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For sound lovers (I'll avoid "audiophile" for now), the unsung highlight of
this decade has been the return of the one-piece music box.
Remember the old portable stereos? Infra-dig, yes, though a few weren't bad.
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Prasanto Kumar Roy is president and chief editor (ICT
Publications) at CyberMedia
pkr@cybermedia.co.in |
But the serious music lover would listen only to twin-channel stereo, or
perhaps 2.1 channels, with a subwoofer to compensate for smaller stereo
speakers. But then came the 1990s and the 5.1 channel system...the most
pointless exercise in home audio. (Dolby's 5.1 has five channels for the front
and rear stereo speakers and one center speaker, plus a subwoofer channel. Nice
for movie halls designed for acoustics, but not for your home.)
And there's the audiophile: the music lover builds a Rs 10 lakh system out of
a Linn turntable (separate arm, head, needle), a Marantz tape deck, a NAD
'receiver' and pre-amp, two Quad tube amps, studio reference speakers.
But things came around full circle with the iPod dock. Once again, a
one-piece box with stereo speakers (but this time, to plug your iPod into).
While most docks are average, some stand out with their sound quality and
imaging: JVC, JBL... My wife's used her tiny Bose SoundDock (Rs 22k) at a party,
and people thought they were listening to a large system. And I recently heard
B&W's Zeppelin ($600, over Rs 40k here) as part of a jury for a TV channel's
gadget awards. This iPod dock is the biggest, most expensive, the most stunning
design I've seen, and has amazing sound.
In the same jury, we tried out three sound bars side by side, along with
large LCD/plasma HD TVs.
The sound bar goes well with a flat panel TV. It has DVD, radio, stereo
speakers...in a long, one-piece package (some use a subwoofer too). The Yamaha
Sound Projector projects sound beams to create surround sound, if you have
suitable room acoustics, though the model we tested did not have a DVD player,
and was expensive. The Philips sound bar does have DVD built-in (Rs 50k). The
Samsung (Rs 40k) is the best value: Bluetooth, and great sound. There's no HD
source, but they both upscale DVD and via HDMI. A neat alternative to the mess
of wires and speakers in a 5.1 system.
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