Steve Guttenberg

Vintage Gear
Acoustic Research AR-3 Speakers
Steve Guttenberg  |  May 04, 2012
Edgar Villchur didn’t set out to start a speaker company; he just wanted to license his acoustic suspension designs to other speaker companies. In the early ’50s, he shopped the concept to the biggest names in the business, but not a single one was interested. So Villchur started Acoustic Research in 1952, and his very first speaker, the AR-1, was an immediate hit. Villchur’s design strategy used the elasticity of air within a sealed cabinet to provide the restoring force for the driver, which allowed his relatively small speakers to produce deep, low-distortion bass.
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Vintage Gear
Nakamichi Dragon Cassette Deck
Steve Guttenberg  |  Apr 13, 2012
LPs and 45-rpm singles remained the unchallenged music formats throughout the 1950s, 1960s, and well into the 1970s when the Compact Cassette really took off. Cassettes were more portable and didn’t suffer from scratches and surface noise issues (but tape hiss could be a problem). The cassette was also the first recordable format to garner a bona-fide, mass-market foothold.
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The S&V Interview
Steven Wilson: Getting Surrounded With Music
Steve Guttenberg  |  Apr 05, 2012
Steven Wilson is best known as the founder, lead guitarist, singer, and songwriter of the progressive rock band Porcupine Tree, but he’s becoming the go-to man for remixing classic rock recordings into 5.1 surround for DVD and Blu-ray. His recent solo album, Grace for Drowning, proves he’s just as adept in creating new music that fully exploits the surround soundscape.
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Audio Separates Buying TipsAV Receiver Buying TipsAV Receiver SetupAV Receiver TechSpeaker Buying TipsSpeaker SetupSpeaker Tech
How to Choose a Home Theater for Movies or Music
Steve Guttenberg  |  Aug 25, 2011
Selecting audio components is one of the more daunting tasks that any serious home theater enthusiast faces. On the surface, it seems evident that if you just go out and buy the best components you can afford, they’ll sound great with both movies and music. And that’s generally true: A better system will more accurately reproduce the waveforms you feed it, irrespective of whether they come from a movie or music. But it’s often not that simple. While assembling a home theater system that’s equally spectacular with movies and music may be a laudable goal, unless you have unlimited funds, you’ll probably have compromises to make. At that point, you might want to steer the system’s performance strengths one way or the other with the right mix of speakers and electronics. But how do you go about matching these up?
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Bookshelf Speaker Reviews
Thiel SCS4 Speaker System
Steve Guttenberg  |  May 12, 2008
Sonic sorcery.

Jim Thiel must be a magician. At least that’s what I thought when I first heard his newest speaker, the SCS4. I was listening to an a cappella band, and the guys were all there—not just the voices, but I felt like the Persuasions were in the room with me. The sound was so utterly natural; it was as if the speakers weren’t doing anything.

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Tower Speaker Reviews
Focal Chorus 800 V Speaker System
Steve Guttenberg  |  Mar 10, 2008
I'm a big Samuel L. Jackson fan, but I didn't totally buy his performance in Black Snake Moan. Jackson plays a righteous old man who takes in a trashy nymphet (Christina Ricci) to set her straight. I was especially intrigued with the story because Jackson's character was loosely based on R.L. Burnside, who didn't just sing the blues, he lived them. Up to the point where Jackson picked up his guitar, he was perfectly fine. But when he started to sing, his performance didn't ring true. It comes down to authenticity. Acting is one thing; singing with a voice that sounds so rough it bleeds is something else. Come to think of it, I could say the same about great speakers. It's one thing to design a speaker that measures well, but that doesn't necessarily make for a great-sounding speaker.
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Tower Speaker Reviews
Paradigm Monitor Series v.5 Speaker System
Steve Guttenberg  |  Feb 11, 2008
Are you experienced?

At its best, home theater is all about making movies feel so real you'd swear you're there. And not just the wham-bam flicks; some of my best experiences have come from straight-ahead dramas. That was absolutely the case with Breach, a chilling portrait of FBI agent Robert Hanssen, the man who sold countless security secrets to the Soviet Union for over 20 years. Actor Chris Cooper's portrayal of the psychopathic traitor totally mesmerized me, but I also credit Paradigm's fifth revision of their Monitor Series speakers for keeping my attention glued to the screen. Every detail of the sound—from the claustrophobic acoustics of Hanssen's office and the whirring noise of his computers' cooling fans, to the dense traffic snarl of Washington, D.C. streets—were all so effortlessly presented that I never thought about the speakers. That's the Zen of it all. When everything's just right, you don't realize the speakers are there.

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The S&V InterviewCustom Installation How-ToHome Movie Theaters
The Greatest Show on Earth!
Steve Guttenberg  |  Feb 05, 2008
When it comes to home theaters, I thought I'd seen it all. But nothing's come close to this. First, I'm going to try to describe the sheer magnitude of Jeremy Kipnis' theater. His Stewart Snowmatte laboratory-grade screen is the biggest I've ever seen in a home, and in the back of the theater, there's a Sony ultra-high-resolution (4,096-by-2,160) SRX-S110 digital projector. I'm looking everywhere, jotting down questions, and Kipnis sounds almost giddy talking about his theater's capabilities. He refers to his baby, the Kipnis Studio Standard (KSS), as "The Greatest Show on Earth." And from the looks of it, he may be right.
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Tower Speaker Reviews
Cinepro Mighty System Theater
Steve Guttenberg  |  Feb 04, 2008  |  Published: Jan 04, 2008
Pump it up!

Cinepro's demo at the 2007 Custom Electronic Design & Installation Association (CEDIA) show in Denver made a powerful impression on my eardrums. I'm no power-hungry audiophile—far from it—but I immediately understood what Cinepro is all about.

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Tower Speaker Reviews
Anthony Gallo Acoustics Reference AV Speaker System
Steve Guttenberg  |  Dec 20, 2007
Splendiferous spheres.

Billed as Ron Carter: The Master @ 70, it was a birthday celebration of the legendary jazz bass player's career—and the music at that early summer jazz concert at Carnegie Hall was truly magical. The highlight of the night arrived when Carter played selections from Miles Davis' Kind of Blue album with Herbie Hancock on piano, Wayne Shorter on sax, and Billy Cobham on drums. I could hear the quartet's music reflecting off the stage's rear wall while it simultaneously floated above the audience in the hall. The sound was so masterfully mixed, I couldn't tell for sure how much of what I heard was the actual instruments or Carnegie Hall's discreetly amplified sound system. It stands as one of those "is it live or...." moments. The next day, I played a stack of Ron Carter CDs over Anthony Gallo Acoustics' new Reference AV speakers and TR-2 subwoofer. The sound was so sweet, I experienced that déjà vu feeling all over again.

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