Audioholics Featured Reviews & Articles

Do you want a theater modeled on the one used by Christopher Nolan, James Cameron, and JJ Abrams to view their movies? IMAX will build you your own Private Theater - in your own home. While the price hasn't been announced, if you have to ask, we're pretty sure you can't afford it. With custom speakers, a system that does daily speaker calibrations, a floor to ceiling, wall to wall curved screen, and dual 4k projectors, this is the theater of your dreams. Right now, IMAX is waiting to start designing your Private Theater. Will we see an IMAX certification program like THX does? Time will tell.

Sorry if you had your brains explode all over your monitor, but it happened to us too. As revealed in this week's Emotiva Podcast, Emotiva has acquired Bob Carver LLC. Emotiva, long known to the Audioholics of the world as the go-to manufacturer for Internet Direct amplifiers, has a history of providing solid-state amplifiers at a fraction of the price of the brick and mortar competition. Bob Carver, a literal giant in the field of amplifiers, has a long history in the world of high-end audio through his companies which include the well-respected Sunfire. To top it all off, Bob Carver will now be working with Emotiva on R&D. The implications are mind-boggling.

DTS announced something recently that didn't get much play. The company launched its new DTS-HD Layered Audio technology. What this is, is a way to allow online media services to stream (on-demand) adaptive bit-rate files from a single encode. DTS-HD Layered Audio takes the best stuff from the DTS-HD codec and uses it to create and store adaptive bit-rate audio streams—all from a single encode. So if you're streaming to a mobile product that isn't running at blazing 4G speeds yet, you can have them pull from a lower bitrate encoded stream. At the same time broadcast quality streaming is possible for those on higher bandwidth connections. DTS demoed the technology at NAB this year and it works as advertised.

Allow us all to introduce to you to: audiogurus.com! Audioholics and Audioholics Store have always been two separate companies, and we feel that it's now safe to end the confusion. The easiest way to do that is to rename the store and re-brand it on its very own top level domain. So after much thought, we've all decided to do just that. It's ready to fly on its own. Its wings have matured and the folks associated with the Store are ready to succeed in the world of audio and video electronics without the confusion of sharing a name with an impartial online A/V review magazine. Audiogurus will continue to provide the same great service, product selection, 30-day return and warranty policies as the original Audioholics E-Store, and Audioholics will still have a great relationship with the folks who run it. You will soon see the Store transition in name and URL from store.audioholics.com to audiogurus.com. It’s a great new direction for all parties involved and we're very excited to see the store get to this level!

The battle for television is on...in fact, it HAS been on for years now. It's been in motion ever since streaming media services like Hulu, Netflix and iTunes started infiltrated their once-protected airspace. Now, a new company, Aereo, threatens the admittedly untenable status quo. Aereo isn't a mispronounced new sandwich cookie, it's a service that, similar to PlayLater, Ivi.tv and FilmOn, justifies its existence through legal technicalities, but which nevertheless faces an uphill battle. But Aereo has some serious backing from IAC and its Chairman and Senior Executive, Barry Diller—and that's good for something. Aereo's service is based on providing an individual antenna for every subscriber, thus creating (in it's definition) a "private transmission" to the user. At that point, Aereo allows for DVR recording and playback services and, of course, access to the live antenna broadcasts available.

Polk Audio and Definitive Technologies ('Def Tech' to its fans) are brands that most audiophiles and audioholics alike are familiar with. So when parent company DEI Holdings formed a new division, that united the brands under a more visible roof, we thought, "That's some pretty significant news." And it is. Sound United is the new division and it will oversee Polk Audio, Definitive Technology and also BOOM. While the three brands will stay separate and maintain their own identities and development teams, Sound United allows the diversity of the brands to be brought together so that each can serve the same consumer in different ways. It's not that DEI wasn't already doing this, but now they have a name by which to supply solutions for all of the various areas.

That's right, SVS and Audioholics are teaming up once again to allow YOU to enter and win a pair of SVS Ultra Tower Speakers. All you have to do is answer a few questions telling us why YOU should be one of three people to review the new tower speakers and, if selected, SVS will ship you and two other lucky contestants a pair of the new Ultra Tower speakers. Then, you'll review them and post your review online in our forums. Our forum members will vote on the best written, most useful, and most comprehensive review. The winner gets to keep their speakers!

10 lucky contestants were given the opportunity to write reviews on two brand new SVS subwoofers. Five wrote reviews on the SVS SB-1000 sub, and the other five on the PB-1000 sub. Well the reviews are IN! Vote for your favorite (best-written, most thorough, schnazziest, etc) review in the poll above and make any comments to substantiate your vote (and perhaps sway others) in the corresponding thread. Check out the links to the reviews below, which are in the same order as the polls.

Sanus has an interesting PR campaign going on this week. The company is exposing a little-known safety concern with flat panel TVs: They can fall on your kids. Flat Panel TVs are cool, but when your toddler of yesteryear used the ole' 32" CRT o pull himself up into a standing position there was no danger of the thing falling on top of him... it weighed 150 pounds (and wouldn't budge). Not so with today's flat panels, which can tend to be tipsy and, on average, weigh anywhere from 30-60 pounds (or more, of course) depending on the size.