Zappa: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack - Deluxe Edition

Performances
Sound

It's hard to fathom counterculture icon and multitalented musician nonpareil Frank Zappa left this mortal coil almost three full decades ago in December 1993, given the sheer range of archival and new releases that continue to arise from the vaults of his legendary Utility Muffin Research Kitchen (UMRK)—a.k.a., Zappa's onetime home studio. Fact is, many of them were personally sequenced, mixed, and/or produced by the man himself before his untimely passing at age 52.

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SVS Launches 1000 Pro Series Subwoofers

Ohio-based speaker manufacturer SVS has launched the 1000 Pro Series, an entry-level subwoofer offering. Consisting of two models, the sealed cabinet SB-1000 Pro and ported cabinet PB-1000 Pro, the new subs feature all-new 12-inch high-excursion drivers, a 325 watts RMS/ 820-plus watts peak power Sledge STA-325D amplifier with fully discrete MOSFET output, Analog Devices DSP, and control via the SVS subwoofer control app.

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Best Gear of February 2021

Spring beckons and so does the long-awaited return to normal life as the pandemic winds down. Though February was short, we learned a few things from our Top Picks for the month: (1) Subwoofers don’t have to look like subwoofers, (2) you can’t judge a speaker by its looks, and (3) you don’t have to spend thousands to get a big-screen TV that delivers terrific picture quality. Will one of our February gems help you rediscover your passion for music and movies or gaming (Pac-Man anyone?) and push your home entertainment experience to the next level? There’s only one way to find out.

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The SVS Virtual Audiophile Happy Hour Returns

The SVS Virtual Audiophile Happy Hour returns with a momentous announcement today, Thursday, February 25 at 6p.m. ET, live on the SVS Facebook page and YouTube channel! For the first time in SVS history, full details of new products will be revealed via live stream and questions taken on the fly.

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KEF KC62 Subwoofer

Performance
Build Quality
Value

PRICE $1,499

AT A GLANCE
Plus
Incredible extension from incredibly small design
Highly flexible controls and features
Wireless option
Elegant finish
Minus
Limited peak output
Pricey

THE VERDICT
KEF’s KC62 delivers impressively deep bass in an elegant, ultra-compact package, though its output is best suited for smaller rooms or listening at more moderate levels.

Mankind has sought to get more and deeper bass from smaller and smaller designs ever since the first Neolithic audiophile blew through a conch shell and thought, "Damn, I wish this went lower, louder!"

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How to Stream PBS Programming

While PBS Passport has a variety of the stations' programming, a PBS Channel subscription through Amazon Prime Video offers a deep dive into different genres.

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Qello Brings Live Concerts into Your Home and Beyond

Qello seeks to corner the market on streaming concerts and music documentaries but do they offer enough diverse material to satisfy our hunger for content?

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Taming the Room Monster

Anyone who has read any of my speakers over the past few years knows that my current room has bass issues (the photo here is, sadly, NOT my room!!). Welcome me to the club; rooms without bass problems are few and far between. Only the obsessed worries about a peak at 30Hz, but erratic response higher in the bass, particularly in the 80 to 200Hz region, can have serious negative effects on the overall sound. To little response there can reduce a source's natural weight, particularly on large scale music or home theater effects. Too much and the bass sounds bloated.

Once you get above a certain frequency, usually between 200 and 500 Hz (known as the Schroeder frequency, after the physicist who first identified it and not the Peanuts character), the room's effect on the sound becomes less significant.

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Mad Max

Picture
Sound
Extras

Let's never forget that the enduring Mad Max franchise—four movies in with a fifth on the way—began right here 42 years ago with this low-budget car/motorcycle-chase gem. Relative to its more popular sequel, The Road Warrior, Max can be viewed as a sort of origin story, showing how a good cop (Mel Gibson) goes mad after a horrible act of violence befalls his family. He hits the road to exact some fuel-injected revenge, leaving behind the world he once knew. What's striking about this movie today is seeing how much better it is than it needed to be, from the emotional story to the intense acting, superb cinematography, sharp editing, and outrageous stunts.

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The Mighty Technics SL-1200

Coveted by audiophiles and DJs, the iconic turntable is still going strong half a century later.

It’s rare for any piece of audio gear to remain in production for more than a few years, let alone a turntable that not only survives but continues to evolve for the better part of five decades. The Technics SL-1200 turntable and its many iterations have been in production for 43 of the last 49 years, an extraordinary feat by any measure.

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Can I Stream MQA Tracks Directly from My LG Phone to My NAD Amp?

Got a tech question for Sound & Vision? Email us at AskSandV@gmail.com

Q My LG V30 smartphone has a high-performance Quad-DAC audio system capable of decoding hi-res files encoded with MQA. I want to use the LG phone as a source to stream Masters-quality music from Tidal via Bluetooth (aptX HD) to my new NAD integrated amplifier. Will this work for MQA, or do I need an external digital-to-analog converter to “unfold” the MQA-encoded files? —Joel Johnson, via email

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TCL 6-Series 65R635 Roku LCD Ultra HDTV Review

Performance
Features
Ergonomics
Value

PRICE $1,000

AT A GLANCE
Plus
Effective, 160- zone local-dimming
App-based color calibration
Affordable price
Minus
Image quality reduced at off-center seats
Some green push with HDR content

THE VERDICT
TCL's 6-Series UHD Roku TV brings the benefits of Mini-LED backlighting to a very affordable price point.

In late 2019, TCL flew me to the company's U.S. offices in California to spend an afternoon with its new flagship, the 75Q825 8-Series UHD Roku TV, a 75-inch 4K LCD model. Not all of the set's firmware was complete, but we took advantage of the opportunity to give our readers a sneak preview. The 75Q825's signature feature was TCL's use of mini-LEDs for backlighting, and at its then price of $3,000, it was something of an outlier for a brand associated with budget TVs.

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The Sounds of Mars

The rover Perseverance is scheduled to touch down on the surface of Mars this Thursday, February 18 at approximately 12:55 pm, PST. I dare you to watch this NASA trailer, and tell me these landings aren't the coolest things ever. Also, this rover carries two microphones. If all goes well, for the first time, we'll be able to listen to sounds from the red planet.

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Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai

Picture
Sound
Extras

A professional assassin who lives by the ancient code of the samurai finds himself targeted by his Mafia bosses. Ghost Dog, a rare venture into genre films for Jim Jarmusch, allows the writer-director to frequently quote, reference, and build upon many classics in his own quirkily deadpan, deceptively honest way. Dog's unglamorous community of gangsters is reminiscent of John Cassavetes' hoods and lowlifes in The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, but—this being Jarmusch—an understated absurdist wit frequently underlies the drama.

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New Gear for Winter 2021

In the weeks following CES 2021, we’ve witnessed a flurry of new product announcements. From a couple of nostalgic audio products to an outdoor entertainment setup and wireless speakers guaranteed to make your neighbors envious, here’s a look at some of the new gear coming your way.

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Bluesound Pulse Sub+ Subwoofer Review

Performance
Features
Build Quality
Value

PRICE $749 (Black Matte or White)

AT A GLANCE
Plus
Impressive kick from a slim, elegant cabinet
Refined sound
Extensive control via smartphone app
Minus
No remote control
No auto-calibration/room EQ feature

THE VERDICT
Designed to work with or without Bluesound’s Pulse soundbar, the new Pulse Sub+ is a bigger and better take on the company’s original Pulse subwoofer.

What's the one thing lacking in even the best soundbar? If you said "deep, realistic, room-filling, floor-pounding bass," then you are absolutely correct. Bluesound is known for its wireless multiroom audio components and speakers, a family that includes the Pulse soundbar.

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Stream Theater

Home video streaming received a boost in 2020 for obvious reasons, while movie theater attendance took a dive for equally obvious reasons. But even with a massive paradigm shift in the way people experience movies and other forms of entertainment clearly taking place in real time, it still came as a shock when WarnerMedia announced in early December that its full slate of theatrical releases for 2021 would drop day and date on the company’s HBO Max streaming service.

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The Court Jester Comes to Blu-ray

When fishing around for a film to show on a movie night with friends, before Covid-19 rudely interrupted, I recommended The Court Jester. I had it on DVD, but I knew it looked good enough to satisfy non-critical viewers who likely also wouldn't be bothered by its 1950's mono sound. We passed on it that time around, but that old DVD has now taken its last spin. A spanking new Blu-ray of the film has just been released in a video transfer nothing short of stunning.

The movie was originally shot in VistaVision, a widescreen process used (mainly by Paramount) in the 1950's and 60's. It's long-since been dropped as a release format, but is sometimes employed for in-camera special effects created for non-VistaVision productions, particularly in the pre-CGI era. It was used, for example, in the creation of the effects for some of the early Star Wars and Star Trek films when CGI wasn't yet a thing.

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Total Recall

Picture
Sound
Extras

Total Recall is a near-perfect mix of sci-fi action, plot twists, and the kind of warped tongue-in-cheek humor we expect from director Paul Verhoeven, delivered here with gusto by Arnold Schwarzenegger playing Douglas Quaid, a construction worker. More correctly, Schwarzenegger is Carl Hauser, a secret operative for the "Agency" who believes he is Quaid due to a memory implant. After being attacked by agents from the "Agency," Quaid escapes to Mars to aid the rebel independence movement and discover his true identity.

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More Headphones from CES 2021 and Beyond

In post a couple weeks ago, we focused on some of the wireless headphones introduced at last month’s virtual CES 2021, the first virtual gathering in the show’s 53-year history. We’re visiting the massively popular category again, this time with a look at headphones introduced at the show or shortly thereafter, including models that bring new form factors and technology into the fold.

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Hands On: discovery+ Streaming App

Discovery+ launched at the beginning of January with a massive amount of content from over 25 niche reality channels— from Discovery Channel to Food Network, Lifetime, TLC HGTV, A&E, and many more. Discover if it's a service you'll want in this hands-on review.

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Elac Uni-Fi 2.0 Surround Speaker System Review

Speakers
Performance
Build Quality
Value

Subwoofer
Performance
Features
Build Quality
Value

PRICE $3,000 (as tested)

AT A GLANCE
Plus
Clean, well-balanced sound
Consistent off-axis performance
Subwoofer control app with Auto-EQ
Excellent value
Minus
Basic looks; black-only finish option

THE VERDICT
Despite its low-key exterior, Elac’s 5.1 Uni-Fi 2.0 system delivers the goods for movies/music and represents an excellent value.

Germany's Elac is a brand that has greatly expanded its presence in the hi-fi and home theater worlds over the past five or so years. While the company itself has been around for considerably longer, back in 2015 it brought on former KEF, Infinity, TAD, and Pioneer chief speaker engineer Andrew Jones to develop new product lines. First out of the gate for Jones was the Debut Series, followed by the Uni-Fi series, both affordable lines designed to pull fresh recruits into the audiophile ranks. New speakers arrived in quick succession, including the upscale but still affordable Adante passive and Navis powered models.

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Will Hollywood Movies Start To Look Cheap?

There is much speculation that, thanks to Covid, the era of the Hollywood blockbuster is over. While some may rejoice, I'm not so sure.

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