One issue with large, high ceiling rooms is the acoustics are not ideal for understanding the dialog in the movie or TV soundtrack.  It will usually take a very good center channel speaker to accomplish this.  The typical solution would have been to install a good center channel speaker under the TV and do left and rights on the bookcases.  However that would not work for good TV audio in the kitchen.

Sony TV and B&W Panorama Speaker

Enter the B&W Panorama and the skills of our Audio Advice install team, Karl and Tony.  The Panorama is an all in one home theater speaker using 9 drivers with individual amps for each one!  It has incredible bass performance for its compact size and does wonders with dialog.  As a matter of fact, I just replaced a very good all in one LCR speaker in my personal family room with one and am thrilled!  The Panorama also has several EQ settings which allow you to fine tune it to your room.  You learn more about the Panorama here in our Panorama blog done when it first hit the market.

Tony and Karl built a custom mount for the Panorama to attach it to a full articulating arm that allows both the beautiful new 55″ Sony TV and the Panorama speaker to swivel together towards the kitchen or family room.  As you can see from the details picture, their wiring job was top notch and super neat.  They were also able to get wiring from the base cabinet over to the TV without cutting any extra holes!  A Universal remote custom programmed is the icing on the cake making everything very simple to operate.

Great view of our custom mount and precision wiring job

It’s just another great example of how our team can make your home entertainment dreams come true.

Picture and Sound in the kitchen, no problem!

The first place choice is a new system from Lenbrook, parent company of PSB Speakers.  At our recent Music Matters event, I had the great pleasure of introducing this with Paul Barton, founder of PSB.  The VISO 1 is an all in one music player that can not only dock your iPod, but stream (uncompressed!) from any smart phone.  It even has video outs for your iPod.  I have to tell you, I have been doing audio demos for 35 years.  There is a look people get on their faces when they hear something amazing.  Over the course of 7 demos for packed rooms at our Music Matters, I have never seen as many people with that amazed look.  You just have to hear the VISO 1.  There is nothing like it by a mile.  Unbelievable sound for an all in one unit!  $699

The new VISO1 From Lenbrook

Another winner is the new desktop system from Magnepan.  It’s called the Mini Maggie system.  Our 2011 Music Matters also introduced this cool new desktop speaker system.  I think it is safe to say most of us spend a lot of time in our home office in front of a computer.  The Mini-Maggie system can make that time a whole lot more fun.  As a matter of fact, one can argue that with this setup you get state of the art sound on a budget.  The system consists of two small thin speakers (well, small by Magnepan standards!) and a flat panel subwoofer.  You’ll need to play around with subwoofer placement, but it can probably fit under or beside your desk.  Magnepans have always been known for their very musical, transparent sound.  One thing they have not been known for is knock you out of your seat dynamics. Just imagine a Magnepan system that could do both!  Since you sit right on top of this Mini Maggie, it has the power response to give you dynamics you would expect out of a super-efficient speaker.  You have to experience it as a desktop system, with your ears about 2 feet from the speakers. Couple this to a good amp and you can get the performance of an ultra-expensive system at your desk for only $1499!

The new Mini Maggie from Magnepan

Next on our list is B&W’s new C5 headphones.  The C5 has been our most popular product purchased by our staff this year, which has to tell you something.  To follow up their successful over the ear P5 headphone, B&W came up with a unique design: the in-ear C5.  First of all, they sound fantastic, just as you would expect from B&W.  They have unique loops you secure around your ears which holds them firmly in place. They have a filtered open back design which makes them sound more like much more like a real speaker while they are in-ear. They do this with a filter made up of hundreds of microscopic steel balls, quite an engineering feat!  Pick up a pair for yourself, or for that someone special on your gift list.  $179/pr

B&W C5 Headphones

The Sonos ZP-90 makes the list two years running!  Of all the things we sell, the Sonos ZP-90 gets the more letters from customers who are incredibly happy with their purchase than any other product.   If you have any kind of stereo system at all, you will love the ZP-90.  Just connect it like a CD player with its audio outs and you open up the world of Pandora, Spotify, MOG, Rhapsody, and more, plus thousands of internet radio stations!  Plus, you’ll be able to hear and control any music on any computer in your house.  If you want to add more for other rooms, it’s a piece of cake.  You can control it with your smart phone or iPad. I guarantee if you get one of these, you’ll be having fun with music again.  $349 will be the best investment you ever made in getting back into the wonder of music!

ZP-90 Connect Ethernet, outputs are digital or analog and you even have an analog input if you get more of these

We round out our list with the Oppo BDP-93 Blu-ray player.  Oppo is a very focused company specializing in great value Blu-ray players.  They only have two models, the 93 and 95.  Oppo is primarily sold factory direct on their web site.  We convinced them to let us become a brick and mortar dealer early in 2011 and since then the Oppo has become the bestselling line of Blu-ray player to ever be on our shelves.  In this day of disposable DVD players, Oppo products are a stark contrast.  Most flat panel manufacturers have promotions during the year where they will typically “give away” their Blu-ray player with the purchase of a TV. Of course, they want this to cost them as little as possible. You can imagine the low quality level you get from most mainstream Blu-ray players.   The Oppo players are just the opposite, getting consistent reviews from all over the world on what an incredible value they are! We’ve also received nothing but positive customer comments on how much people love their Oppo players.  At $499, the BPD-93 gets you a player with wonderful picture and sound, a host of streaming features, and a unit that is a pleasure to use.    If you are in the market for a Blu-ray player, you cannot go wrong with either Oppo.

The Great Value Oppo BPD-93

Thanks for taking the time to read over our Holiday Gift Guide.  Our 60+ employees at Audio Advice thank you for your support over the years. We hope you and your families have a very safe and fulfilling holiday season!

We had a homeowner in Charlotte who wanted to have the largest possible screen above the living room fireplace in the condo he was moving into.  The big challenge for our team was the fact this was a ground floor condo with beautiful plaster walls that could not be repaired if any damage occurred.  Todd Smith designed the system and presented the solution to the homeowner who gave us the green light.  Ryan Meacham was able to become a super hero installer and somehow wiggled in between the two floors to get the wiring where we needed it for all of the components.

Dave Stephens, Chris Kieffer, and Craig Needleman also put forth an amazing effort during this install.  In ceiling speakers were used to keep the formal look of the room intact.  We were also not able to cut into the ceiling to hide a screen housing, so we chose the beautiful Cabaret screen from Stewart Filmscreen.  The classy black gloss housing looks great in the room and the 120″ screen (the largest the Cabaret comes in) fills the space nicely.  The new SIM2 Crystal 45 was chosen for it’s great picture and beautiful enclosure.  Everyone loved the final result!

Here we show the screen in the up position

Screen in the down position

Vince Gill's "Guitar Slinger" now available from MCA Nashville

You’re invited to join us for Music Matters – two nights of presentations by industry experts – devoted exclusively to great musical reproduction with some of the newest and best audio components, in a casual, low-key atmosphere.

The first night, our Triangle showroom at 8621 Glenwood Ave. in Raleigh will host Music Matters on Thursday, Nov. 17th. Our second evening will be Charlotte Music Matters, on Friday Nov. 18th in our Pineville showplace at 11409 Carolina Place Parkway. Both evenings will last from 5:30 pm to 9:30 pm, with 30 minute presentations conducted every half hour. Wine and food in Raleigh will be served by Bella Monica, and in Pineville by Born to Cook. These are must hear events for musical enthusiasts of the Carolinas!

Some of today’s newest and best audio components will be presented by: Audio Research, AudioQuest, Ayre Acoustics, Bowers & Wilkins, Classé, GoldenEar Technology, Magnepan, Peachtree Audio, PSB Speakers, Transparent Cable, and Wilson Audio.

We’re excited to have industry legends Sandy Gross of GoldenEar Technology and Paul Barton of PSB Speakers in attendance! Chris Connacker, founder and chief writer for the website Computer Audiophile will also be a special guest presenter for Music Matters!

During your visit, enter our drawing for special prizes including the DAC-iT from Peachtree Audio and copies of the new Vince Gill album Guitar Slinger, courtesy of MCA Nashville.

We look forward to seeing you in November! Please RSVP if you plan to attend with the number of people in your party, and the location, to event@audioadvice.com.

Triangle event location: 8621 Glenwood Ave. (2 miles east of I-540), Raleigh, NC 27617  (919) 881-2005

Charlotte event location: 11409 Carolina Place Parkway (outside Carolina Place Mall), Pineville, NC 28134  (704) 821-4510

The Phil Miller Parade home front exterior

(10/13 Update) Both homes with Audio Advice installations were recognized in the category of homes priced from $949,000 to $2, 495,000  in the 46th annual Parade. Intrada Grande, a Cary home by Pegram Residential in MacGregor Downs, received a perfect score. The Gold prize was awarded to Chateau Grayson Elizabeth II, by Phil Miller Construction, at Hasentree in Wake Forest. Details about Audio Advice systems in both homes are located below. Congratulations to the winners!

Audio Advice System Descriptions

The first of  two homes with Audio Advice installations in the 2011 Raleigh/Wake County HBA Parade of Homes is located at 1312 Eagleson Lane in Wake Forest, at this year’s featured home by Phil Miller Construction in Wake Forest’s Hasentree development.

Parade of Homes dates are October 1-2, 7-9, and 14-16. The display home is open daily from noon to 5 pm.

Audio Advice systems at this location are an affordable front projection home theater, a popularly priced multi-zone streaming music system, and home security system.

Home theater features include a great performing Epson 3 chip LCD projector paired with an impressive 100” screen by Screen Innovations. Other elements include a custom theater speaker combination from Bowers & Wilkins, audio/video receiver from Integra, Sony Blu-ray player, and remote control from Universal.

The multi-zone wireless streaming music system by Sonos enables listening throughout the home to your own music library from computer or iPod, or direct from the internet via online music services such as Spotify or MOG. The Sonos system can also be controlled with your Android smartphone, iPhone, or iPad as well as the Sonos controller.

View from back patio of the Phil Miller Parade home.

Follow the link here for directions from the Audio Advice Raleigh showroom to 1312 Eagleson Lane, Wake Forest.

More information on other features of the Phil Miller Parade home can be found here at the Parade of Homes online listings.

Pegram Residential 2011 Parade home exterior, MacGregor Downs in Cary

The second home showcasing Audio Advice system installations is located in the home from Pegram Residential at MacGregor Downs in Cary, at 105 Hoy Court.

Parade of Homes dates for 2011 are October 1-2, 7-9, and 14-16, with display homes open daily from noon to 5 pm.

The featured Audio Advice systems in the Pegram Residential home include two surround systems in the living room and game room, featuring Sony 46” XBR flatscreen televisions, with Bowers & Wilkins  in-ceiling speakers with angled drivers, Integra audio/video receiver, and Oppo Blu-ray disc player, with Universal remote control.

Additional system highlights are the Lutron RadioRA2 lighting control system, as well as the multi-zone Niles IntelliControlICS home music system, incorporating a dock for iPod music library, an Integra compact disc changer, and Bowers and Wilkins in-ceiling, and Niles outdoor speakers.

Other system enhancements are a camera security system with Alarm.com control interface, as well as whole house intercom.

Follow this link for directions from the Audio Advice Raleigh showroom to 105 Hoy Court, MacGregor Downs, Cary.

More information about this Pegram Residential home can be found here at the Parade of Homes online listing.

Audio Advice is pleased to be a participant at the 2011 March of Dimes Designer Show House in Charlotte. The home is furnished and decorated by Charlotte’s leading interior design firms to showcase their design services while raising money for the local chapter of the March of Dimes.

Where:  516 Museum Drive in Charlotte’s beautiful Eastover neighborhood

Dates:  October 7^th, 8^th, & 9^th and October 14^th, 15^th & 16^th

Hours: Friday and Saturday from 10:00 am to 6:00 pm, Sunday from 1:00 pm -6:00 pm

2011 March of Dimes Charlotte Designer Show House

We are sharing the bonus room on the top floor of the home with our Southpark showroom partner, Kelly Cruz Interiors, and demonstrating a home theater installation there. (Exterior of the home is pictured above.)  Home theater elements include an affordable Epson front projector paired with a 106″ Dragonfly screen. Front and center speakers from Bowers & Wilkins’ 600 Series and a Velodyne subwoofer are the heart of the surround system. Components featured include an Integra receiver and Samsung Blu-ray player, with system components and lighting controlled by a remote from Universal Remote Control. Furniture is from VIP Cinema Seating.

Our contributions also include a Samsung 55″ LED television with Samsung Blu-ray player, plus in-ceiling flush mount speakers in the game room, whole house audio system, and an undercabinet LCD television displaying feeds from outdoor cameras.

Admission price is $15 at the door, and all ticket proceeds will benefit the local March of Dimes.  The mission of the March of Dimes is “ to improve the health of babies by preventing birth defects, premature birth and infant mortality.  The mission is accomplished through research, community service, public and professional education and advocacy.”

This is a great cause, and we hope everyone who can will attend and support this worthy March of Dimes project, see our home theater installation and get some of the latest and best ideas in home décor.

As you might guess, I have quite a bit of consumer electronics in my home.  I’ve got a whole house audio system, video distribution system with several TV’s, and two home theaters.  Everything is as fully surge protected as I can make it. Every single signal path has surge protection on it.  I do not have lightning rods on my house.

About 3 weeks ago in the late evening some storms passed through and we heard a fairly loud thunder clap.  It did not sound like it was a direct hit, nor did it sound like it was right in our yard, just one of those loud bangs that felt like it was maybe a few blocks away.

The next morning, my wife complained that she could not select the Tivo she wanted to watch on our video distribution system.  I did a quick check and found the video matrix switcher locked up, did a reboot and everything was fine.  I thought to myself, that is weird, maybe the strike somehow locked up the switcher as it had worked flawlessly for 5 years.

I did not use the theater that day, but that evening my daughter complained she could get no sound in the theater.  I rebooted the Classe processor a couple of times, played around with its settings and finally got audio back there.  Now, I was starting to worry.  Nothing was broken, but this was a bad sign.

Boy was it ever.  Over the last two weeks things have gone totally downhill.  My XM tuner has died.  The TV in our bedroom will randomly turn itself on and off.  The big multichannel power amp I use for the whole house speakers started going into protection, a reboot would fix it, but last night, it totally died.  The audio is dropping out on one of my TIVO units at random times.  One of my Cisco cable card convertor boxes keeps rebooting itself randomly.  I hate to think what else will go down.

What has happened to me is what can happen to you.  Somehow I was hit even though I am fully protected.  The damage was not catastrophic, but appears to be showing up over time most likely due to stressed components.  The moral of this story is, if you hear a loud thunder clap, and you have ANY weirdness at all with your consumer electronics afterwards, call your insurance agent and warn them you might need to file a claim.

On the last day of the show, after the crowds had thinned down, we still had to wait close to an hour to get in for this demo.  The lines for this new product were consistently stretched around the booth throughout the entire show.  A group of us walked in and had to sit on the very front row, which put us about 7 feet from a 180” (that’s 15’) screen.  The product on demo was a new projector from Sony.

Movie theaters around the world are going through a complete redo as they change over from film to digital projection.  The forward thinking theater owners are preparing for the future of cinema by installing projectors that are capable of 4K.  A projector of this type has 4 times the resolution of even current 1080p projectors.  As stadium seating becomes more popular, the audience is sitting a lot closer to the screen than in the past, which means you really need the highest resolution possible.  There is also a revolution going on in the movie camera industry where the exact same change is occurring.  Cameras are going from analog film to digital and the smart companies are choosing 4k camera systems for it’s incredibly better resolution.  Sony has installed more than 9,000 of these 4K projectors around the world and continues to install several hundred per month, at a cost north of $250,000!  These guys weigh in at over 400 pounds and only run on 220.  I think you could say that gives them a bit of a track record in the 4K projector business!  For those of you interested in learning more about 4K cinema, here is a link to Sony’s 4K professional website: Sony Professional Digital Cinema

The Professional Sony 4K projector found in digital cinemas around the world

At the CEDIA show, Sony unveiled the world’s first consumer 4K projector, the VPLW-VW1000ES.  And I have to tell you, it just blew us out of the water!  The projector has twice the light output of any Sony projector in the past.  It is fully 3D capable.  You do not need an anamorphic lens for 2:35 movies.  Better yet, it up-converts your Bluray and DVD content to 4K.  We were sitting so close to this 15’ screen that it was impossible to even take in the entire image left to right.  The incredible part is, that no matter what content they showed us, we could never ever see the slightest artifact at all!  Even at this extremely close distance we could not see a single pixel!

Enjoying a movie is all about being immersed in the picture.  With a projector of this quality, you’ll be able to have a far larger screen than in the past.  It has the horsepower in light output to fill up a huge screen and the resolving power so you will never see anything but an astonishingly pure picture.  For the ever increasingly popular 2:35 screens, you will not have to spend the extra money for an anamorphic lens and sled.

For the final demo, Sony showed us a clip done in 4K from the upcoming Spiderman movie.  My prediction is that once 4K becomes popular, 3D is done.  A movie produced in 4K just has so much resolution, you do not need 3D.  It’s simply amazing and you have to see it to believe it.  It’s like the difference you all experienced when you saw high definition for the first time!

The new home version of Sony 4K Cinema

The VPLW-VW1000ES will be available sometime in the 1^st quarter of 2012.  And are you ready for this…even though its modeled on the same platform as their $250K professional projectors, it will be 1/10^th its price, yes, it will be $25K!!!

Imagine this on your deck or patio, totally weatherproof!

An example of a Seura Mirror TV in a bathroom

Seura is another company making TV’s for special applications.  They are well known for their mirror TV’s which sit behind a custom mirror and are totally invisible until you turn them on.  Seura engineers and hand crafts every product at their plant in Green Bay, Wisconsin.  They have a new line out called Hydra of totally waterproof TV’s for kitchens, showers, and baths.  These TV’s mount in the wall and come in a variety of finishes.  They introduced a new stainless steel finish this year that is just perfect for your gourmet kitchen!  Imagine a 19” TV (which is the perfect size for a kitchen) that mounts in the wall and totally complements your stainless steel appliances.  I showed a picture of this to my wife and she wanted one!  The frame can even be ordered in any of 800 custom colors to match your color scheme.

This new TV will make your stainless steel appliances jealous!