Sound + Image September - October 2022

Only last issue I was having a whinge about companies claiming high-res audio via Bluetooth (which can’t be done). But just as that issue went to press, I heard about a whole new Bluetooth spec from the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG), including a new standard audio codec, which is to be called LC3. Audio geek that I am, a new Bluetooth codec is exciting stuff to me, and I grabbed the new spec sheets with enthusiasm. I was disappointed. Perhaps I should have known better, because ever since I attended an early launch of consumer Bluetooth back in the late 1990s, I have waited through the umpteen updates since then for the Bluetooth SIG folk to allocate more bandwidth for audio. More bandwidth, a higher bit-rate: that’s the only way…

Netflix, Ambeo, & spatial stereo The first time we featured Sennheiser’s Ambeo in Sound+Image, it was in relation to nine-channel music recordings. Sennheiser’s then ‘tonmeister’ and sound engineer Gregor Zielinsky was pioneering music recordings in 9.1, and spent several years demoing and advocating this recording technique at expert meetings and (mainly pro) audio conventions, culminating with more open demonstrations at CES 2016 in Las Vegas, and elsewhere. This variation of multichannel audio was designed more for use with music than movies, and required replay on a 9.1-channel loudspeaker system. Against obvious competition, it never seemed destined for greatness, and multichannel music has gone on to become dominated, like multichannel movie soundtrack streaming, by Dolby Atmos presentations in varying degrees of quality. But that form of Ambeo in 9.1 did find an early application…

Only last issue I was having a whinge about companies claiming high-res audio via Bluetooth (which can’t be done). But just as that issue went to press, I heard about a whole new Bluetooth spec from the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG), including a new standard audio codec, which is to be called LC3. Audio geek that I am, a new Bluetooth codec is exciting stuff to me, and I grabbed the new spec sheets with enthusiasm. I was disappointed. Perhaps I should have known better, because ever since I attended an early launch of consumer Bluetooth back in the late 1990s, I have waited through the umpteen updates since then for the Bluetooth SIG folk to allocate more bandwidth for audio. More bandwidth, a higher bit-rate: that’s the only…

Sound+Image and Australian Hi-Fi are EISA’s representatives for Home Theatre and Hi-Fi respectively here in Australia, part of the Expert Imaging & Sound Association which for 40 years has been pooling the editorial review experience of 60 special interest magazines and websites across 29 countries. EISA usually holds an annual convention in March, and an awards ceremony in September (in Berlin during IFA) for celebratory sherbets and a posh gala presentation ceremony. With global travel still opening up, this year’s convention remained an extended series of online presentations nad discussions, followed by judging sessions between EISA’s various Expert Groups to nut out the final winners. Again no winners gala this year (next year, we hope!), but that’s just a shingdig to celebrate the completed task: we’re still able to bring you…

PROJECTORS — WHAT YOU NEED TO CONSIDER… BRIGHTNESS It seems obvious, but it’s all about brightness. Too few lumens will leave you unable to enjoy your big picture in anything but near-darkness, or will require you to brighten your image by bringing the projector forward and shrinking your screen. Which, of course, isn’t the point of it all… USE A SCREEN The screen is an integral part of a projection system. As you can read in our installation feature this issue (p74), you should consider the whole system, not just your projector. Without a screen you are effectively hobbling the projector’s abilities, kinda like buying a great hi-fi system but then using cheap speakers on the end of it. Many casual projector users just shine their image onto a white wall, even walls of…

As we set up the new GS50 from Taiwan’s BenQ, it occurred to us that it combines characteristics from the last two BenQ projectors through our doors. The physical design puts it clearly in the same camp as the near-cubic BenQ 3000i — but that was a 4K projector more than double the price of this one. Technically the GS50 is closer to the Sound+Image award-winning GV30, a ‘portable’ projector with an unusual circular design which made it very easy to aim (straight up at the ceiling if you wish), while being super-simple to set-up. A lot of those abilities transfer over to this GS50 equally successfully. But here you get more lumens, and higher resolution — this delivers a Full-HD pixel count of of 1920 × 1080 (compared with the…