Introduction JL Audio is very well known to many audio enthusiasts for their powerful yet accurate car audio speaker products. Those who think today’s car audio world is limited to the guy blasting ear-destroying rap while driving down your street as all there is have a lot to learn. State-of-the-art car audio offers consumers willing to customize their cars’ audio and video systems many of the same tricks that you would expect to see in a ModernHomeTheater.com featured installation. JL’s specialty for more than a decade has been building and designing some of the most impressive, tight and powerful subwoofers you could ever hope to put in your trunk. Logic would suggest that repackaging JL’s excellent car audio subwoofers for the home theater and audiophile market would be a no-brainer, but JL would stop you right there. Their home theater subwoofers are anything but repackaged car audio speaker systems. These woofers are as serious as ...

Introduction Speakers have under gone huge leaps in evolution, from the once common rectangular box with one or more drivers on the front to multi-cabinet designs. Newer manufacturing techniques and materials have allowed unique shapes previously only dreamed of to become reality. The upsurge in flat panel displays and the huge increases in real estate values have energized the market for smaller, more ergonomically sensitive speakers. Audio guru Bob Carver is well aware of these new market factors and has created a very compelling new loudspeaker solution for real world systems that don’t want to compromise on old-world audiophile excellence. Carver is well known for making products that outperform their size. This goes for his amplifiers, which usually weigh a fraction of others in their class, to his legendary subwoofers that have redefined size and performance expectations, and now the Cinema Ribbons. Standing at just over eight inches high, these new speakers are designed to give ...

Introduction There are few more challenging tasks in the sport of home theater than selecting and setting up a subwoofer in your system. What makes a subwoofer such a challenging selection is perhaps best explained by its name. The operative section of the word is “sub,” which refers to subsonic frequencies that are defined by being for the most part inaudible. Although subwoofers also handle higher audible frequencies, the meat and potatoes of a sub are better felt than heard. The Definitive Technology SuperCube Trinity Subwoofer is an incarnation developed specifically for the Trinity Church in New York. When Definitive Technology was approached with the challenge of amplifying and accurately reproducing the church’s massive pipe organs, Definitive rose to the occasion. Providing a single bi-polar tower for each organ pipe, the Trinity Sub has been designed to become the cornerstone and low-end reinforcement of the most challenging instrument in the world to reproduce – the mighty ...

Introduction We’ve all been there. Stuck at a red light trying to enjoy our music in the comfort of our own vehicles. Maybe you play a bit of air guitar, or sing along, whatever your inner child wants, it’s okay because you’re in your car. Your bubble. Your sanctuary. That is, until, the jerk in the three thousand dollar Honda Civic with the grapefruit shooter for a tailpipe rolls up next to you and assaults you with what I can only describe as an amplified fart trapped within a soda can. Sure, he’ll call it bass. I call it automotive flatulence. That trunk rattling, muffler busting sound isn’t bass. It’s distortion. It’s noise. And if you’re one of these people…do the world a favor, turn it down. The only person you’re impressing is yourself which judging by the slapdash way you’ve snap-tightened your car isn’t saying a whole lot. If you want bass - ...

Introduction There have been many challenges in rebuilding the AVRev.com reference theater (which I have previously written about and archived for Modern Home Theater how-to features, with more details to come). One of the challenges not discussed is what I was going to do with the living room where my former reference system lived. Removing the large equipment rack thankfully created more space that allowed for the sleek installation of a lightly tinted glass wall. Removal of the floor-to-ceiling, bird’s-eye maple media storage cabinet that housed my Stewart roll-down screen also opened up some serious space. The design challenge was unique, considering the entryway to the new theater, as well as the stairs leading to the new addition, is exactly where my Wilson WATT Puppy right speaker used to be placed – how could you get great sound in a room or, in this case, a series of rooms, including the living room, dining room ...