Sound & Vision

That’s all Folks! I KNOW you’ve heard this one before: All good things must come to an end. To quote The Doors, “This is the end.” It is the final print issue of Sound & Vision magazine. I want to express my sincere gratitude to all the writers who made Sound & Vision such an outstanding read in print, right up through the year 2024. Many other magazines didn’t make it this far, which makes this moment both a significant milestone and a bitter-sweet farewell. But like a delicious chocolate bar, bittersweetness has its good points. Yes, farewell, Sound & Vision magazine. I will miss it more than I ever imagined before I took the editorial helm two years ago. This magazine has been an institution in my life for…

This will be the final print issue of Sound & Vision, which, sadly, also means this will be the end of this column. For 21 years I’ve had the privilege of sharing some advice and anecdotes in this space, and for this last column, I thought I’d take a look back on some of the highlights over the years and get a bit personal. And the best place to start is at the beginning… It is with no hyperbole that I say that home theater changed my life. I was working as a golf professional at a private club in Northern California when I first experienced a surround sound system in a home. One friend’s dad bought a JBL audio system called Music + Movies which included a basic…

Alan Parsons (at left below) has long been acknowledged as a pioneering surround-sound mixer/producer all the way back to the early days of quad, and now he’s finally triangulated his sights on the kind of project we’ve all been waiting for—namely, by taking the maiden Dolby Atmos remixing voyage into his own deep catalog as the co-mastermind behind The Alan Parsons Project. Parsons’ initial APP-in-Atmos foray appears on the Blu-ray that’s included in the 4CD/1BD/2LP Super Deluxe Edition box set for their May 1978 release, Pyramid, via the ironically named Cooking Vinyl label. In short, the Atmos Pyramid remix ascends and envelops you in all the ways it should—and shrewdly avoids the pitfalls of how it shouldn’t. During a recent Zoom interview, Parsons, 75, and I discussed his overall Atmos…

Dubious achievements are flooding the consumer electronics and broad-cast industries. In our second annual Trasher Awards, we single out the most noteworthy companies and products. So, in the spirit of informative condemnation, our 2024 Trashers go to: ❱ WCBS TV for abruptly cutting in with the local news amid “Piano Man” during a live Billy Joel concert from Madison Square Garden. Fans who had been dancing in front of their couches were flabbergasted, dejected and outraged. Why couldn’t CBS have cut off The Masters that had run over earlier in the evening so that Joel could’ve started on time? (The network humbly reran the concert in its entirety the following week.) ❱ TV coverage of the April 8 North American total eclipse in which producers lit up their correspondents with…

Was it the carbonara? I wolfed down that big bowl of “coal miner’s spaghetti” but did the pork seem just slightly off? In any case, something sure made me drowsy, and now it feels like I slept forever. Did I pull a Rip Van Winkle and awaken years later? Or am I still asleep and this is all just a dream? Either way, here I am with the reincarnated Sound & Vision magazine in my hands. It’s the October/November issue. October/November 2124, that is. Wow! The future! But some things haven’t changed. For starters, fierce debates still rage in the audio/video community. Remember vacuum tubes versus solid state? VHS versus Betamax? CRT versus LCD? The analog versus digital brouhaha? Well, now we have a new squabble on our hands -…

EISA, the Expert Imaging and Sound Association, is a unique collaboration of 56 member magazines and websites from 27 countries, specializing in all aspects of consumer electronics, including mobile devices, home theater video and audio products, photography, hi-fi, and in-car entertainment. This international association features expert members from Australia, India, Canada, the Far East, the USA, and the wider European community, ensuring that the EISA Awards and official logo are your guide to the best in global consumer technology. Every year, EISA’s Expert Group members, including editors from this publication, test a wide range of new products in their fields. These products undergo a comprehensive multi-step judging process, starting early in the year and continuing through early July. EISA hosts webinars to showcase brands and their latest technologies to its…