Home Theater News & Reviews

We've tested A LOT of factory designed and manufactured subwoofers here at Audioholics. This time we built and tested our own with the Creative Sound Solutions SDX12. Does the Creative Sound Solutions SDX12 12" sealed subwoofer DIY kit buy you more performance than commercial offerings? Check out how the SDX12 performed compared to similarly priced commercial offerings.

RBH Sound unveiled a new flagship SVTRS active speaker system that rocked the 2020 Florida Expo show. This large, powerful speaker is truly a sight (and sound) to behold. These titans stand nearly eight feet tall and weigh 310 lbs and offer bass extension down to single digits. RBH claims this new system offers significant advantages over their Status 8T speakers while being slightly less expensive along with including its own state-of-the-art amplifier and DSP tuning. Does Audioholics have a new reference speaker to dethrone the mighty Status 8Ts? Read on to find out!

Rotel’s high-end Michi brand is making a comeback after a long hiatus with three new audiophile stereo components. The Michi P5 Control Amplifier ($4K), S5 Stereo Amplifier ($7K), and M8 Monoblock Amplifier ($7K) are Rotel’s new flagship audio offerings, promising superb build quality, elegant design, and unshakeable 2CH performance. Read on to learn more.

RSL CG3, CG23, Speedwoofer 10S 5.1 Speaker System Giveaway is Here! Audioholics has partnered with RSL to give away the brand new "white" variant on their classic CG3 Series Home Theater Speaker System ($1,079.00 value)! Contest ends March 7th, 2020 so ENTER NOW to win BIG!

TiVo’s EDGE DVRs are the company’s first offerings to support Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision 4K HDR video. They can also skip entire commercial breaks automatically. The EDGE for cable ($399) and EDGE for antenna ($349) both include 2 TB of hard drive space for recording up to 300 hours of HD video. Read on to learn more.

Many of today’s vented subwoofers and full-range tower speakers offer port plugs for sealing the cabinet and making them behave like sealed speakers. But this does not result in a true acoustic suspension system, which is quite a different animal altogether from a merely “sealed” speaker. Let’s explore the difference between acoustic suspension and sealed and see if today’s designers aren’t missing an opportunity to make some great products.

Not long after Dolby announced the Home Atmos format, Audioholics ran some competing predictions about its potential for success and failure. Now, more than five years later, we take stock of how Home Atmos has panned out and which predictions were right and which were also wrong. Read our assessment of where Dolby Atmos stands today relating to the home theater environment.

Definitive Technology has expanded its popular Demand Series of loudspeakers with the addition of the D15 towers ($3,398/pair), the D17 towers, ($4,598/pair), and the D5C center channel speaker ($799/each). These new speakers are designed to “deliver full-range, room-filling sound and elegant styling for enthusiasts seeking a premium listening experience.” The new Demand Series tower speakers feature newly-developed carbon fiber woofers and dual side-firing passive radiators. Read on to learn more.

Stereo Bass- Myth or fact? A must have feature for some, but neglected by most. In this article Audioholics will explore the concept of stereo bass, introduce are preferred term of bassiousness (base-shush-ness), and provide some guidance on maximizing it’s effect. We also provide our own take on how we choose to incorporate stereo bass into our own systems, or not due to inherent tradeoffs. To find out what we think, read on.

VIZIO launched a new and much improved lineup of UHD displays at CES 2020 in Las Vegas, Nevada. The new lineup ranges from the accessible 40-inch V-Series to a massive all-new 85-inch P-Series Quantum X. With a ton of new features and brand new technology along with a series of OLED TVs, the 2020 SmartCast TV lineup from VIZIO is their highest performing and widest range ever.

Bose announced that they would close ALL their retail stores in North America, Europe, Japan, and Australia by the end of 2020 which equated to about 120 stores, but would keep open 130 stores in India, South Korea, and China. How will this affect distribution and marketing for the audio giant? Read on to find out.

How is it that so many audio enthusiasts swear by differences in equipment or recording when we know that the changes made are either non-existant or well below audible thresholds? These effects are not acoustic but rather psychological, so the question becomes: how does the mind pull this trick? The effects of the mind's perception on our experience of sound is far more profound than you might realize. Read on to learn about this bizarre effect that overturns so much of high-fidelity audio.

Yamaha is on their 3rd generation of separates in the Aventage line and we got our hands on their new 11-channel CX-A5200 AV Processor and MX-A5200 amplifier. With their predecessors in our Audioholics Showcase home rack for the last year, we have a great reference to see just how much Yamaha has refined this package with their latest technological advancements. Are the 5200 series models a worthy successor to those they replace? Read our review with detailed measurements to find out.

ATSC 3.0 aka. “Next-Gen TV” is the next step in the evolution of digital broadcast television, and it’s rolling out to over 40 of the largest US television markets in 2020. In a cord-cutting world, it’s great to see the oldest cord of all giving us good reason to spare the scissors. What will ATSC 3.0 compatible hardware give? How about better signal integrity, upgraded audio and video and much more.