Audio Video News

This Saturday, April 21, marks the sixth edition of Record Store Day, a holiday for vinylphiles worldwide. In an age of music streaming services and online shopping, it's a chance to give a little back to the independently owned brick and mortar shops that nurtured your addiction in the first place, and help keep it alive today.

Father's Day is upon us again, graduations have just gone by - and chances are you may not have quite finished all of your shopping. Don't worry, the staff of Sound+Vision is here to help.

Join PopSci and Samsung on Tuesday June 19, 2012 at 1pm EST for an exclusive live Facebook Q&A.

Regional hi-fi shows are sprouting up all over North America. We now have the Rocky Mountain Audio Fest in Denver, T.H.E. Show in Newport Beach, AXPONA in Jacksonville, and NYC’s New York Audio and A/V show. And each year Montreal gets its own event, Salon Son & Image. Wouldn’t it be great if they also held one in Toronto?

Criterion Games wants wanted their latest open-world crashathon racer Need for Speed: Most Wanted (out today for PC, PS3, Vita, Xbox 360) to be a more film-like experience. So they hired BAFTA Award nominee Vanesa Lorena Tate to take on audio lead responsibilities. She’s been composing since she was four years old and has worked on such films as Hellboy 2: The Golden Army and two Harry Potter flicks: The Order of the Phoenix and The Deathly Hallows part 2 in addition to Criterion’s last Need for Speed, 2010’s Hot Pursuit.

It's that gadget-buying time of year again, and in case you haven't noticed, there's been something of a mobile-device convergence going on lately, with tablets shrinking and smartphones getting bigger and bigger. Under the hood, they're all very similar to begin with, so it shouldn't come as much of a surprise.

But is there a compelling reason for S+V readers to pick up one of these barely-pocketable chunks of Gorilla Glass and plastic? To find out, we took a look at three of the current leaders in the competition for your inside jacket pocket: HTC's Windows Phone 8x and Droid DNA, as well as Samsung's boundary- (and pocket-) stretching Galaxy Note II.

If 2011 was the year that tablets took over, 2012 was unquestionably the year of the headphone. The market for headphones has exploded, and Sound+Vision has stepped up its coverage to handle the flow, with reviews of new ‘phones, along with related gear such as portable and desktop speakers, amps, and DACs appearing on a weekly basis at soundandvisionmag.com.