Featured Reviews

Acoustic Frontiers has released an Acoustical Measurement system called XTZ Room Analyzer II that is said to be easy to use and it comes in two flavors, Standard and Pro. XTZ contains both the hardware (microphone, soundcard, cabling) and the software required to calibrate your home theater. There are four pieces of functionality that XTZ Room Analyzer provides that is used to complete a system calibration: SPL, Delay, RTA and Frequency Response. This system interfaces with your A/V receiver and external equalization to help you dial in the best response for a better home theater experience. The graphic interface looks pretty cool and the price for these two systems seems quite reasonable.

Auralex introduced their new 2' x 2' x 1" SonoLite fabric wrapped absorption panels at the most recent NAMM show. From our tests, they proved their new SonoLite panels offers the performance and aesthetics you need when fine tuning the acoustics of your theater room. SonoLite is easy to install and it addresses the issues of excessive flutter echo which may arise in a theater room where there is a great deal of parallel hard surface areas (wood floor and drywall ceiling). Best of all, SonoLite is a tool-less solution which doesn’t require any fancy tucking of fabric into pre-installed mounting tracks. Simply apply an adhesive and place them in the problem areas and you’re done. If you find your home theater system to be fatiguing over extended listening sessions, consider evaluating and addressing your room acoustics issues before spending hard earned dollars on upgrading equipment (or even worse, cables). For less money than a cable tweak, Auralex Sonolite ($30 per panel) provides a real solution to potentially transpose your listening experience from good to excellent. Highly recommended.

We've covered Auralex Acoustics a bunch in the past and they've always impressed us as a premier innovator in sound control solutions. At CEDIA, in addition to their new Sustain Bamboo Diffusors, they also showed off their new HD Cinema Series line of acoustical panels. The new panels are specifically designed to cater to the audiophile and home theater market through the use of a variety of shapes and sizes that should have a wide appeal to those looking to tame room acoustics and achieve better sound reproduction. We saw them in person and they are really attractive and present an almost limitless way to increase both the aesthetics and room acoustics of a room.

I've started to become a fan of bamboo. The inexpensive and eco-friendly material has started showing up all over - in furniture, flooring and more... I'm waiting for someone to make bamboo accessories for my car. Anyway, Auralex Acoustics is jumping in feet first and has offered its new Sustain Bamboo Sound Diffusor Series. The new system is made from 100% "eco-friendly" bamboo (as opposed to the non-eco-friendly kind, we guess). I can't help but think that once we use enough of these new products we'll end up back at plastic, which doesn't go extinct or run out...

The SubDude HD is a platform for your subwoofer. Why would you want it? Well, a subwoofer, as you may know, generates a lot of vibration due to the fact that it puts out low frequencies and has a larger driver than most speakers. Well, these vibrations move into your floor and reduce the actual efficiency of the sub. After all, if it's expending energy into moving your furniture around the room, its not putting all of its energy potential into making sound waves. Plus it can just be a nuisance - as anyone who has experienced dishes rattling in their cupboards during a bass-heavy scene can testify.

You may have seen the Typhonics SP-Tiles. They are the acoustical foam room treatments in the shape of speakers. Not exactly appealing to your better half? Well we've got some suggestions on that front. For a mere $54 a pop, you can use double-sided tape to stick these to your wall. They suggest both in front and behind your listening position. We're guessing your spouse will suggest a placement somewhere closer to the curb.

GiK Acoustics has been one of the most popular online dealers of room acoustics for their quality products at no-nonsense pricing. They've consistently met and exceeded their customer's needs by providing products that they often didn't even know that they needed. Once again they are doing the same with the introduction of their new Screen Panel. Obviously designed for a studio setting, we think there are more than one Audioholic that would be interested.

For a very reasonable (in this category) $799 (currently $699 on preorder) the AS-EQ1 sub EQ is their new standalone room correction system. A joint venture with Audyssey Labs, a name that is becoming synonymous with room correction, the AS-EQ1 offers computer interface, dual subs, and some very interesting aesthetics. For those that want an easy to use room correction system, the AS-EQ1 is just what the doctor ordered. It's built to work with existing technology without overriding anything, it is easy to setup and maintain, and it lets you know exactly what it did via pretty graphs.

I very rarely say anything unequivocal in a review. Hold on to your hats 'cause I'm gonna to do it now. The GiK Tri-Traps will improve the sound in your room. They will. It doesn't matter the speaker or the amp. The DVD player or the processor. The Tri-Traps will help curb your bass problems. Are they a panacea? Will the fix everything? No, of course not. But ask any acoustical expert and you'll find that corner bass trapping is high up on their list of "first steps to a better sounding room."