Featured Reviews & Articles

No matter how good of a loudspeaker system you have, it's inconsequential to how it will perform in your room if it isn't properly placed and set up. It is imperative to ensure there is a direct path of sound from all of the drivers of your center channel to the listening seats without any obstructions such as theater chairs or people's heads. This article discusses how to tweak the positioning of your center channel speaker and also improve the base or stand it sits on to eliminate harmful resonances. We highly recommend you take the time to properly place and set up all of your speakers, and give some extra attention to the center channel as it will repay you in dividends when trying to understand what Bane is saying while crushing Batman's back.

We know, we know...you are an expert in everything. Mounting a TV, wiring an outlet, framing a wall, programming a home automation system, or building a DIY speaker—you've got it covered. If only that were true. The truth is, we all need help. Coming from the custom install world, I can attest to the horrible mistakes that can be made when someone chooses not to ask for help. Depending on what you're doing, the consequences of guessing could be minor (having a speaker a few dB too loud/quiet) to all-out catastrophic (having a TV fall down, which scares the cat who then darts off and knocks over a candle, which then catches the curtains on fire, and then your entire home burns down, but the fire spreads over a clothes line and burns down the entire city block, which causes a local chemical factory to catch fire and explode, leading to a toxic cloud floating across the world and hurting millions of people). Seriously, don't create a toxic cloud, ask for help.

At Audioholics we love audio. We love it. Wait, scratch that... we love GOOD audio. And with that said, it's with great pain that we ride in a vehicle that doesn't live up to the standards of an audioholic. And believe me when I say that MOST vehicle sound systems don't live up to those standards. But even taking into account that most vehicles will never sound as good as a well-tuned home theater system, there was one car that was absolutely horrendous. This car was the worst. It had boomy bass that didn't play low, nor did it know enough to call it quits when it received frequency content it had no business trying to reproduce. A car with high frequencies that used to attract cats in heat from across the neighborhood and cause bleeding in the ears of small children. A car who's audio system could turn even your favorite song into a poisonous cacophony of grating chord-filled agony.

We have reached a marvelous time where HDTV is not only affordable, but also low profile enough to get the green light from our wives to hang on a wall in the comforts of our own bedrooms. This article provides useful tips on how to hide cabling connected to your HDTV to ensure the cleanest looking install possible. This is a quick and easy method for cleaning up that cable mess for a more aesthetically pleasing installation that will also improve the enjoyment you get out of your system.

In our last article The New Home Theater PC – Part 1, we explored the past failures of HTPC to attract consumers en masse, and also discussed the various deficiencies that lead to the decline of the HTPC as a viable consumer product in the CE marketplace. More importantly, however, we touched upon what consumers want and what the NEW Home Theater PC looks like in this day and age of downloadable content. In this final installment, we'll walk through several scenarios and configurations and talk about using the laptop as the New Home Theater PC to enable streaming content and fulfill the promises of the original HTPC – but without the hassle or configuration problems typically associated with the genre.

I think it's pretty safe to say that the traditional Home Theater PC is dead... at least it's dead insofar as it has completely failed to reach the mass market in an accessible and easy-to-use way. There are many reasons for this, but let's just touch upon a few before we present some of the solutions for those wishing to get Internet content on their televisions without having to incur a ton of hassle or purchase a brand new set with integrated network features.

There is an old axiom I love to live by, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. Just because your speakers are old, doesn’t mean they can’t still perform as good and sometimes better than the models that replace them from the very same company. When I noticed my JBL Pro III speakers weren’t sounded as good as I remembered, I realized it was time to take some action. My beloved little speakers fell victim of aging so I elected the services of a company called Simply Speakers to restore them to their original working condition. Not only did they oblige, but they took it to the next level by doing a first rate job while also offering a modification to improve their performance. They proved to me that it’s hip to be vintage. If you’ve got some old speakers lying around that you’re fond of in need of a little TLC, I highly recommend Simply Speakers as your #1 choice for the task.

In “Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith,” Chancellor Palpatine invites Jedi warrior Anakin Skywalker into his impressive office overlooking the capital Galactic City. Home theater owner Steve Simon had a pivotal moment as well, though his likely didn’t involve Jedi forces and dark sides. Simon wanted to convert part of his garage into a home theater, and he thought he’d decorate it with the Star Wars memorabilia he had collected over the years.

It’s one thing to hire an installer to create the ultimate home theater dream room. It’s an entirely different story (and a fun one) to create that room all by yourself—for less than five grand. While many home theater creations flaunt wealth in our faces, Stephen Hopkins was all about making us jealous for what he didn’t spend. "Budget was a definite concern," Stephen says. "Since we were building the house (our first) there was very little budget available for the theater itself."