Home theater

Let's hear it for Oscar nominees for sound

There are two Oscar categories for best sound: best sound editing and best sound mixing. The sound editor designs and pre-plans the sound for the film. If it's a special-effects movie like "Avatar," the sound editor supervises the crew charged with creating the film's soundscape, including all of the sound effects.

Sound editors and mixers are the Rodney Dangerfields of the film biz; they don't get any respect. Look for their names at the very end of the credits, way, way down there with the caterers, hair stylists, and dog wranglers. Yet their mission is near impossible: create a seamless soundtrack that is, in fact, constructed from thousands of sonic fragments.

It's a colossal multichannel jigsaw puzzle, except a lot of the pieces don't fit. It's the mixers' soundtrack machinations that thrust the audience into the reality of the film they're experiencing--the subterfuge totally works--most viewers believe they're watching a literal record of what the camera "saw" and what the microphones "heard." Depending on the type of movie you're watching, most, sometimes 90 percent of the sound was recorded after the film was shot.

The mixers typically work on 15- to 20-second sections of a film, running the sequence over and over, constantly tweaking the balances. They might get hung up on a single music cue for 2 hours. Movies still run at 24 frames per second, and each frame of picture might have hundreds of sound elements. There are background tracks (traffic, wind noise, etc), specific effects tracks (gun shots, birds chirping, etc), foreground dialogue tracks, background dialog (for crowd scenes), plus lots and lots of music tracks.

Music mixing always requires finesse, moving the music in relationship to the picture as little as two frames can completely shift its impact on the scene. Moving a bar here, a downbeat there--it's all about how the music blends with the effects and dialogue--it's easy to lose it. Changes in the music's equalization, balance, and volume can change from picture cut to cut.

Mixing a film is a highly technical endeavor, but at the end of the day, it's not a nuts-and-bolts medium, the film has to feel right. Picture editing dictates the internal rhythms, but sound pushes the film; it has all the little engines that make things happen. It's what gets you caught up in the emotions of the story.… Read more

Audiophile conundrum: Does more equal better?

Maybe it's an American thing; we love big stuff. We equate size with quality, and think that exquisitely designed, silly, expensive products are always better than more affordable alternatives. Is the new iPod always better than last year's model? Then again, how do you define "better"?

A lot of audiophiles believe more watts, more power, higher digital sampling rates, higher resolution, heavier turntable platters, speakers with more drivers, bigger drivers, or more channels of sound will always produce better sound. It ain't necessarily so.

Don't get me wrong, I love high-end audio. But I … Read more

Park Avenue Audio, a kinder and gentler high-end store

When I first met Dennis Yetikyel at Park Avenue Audio last year, I didn't realize he was the owner of the store. He's so laid-back and easygoing I just thought he was one of the guys who worked there. The store was founded in 1976 as a family business by Yetikyel's granddad, so it's definitely a mainstay in the New York City high-end audio scene. Yetikyel started working at Park when he was 16; he now heads a staff of eighteen people.

Park has a welcoming vibe and a carefully selected roster of brands for its … Read more

Poll: Is 7.1 channel home theater a bust?

I'm a big proponent of stereo home theater, but I'd quickly concede that most home theater buyers are looking for multichannel systems. Of all the available multichannel options--11.1, 9.1, 7.1, 6.1, and 5.1 --that last one is the most popular, but that hasn't stopped most manufacturers from only offering 7.1-channel models. Budget-priced models are the only 5.1 receivers you can buy.

And in 2009, Dolby Pro-Logic IIz, which featured two additional "height" channels, bumped the total for some receivers to 9.1 channels, even though our listening tests here at CNET … Read more

Panasonic Blu-ray player incorporates 19th-century audio tech

My expectations heading into the Panasonic press event on Wednesday in New York City were pretty low. I'm the audio guy and most of the hubbub was focused on new plasma and LCD displays, and Blu-ray players.

I sat there, eyes glazing over, as Panasonic spokespeople prattled on about "exciting" new advances in Viera Link and PHL Reference Chroma Processor Plus technologies--good times for me! But then something amazing happened: they mentioned sound quality! Trust me, that doesn't happen very often at these things, so I was all ears.

First, the new DMP-BD85 Blu-ray player features an HDMI Jitter Purifier, which, according to Panasonic, "affords clear, robust bass sounds faithful to the original." That sounds like something the PR department dreamed up, but it may be useful. We'll see.

Then they said the DMP-BD85 uses a Digital Tube Sound Simulator to produce the warm sound quality associated with vacuum tube amplifiers! What? They even had a small plastic display box fitted with three small tubes to illustrate the concept. DMP-BD85 owners can select between the "sound" of three different tube effects over the HDMI and 7.1-channel analog audio outputs (or turn off the effect and hear unprocessed sound). They didn't mention it, but this sort of sonic enhancement probably won't be compatible with Dolby or DTS soundtracks. That leaves DVDs, Blu-rays, and CDs encoded with PCM audio.… Read more

Marantz PM5003 amplifier: High-end audio bliss for $450?

I have no idea why giant electronics companies like Sony, Panasonic, Sharp, or Samsung never really tried to enter the audiophile market in the U.S.

Sure, Sony's very first SACD player, the $5,000 SCD-1 was a spectacularly good-sounding component; Sharp made an exotic, very high-end digital amplifier a few years ago; and back in the 1970s Panasonic's Technics gear was pretty impressive. I'm sure those companies are still producing no-holds-barred audio for their home markets. So the know-how is there, but apparently little interest in sending it here.

The first-generation Marantz audio products were designed and built by Saul B. Marantz in his home in Kew Gardens, New York, in the 1950s. The company truly advanced the state of the art, and those early Marantz designs now fetch big bucks on eBay. By the 1960s Marantz started building gear in Japan, and the company was sold and resold over the intervening decades. But through good times and bad, Marantz stayed true to its roots and always made above-average-sounding products, bettering the offerings from larger companies like Sony and Panasonic sold in the U.S.

Robert J. Reina's enthusiastic Marantz PM5003 integrated amplifier review in the January 2010 issue of Stereophile started me thinking about affordable high-quality gear from mainstream manufacturers. Yes, it can happen.

The Marantz PM5003 ($450) is a stereo integrated amplifier; it puts out 40 watts per channel. It was designed in Japan and made in China.

Do you have a turntable? Great, you can plug it directly into the PM5003; it has a rather sophisticated moving-magnet phono stage that'll bring out the very best sound from your records. The PM5003 also has five line-level inputs, two record outputs, a balance control, a headphone amplifier, treble, bass, and loudness controls. … Read more

Movies or music? Which do you enjoy more at home?

Yes, it might seem reasonable to expect that a home theater system will automatically sound equally good with movies and music, but that's not easy to do. With speakers especially, the difference in performance requirements is significant.

And though there are some specific models from Klipsch and Dynaudio that are adept with both forms of entertainment, most speakers skew one way or another. For music, overall sound quality is the top priority, for home theater it's more about clarity and the ability to handle the extreme dynamic range of special effects such as explosions.

For maximum home theater thrills you'll need as much power as you can afford, a potent subwoofer, and speakers that perfectly blend with said sub. With home theater your attention is focused on the picture; sound plays a supportive role. As long as the receiver and speakers don't overtly distort when they're playing at the volume level you want, and there's enough subwoofer bass to make special effects come alive, it's mission-accomplished time. Achieving reasonably good home theater sound isn't all that demanding from an equipment point of view, but careful speaker setup and room placement are crucial for best results.… Read more

How to set up iTunes Home Sharing

Editor's note: This guide was written about an older version of iTunes. For details on linking your iOS devices with newer versions of iTunes, see our story here: How to use home sharing on your iPad, iPhone, or iPod.

I have no idea how many MP3s I own. It's not that I'm too lazy to look--the problem is that my collection is scattered between all the computers in my life. I have a few albums on my personal laptop, a few more on my work laptop, and the bulk of my collection on an ancient Apple G4 … Read more

Cheap and easy home theater soundproofing tips

I occasionally get e-mails asking about cheap and easy ways to soundproof a listening room. Readers want to minimize the amount of bass and sound leaking into neighboring apartments or rooms in a house from their home theater.

Bona-fide soundproofing is neither cheap or easy. Anything short of building a "floating" (isolated) recording studio type listening room won't totally soundproof a room. You see, a floating room's ceiling, walls, and floor are acoustically and structurally isolated from its surroundings. Prices vary, but plan on investing at least $10,000 for a professionally installed floating room. After the floating room construction techniques, you can attain more limited success with double sheetrock on the walls. That is, install new double sheetrock walls with an air gap between them and the original walls. Double sheetrock can make a big difference, but it's still far from a cheap or easy solution.

A friend put a layer of lead sheeting under his apartment's finished wood floors to reduce bass transmission to the floor below. It worked, but I'm not so sure about the health concerns from living around that much lead.

But I do have a few tips to reduce sound leakage from one room to another, or between floors of a house or apartment that won't break the bank.

Before we go any further, let's define our goals: sound isolation isn't the same thing as improving room acoustics (I'll cover that in another blog).

Sound is transmitted from one room to another either through structure borne vibrations (wall, ceiling, or floor movement), or through the air. Thick carpets or wall pads won't do much in the way of soundproofing, but they may improve sound quality in the room.… Read more

B&W's diamond tweeters ring truer than ever

British speaker manufacturer Bowers & Wilkins doesn't revise its top-of-the-line 800 Series models often. It must have been a good five years ago when the company first introduced diamond tweeter equipped models.

The 800 Series speakers are not only highly regarded by serious audiophiles, but also they can be found in the best recording studios and mastering houses in the world including Abbey Road Studios in London, George Lucas' Skywalker Sound in California, and here in New York City at Sterling Sound. I've heard the 800 at Sterling, so I know it really deserves to be a benchmark design for audiophiles and professionals. Also, the 800 series is also drop-dead gorgeous.

The just announced diamond tweeter models are the sixth-generation 800 Series, but only the second with diamond tweeters. The new 800 line is also the first to feature diamond tweeters in every speaker in the seven-model range.

Why diamond? The vast majority of dome tweeters used in other speakers, including very high-end models, use either cloth or metal dome designs, but thanks to diamond's superior strength, the 800 Series tweeter produces less distortion and greater high frequency extension and resolution. The new diamond tweeter uses a quad-magnet design that offers superior efficiency, and greater dynamic range than the previous models' tweeters. Therefore, when the drummer whacks a cymbal or the trumpet player really wails, you'll hear it.