 
The future of HD DVD and Blu-ray is neither boom or bust, according to The State of Home Video (11th Edition) from Kagan Data Services. Kagan sees the two new formats together grabbing 13.9 percent of the market by 2009, 53.7 by 2012, and 68.7 by 2015: "The first wave of high-definition DVD homes will consist primarily of those homes with non-dedicated players, such as PS3, Xbox 360 and PCs.... We estimate the balance will shift in 2009 as dedicated player prices drop and the dust from the format war has settled." However, revenue growth in hard-copy software will be slowed by downloads, Kagan said, citing CinemaNow. Meanwhile, obstacles to the long-awaited combi player have continued to fall, most recently with NEC's announcement of a video processing chip that handles both formats at no extra cost. Ricoh had already announced a pickup lens that reads the disc at two depths, to accommodate the differing demands of each format. With NEC shipping the new part in 2007, we might see a combi by the end of that year. Maybe. But don't hold your breath waiting for a recorder.
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So Long, Lossy, It's Been Dull to Know You
Mark Fleischmann  |  Oct 02, 2015  | 
Over the past couple of years, I've raised the bar for new entries to my music library. I've been steadily giving up lossy audio. In other words, file formats like MP3 and iTunes-approved AAC are no longer welcome. It is time for my library to move to the next step. So long, lossy. Quoth the raven, nevermore.

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Soderbergh Bursts the Release Bubble
Mark Fleischmann  |  Jan 19, 2006  | 
Steven Soderbergh's Bubble will soon become the first major movie to be simultaneously premiered in theaters and on satellite television. On January 27 the movie will be shown on HDNet while rolling out in theaters nationwide. The DVD release will follow on January 31. However the actual opening night was January 12, in Parkersville, West Virginia, where the tale of murder in a doll factory was shot with real-life people on high-definition video. Theater chains are crying foul, so it's uncertain if or when the movie will make it to your local cineplex.
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Some P2P Sites Hazardous to PC Health
Mark Fleischmann  |  Oct 19, 2006  | 
Lawsuits from the RIAA are not the only hazards for the intrepid file sharer. Simply downloading P2P software can pollute your PC with nuisance software. The most notorious example remains Kazaa, which paid more than $100 million to settle music-industry lawsuits, but is still listed as badware by stopbadware.org. That report is a few months old, but according to the McAfee SiteAdvisor, the Kazaa site still exposes PC users to what "some people consider adware, spyware, or other unwanted programs." In addition, it links to firstadsolution.com, "which our analysis found to be deceptive or fraudulent." SiteAdvisor gives similar warnings about BearShare. Limewire and Morpheus get a clean bill of health, but beware of other sites that offer free downloads of Limewire and Morpheus software—and that includes most of those listed as Google-sponsored links! By the way, the SiteAdvisor is a free plug-in for Internet Explorer or Firefox that festoons Google, Yahoo, or MSN search results with green- or red-light bugs to warn you of PC health hazards. Click on the bugs and they'll give you information like that quoted above. SiteAdvisor is totally goodware—it costs nothing to install and may keep you out of loads of trouble.
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Sonic Impact Super T Stereo Digital Amp
Mark Fleischmann  |  Oct 17, 2007  | 
A problem was looming in the kitchen--aside from my rudimentary cooking skills and haphazard sanitary habits, that is. I found myself avoiding my kitchen system. The kitchen rig seemed like a good idea at the time. By combining a mass-market mini-system with a sat/sub set, and wall-mounting the satellites, I'd squeeze music into a tight L-shaped place where only radio had gone before. Anyway, I soon tired of the system's rudimentary and haphazard performance and it devolved into a glorified radio. After a decade I threw in the dish towel and replaced the radio function with, well, a radio. Then I set about brainstorming a new music system for the kitchen.
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Sonic Impact T24 Shelf System for iPod
Mark Fleischmann  |  Jul 11, 2007  | 
The world is well supplied with iPod-compatible micro-systems. Unfortunately, many of them don't look so good. An exception is Sonic Impact's curvaceous T24.
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Sonoro Cubo Compact System
Mark Fleischmann  |  Jun 18, 2008  | 
Sonoro is a German audio manufacturer. The company recently commissioned a survey on the listening habits of 560 consumers. Thirty-nine percent of them named FM radio as their number one audio entertainment source, beating iPods and other MP3 players at 23 percent. That was interesting, but when I visited the Sonoro site, I found something even more interesting: the Cubo system.
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