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RMAF VIII: Naim Dropper
Thomas J. Norton  |  Oct 14, 2009  | 

The company may be more widely known for clever ads that play on its naim than for loudspeakers, but Naim Audio's new Ovator S-600 might just change all that. There's enough innovation here to fill a review-length discussion, but the main feature of the system is the BMR (Balanced Mode Radiator) midrange/tweeter. The latter covers the entire spectrum from 380Hz to above the audible range. The dispersion is claimed to be similar that of a conventional midrange and tweeter array, but with the superior coherence possible when all the mid/high frequencies are coming from the same location. A brief listen indicated more than a little promise. The BMR also seems to be ideally suited to a center channel design, though there appear to be no immediate plans to offer one. The S-600 is expected to sell for just north of $10,000. A somewhat smaller, less expensive sibling is also expected.

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RMAF-II: Audio From the Top of the World
Thomas J. Norton  |  Oct 14, 2009  | 

The Hegel room was one of the first good-sounding rooms I heard, and remained one of the most affordable. Hegel? It's a Norwegian company that has been doing business almost everywhere in the world for about 20 years, but this is their first serious foray into the U.S. market. A tough time to start, but they come well equipped. The demo featured the H200 integrated amp ($4400), which at 200W per channel is one of the more powerful integrateds around, the CDP2A mk II CD player ($2650), and the new HD10A D/A converter ($1200) featuring USB and SPDIF digital inputs. The speakers that completed the system were the Dali Helicon 400s.

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Rocky Mountain Hi-Fi: The Rocky Mountain Audio Fair 2009
Thomas J. Norton  |  Oct 14, 2009  | 

The 2009 Rocky Mountain Audio Fest was held earlier this month in Denver, Colorado, as it has for several years now. While my main beat these days is home theater, both for <I>Ultimate AV</I> and, increasingly, for <I>Home Theater </I> magazine, once an audiophile always an audiophile, so I was anxious to find out what was happening in the world of hair-shirt Hi-Fi.

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Rocky Mountain High-Fi
Thomas J. Norton  |  Oct 22, 2014  | 
The annual Rocky Mountain Audio Fest was held in early October in the Marriott Hotel at the Denver Tech Center. For at least the past 10 years this has been the biggest of the many audio shows now jostling for position around the U.S. Depending on who you ask, the Newport Beach (CA) show, held in June, is nipping at its heels but isn’t quite there yet.

Manufacturers (not to mention the press) must be tearing what’s left of their hair out trying to support all these shows, which now include RMAF, Newport, (northern) California, Chicago, New York City, Washington D.C., and Toronto. Let me know if I’ve missed one! And this doesn’t even include the trade-only CES (and, for some, CEDIA EXPO). For small manufacturers this is a major expense, and many of them only attend one or two. If they support two, it’s most likely they’ll include RMAF and CES).

Unlike many present-day audiophiles I keep one foot in the audio/video world of home theater and surround sound and the other in the 2-channel world of high-end audio. I regret that multichannel, even for music alone, remains anathema to many audio fans. As for film sound, for many that’s clearly the spawn of the devil...

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Room Enough? Tales of Moving and AV Room Setup
Thomas J. Norton  |  Sep 15, 2015  | 
Moving, either across town or across country is up there with life's highest stress producers, just below a death in the family, divorce, being fired, or taxes. And as I've alluded to in previous blogs, when an audiophile or home theater enthusiast is involved (and many of us are both), all bets are off as to which of these events is the worst! I’ve written a bit about my recent move before, but there’s always more to say...
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Samsung's Age of Ultra
Thomas J. Norton  |  Apr 07, 2015  | 
Last week Samsung held a launch party for its new SUHD Ultra HDTVs (forgive the redundancy!) in New York City. They kindly flew me from my new digs in northwest Florida to attend. New York based S&&V Editor Rob Sabin was there also, along with most of the consumer electronics press.

Two of the new Samsung SUHD LCD sets are the first consumer sets to support the new high dynamic range (HDR) technology that, along with a wider color gamut, a deeper color bit depth, and (of course) 4K resolution (3840 x 2160 pixels) are all central to a complete picture of what Ultra HD is all about...

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Sci-Fi In the Early Days of CGI
Thomas J. Norton  |  Oct 06, 2020  | 
Most sci-fi fans have their favorite genre films from each decade. The 1980s had more than their share of them. There would be plenty of votes for the second and third Star Wars releases: The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi. Star Trek TOS would also crash the party with perhaps the best sci-fi trilogy of all: The Wrath of Khan, The Search for Spock, and The Voyage Home. There were one-shot candidates as well, including Aliens, Cocoon, Inner Space, War Games, Enemy Mine, and, of course, E.T.

Yes, the ‘80s were a good time for sci-fi. Even more amazing is the fact that most of these films used only physical (practical) effects; CGI was barely a buzzword. But two live-action films from the first half of the decade hinted at what was to come. Tron made an attempt at using computer generated images, though many of the effects were supplemented by animation. But it was another film from the ‘80s that more clearly pointed the way to the future: The Last Starfighter.

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Screen Musings & Why 2 Screens Are Better Than 1
Thomas J. Norton  |  Aug 02, 2016  | 
With a near constant steam of new Ultra HD sets cycling in and out of my system, I’ve been slow in mounting my two projection screens, a 96-inch-wide wide, Stewart Filmscren StudioTek 130 (gain 1.3) and an 87-inch-wide, 16:9, Elite Primevision PowerMaxTension (gain 1.1). Both are retractable, which serves several purposes...
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Screen Shot
Thomas J. Norton  |  Aug 01, 2006  | 

There's an interesting story behind the photo of the Samsung rear projection set that appears on the home page and in the product review. As most of you know, such photos are almost never taken directly from a television showing an actual image. Instead, the image is inserted later into a blank screen photo of the set using a computer program, most often Photoshop. This program allows nearly any photo to be resized and reconfigured to fit a television screen originally shot at any angle.

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Searching for Mr. Big Screen
Thomas J. Norton  |  Feb 02, 2016  | 
Living in coastal northwest Florida has its benefits, but first-rate movie theaters isn’t one of them. In moving from the Los Angeles area last year I left behind some of the best movie theaters in the country...
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SED Gets Closer
Thomas J. Norton  |  Oct 09, 2006  | 

So did the puppet image in the last photo turn into a Sumo wrestler? Not quite. I couldn't snag a screen shot if the puppet because of a strange interaction between the screen image and my digital camera (FM reported the same thing). But for some reason this photo came out OK. The image on the SED's screen wasn't his blue; that's a camera issue.

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SED Puppetoons
Thomas J. Norton  |  Oct 09, 2006  | 

The SED demo included this puppet performance (this is a direct shot of the live action, not a screen shot from the SED) so we coulde compare live vs Memorex.

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Seeing ‘Oppenheimer’ in IMAX…and Skipping ‘Barbie’
Thomas J. Norton  |  Aug 08, 2023  | 
OK, I haven't seen Barbie. Nor do I have any intention of doing so, even it if shows up for free on a streaming service. My only...ah...exposure to Barbie was in the Toy Story franchise, where she was basically a third-stringer. But Barbie was a apparently big deal for years for young girls, who are now all grown up and yearn for nostalgia wrapped around some new-fashioned man-shaming.

But I did see Oppenheimer in my local IMAX...

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Serenity in a Star Wars Universe
Thomas J. Norton  |  Nov 02, 2005  | 

The DVD of <I>Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith</I> hits the video stores this week. Fox didn't send us an advanced screener. Perhaps they read the rather negative review I wrote last summer during the film's <A HREF="http://www.guidetohometheater.com/thomasjnorton/505tjn/index1.html">thea... release</A>! I'll have more to say about the movie, and about the DVD release, in the upcoming November 2005 <I>UAV</I> eNewsletter, scheduled to be mailed out next week. You do subscribe, don't you? (If not, simply <A HREF="http://www.ultimateavmag.com/newsletter_subscribe/?Your%20E-mail"> click here</A> to sign up. It's free.)

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Sharp Does Blu-ray
Thomas J. Norton  |  Oct 08, 2006  |  First Published: Oct 09, 2006  | 

Sharp was only one of a number of manufacturer's showing new Blu-ray recorder/players, most of them also including hard drives. Sharp's was particularly classy, with a wood-grained top. None of these recorders are destined for the U.S. market.

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