Daniel Kumin

It's been a little while since I've had a Sony receiver up on the gear rack, so I was looking forward to renewing the acquaintance, especially?as our subject is a mid-market model, and Sony has always been fiercely competitive at the most popular price points. So it's not too surprising to find its new STR-DN1030 jammed with features that were strictly the stuff of high-end models perhaps 18 months ago: AirPlay compatibility, DLNA network audio streaming via Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and an iPhone/Android control app, to name just some.

Virtually all music recordings and film soundtracks are intended by their creators to be heard over speakers. There’s good reason for that: Speakers yield the most natural tone and the most accurate spatial presentation — qualities that are difficult or impossible to match via any sort of headphone listening. But what kind of speakers should you buy?

Who wouldn’t want to play their growing horde of audio files – the same ones that feed the iPod and iTunes — on the “big” system, with big-system volume, quality, and impact?

Nobody, that’s who.

I have seen the future, and it is wireless. Wireless data, wireless music, wireless speakers, wireless keyboards, and now, wireless HDMI hi-def video. (Of course, all these things still need to be plugged into the wall, for AC power. Perhaps, somewhere on the Other Side, Nikola Tesla is still working on that.)

Wireless HDMI gets us that much closer to the Jetsonian ideal of the sheet-of-glass video screen floating unencumbered on a wall – without having to tear down that wall to run wires.