In This Issue

FEATURES

OLED TVs

The new breed of bigscreen OLED TVs are due out this year – are they worth waiting for?

THE AUSTRALIAN AUDIO & AV SHOW

A wonderful weekend of hi-fi and home cinema delights...

SMART HOMES- HARD ROCK CINEMA

A 193-inch bigscreen home cinema installation in a room cut from solid rock. Any problems with that, then?

SPEAKER DOCKS

Docks that do dock and docks that don’t need to, from Yamaha, NAD, JBL and iLuv

DEPARTMENTS

EDLINES

The Editor puts a virtual dollar into the jukebox cloud and muses on the future of subscription music

NEWS

The Australian Audio & AV Show comes to Sydney
New accessories and a receiver from Arcam
Musical Fidelity’s M1 PWR power amp
Dynaudio ditches cables for its Xeo active speakers
Sonos winds up software for pre-Intel Macs
KEF’s new R Series of loudspeakers   
B&O’s musical Esky
Sony loans out 3D camcorders for free
Sharp’s curvy latest DLP 3D projector
JBL goes Xtreme with its latest Bluetooth dock

CES News

AV: With largescreen OLED televisions on show
at CES in Vegas, are they worth waiting for?
 
Audio: Edgar Kramer picks his top five rooms
from the High Performance Audio section of CES.

INTERVIEWS

Brad Bird, George Miller, Chris Miller,
Mini interviews with directors of top summer movies Mission Impossible - Ghost Protocol, Happy Feet Two and Puss in Boots

NUTS 'N BOLTS

Is a disc in the hand worth two in the cloud? Adam Turner assesses the merits and drawbacks of cloud storage versus traditional media hoarding.

SOUNDOFF

LOCKED AND SLOT LOADED...
Derek Powell is more than mildly cynical about the advertised “exciting experiences” of chip-based music...

LISTENING AND VIEWING

24-BIT MUSIC REVIEWS

We continue our reviews of ‘Studio Master’ 24-bit downloads, loving the sounds but discovering a couple of releases that simply aren’t what they claim.

BLU-RAY REVIEWS

Stephen Dawson pairs up his Blu-ray reviews in themes of ‘Art vs Cinema’ (The Tree of Life and Taxi Driver), 3D spy sequels (Spy Kids: All the Time in the World 4D and Cars 2) and ‘Subverting Tropes’ (SUPER and Tucker and Dale vs Evil)...

Terrence Malick and Martin Scorsese may have missed out at the Oscars, but they come together in our themed Blu-ray reviews this issue Vintage Audio
What was it like to shop for hi-fi in the 1950s and 1960s? We breathe deep from the pipe of nostalgia

EQUIPMENT REVIEWS

SHARP 70-INCH LED-LCD TELEVISION

What a whopper! The biggest TV we’ve ever reviewed proves an able performer — no 3D, but otherwise 
solid performance at a projection-challenging size.

YAMAHA RX-V671 AV RECEIVER

It’s the little brother to the award-winning RX-A3010, priced at just $1099, but sharing many of the 
networking features of the pricier performer...

PROJECT USB TURNTABLE

We celebrate the joys of vinyl with this turntable 
that has a built in phono stage and USB output — 
so you can copy your grooves straight to computer.

JBL 4429 STUDIO MONITOR SPEAKERS

Our cover stars under full review — they’re big, 
but they’re beautiful, making spectacular sounds 
that put you right in the producer’s chair.

HUMAC PERSONAL VIDEO RECORDER

Humax returns to Australia with this twin HD PVR 
which took out our award for PVR of the Year. 
Here for the first time is our complete review.

FOCAL BIRD 2.1 PACK STEREO SYSTEM

A minimalist hi-fi solution using high-quality satellite speakers and a subwoofer hidden under the amplifier. Built-in Wi-Fi streaming makes this a versatile solution.

GROUP TEST- Speaker docks

They can all dock an iPhone or iPod, but several of these new designs also include Bluetooth or AirPlay streaming, so you may never need to dock again...
•  Yamaha PDX-11
•  iLuv ArtStation Pro
•  NAD Viso 1
•  JBL On Air Wireless

PIONEER FS51 SPEAKER PACKAGE

Pioneer asked its high-end speaker designer to 
reduce the price of his designs by 99%. Remarkably, 
he agreed, and the FS51 package is the result...

DXTREME PERSONAL VIDEO RECORDER

The DX-390 is both a media player and a twin-tuner 
HD PVR, loaded with slots, sockets and abilities. Can 
it keep such complexities under easy user control?

ASUS DAC/HEADPHONE AMP

ASUS has long made high-quality soundcards, 
but this is a standalone 192kHz DAC and headphone amp with balanced outputs and excellent sound.