As home theater enthusiasts, we tend to get excited about making our home theaters bigger, better, clearer and louder.  We drool over more powerful amplifiers more capable speakers and subwoofers that provide just the right amount of boom. We want best sound possible for our home theater, but when it comes to areas outside of our viewing room - when we're reading a book in the next room or trying to sleep in our beds - we just want silence.  Hearing those massive speakers outside of the home theater is a no.Whether you've got a dedicated theater space or a multi-purpose room that you use for your home theater, there is a wide array of options available to you, ranging from the cheap and simple to the costly and complex. To know how to block the sound that's escaping your ...

You can blame or thank Apple, because the iPod and iPhone have created a worldwide demand for in-ear headphones. There are hundreds of ear-bud phones and their ilk on the market, but few are engineered to produce audiophile-grade sound like Klipsch's Image X10i in-ear headphones. It makes sense that a company whose built its name and reputation for innovative loudspeaker designs would step slightly to the side and put that knowledge into a high-end headset. The Image X10is are Klipsch's lightest in-ear headset, with an in-line microphone and a 3-button remote for taking phone calls and controlling files on iPods, iPod touches and iPhone 3GS. Although the X10is are Apple compatible, the audience for these headsets is the music-loving audiophile with an iPod or iPhone stuffed full of tunes. With a suggested sticker price of $349.99, it's doubtful casual listeners ...

It's hard to imagine an audio world without the name “Klipsch” in the vocabulary. By all accounts, Klipsch founder Paul Klipsch was a one-off – a man with an unquenchable thirst for knowledge and discovery that resulted in speaker concepts and designs that still exist decades after inking the first blueprints. In high-end audio, few things last long enough to become buzzwords or achieve classic status. Audiophiles often speak in hushed tones of reverence for Marantz's 10B tuner, Dynaco's ST-70 amplifier and Acoustic Research's AR turntables. That list must certainly include the Klipschorn – Paul Klipsch's venerable loudspeaker design still capturing the imagination and ears of audio enthusiasts as we approach the year 2010. It's a remarkable accomplishment that spits in the face of such technological “upgrades” as Windows 7 and other patches to fix what was never whole to ...

We got a chance to speak with Cheena Srinivasan last week, the Chief Operating Officer of Kaleidescape.  For those that haven’t been paying attention to recent hardware announcements, Kaleidescape just launched the Mini system.  The Mini is Kaleidescape’s first component that integrates a multi-zone system into a single unit.  It was also launched at a price point that’s 40% less than the previous system.Based on the design, we were curious if Kaleidescape was attempting to break into the consumer market rather than targeting custom installers as they have in the past.   While the mini system is still being targeted to installers for retrofit job and remodels, the mini player is designed to be used as a free-standing set top box in your home theater setup.  It comes with rubber feet on the bottom of the player for display or it ...

Introduction When I was told Krell was developing an iPod dock, I knew I had to have it, if for no other reason other than the fact that it was a Krell iPod dock and was sure to be ridiculous.  If there’s one thing I like about Krell, it’s the simple fact that every product they make goes to 11 in more ways than sheer volume.  After un-boxing the Krell KID (Krell iPod Dock) and matching Papa dock stereo amplifier, it’s safe to say this system takes iPod music to the ultra-extreme.  Until the KID’s arrival, my impression of an iPod dock was a cheap puck-style hunk of plastic helping to produce cheap hunk of plastic sound.  Don’t get me wrong, I love the Apple iPod, truly I do, and I consider it a viable music source when handled correctly, but ...