Amplifiers

The TightDrive from Amptweaker allows guitar and bass players to take control of that all important tone and overcome any unwanted delay that can slow down the sound as it moves through an amp's circuitry. As well as LED-lit gain, distortion, volume and Tight controls the pedal also features an effects loop where onboard effects can be moved in front of or behind the TightDrive's tone modifications.  Read More

Bang & Olufsen has added some serious bottom-end to its speaker line-up with the BeoLab 11 subwoofer. Sporting a small footprint and typically slick design, the tulip-shaped BeoLab 11 unit uses two opposing drivers to take advantage of the "Acoustic Balance Principle" - a first for B&O in subwoofer design.  Read More

JoyVirtue (JV) has created a vacuum tube amplifier and speaker set for iPods, complete with a dock, for the audiophile who finds the common iPod/iPhone dock and speaker systems a little, well … common. This set up brings out the best in any digital music collection by converting the often “two-dimensional” flat sound from a digital source into a high fidelity analogue one, giving your music more body and fullness. And the classy piece of equipment with its unique styling is also a sure to be a talking point at the next social gathering you host.  Read More

Most times when budding rockstars pick up a guitar and start to play for the first time, it sounds like they’re stepping on a cat – well, to everyone else in the room, anyway. If you are the parent of one of these musicians you might want to introduce them to Paper Jamz, an affordable and innovative play instrument that provides an instant rock star experience and open-ended play, say its makers, WowWee Toys. The one-inch thick stringless guitars (slightly thicker drums) are touch-sensitive, which means you only have to the strum or tap the special circuit-embedded paper on the surface to get a professional sound. Rock on!  Read More

For home theater enthusiasts or gamers who enjoy the deep thud of a good subwoofer but want a little more “jolt” without the extra noise, Earthquake Sound Corp. has added to its range of tactile transducers with the Q10B and MQB-1 that, when fitted to a theater chair or platform, can virtually loosen your fillings. Along with visualizing and hearing, low frequency sound adds a third sense which brings people further into the realm of virtual reality of movies and games.  Read More

In a world where miniaturization rules the roost, it's refreshing to see some things getting bigger and bigger. Just last week we featured Regen's enormous ReVerb iPod dock which stands tall and slim at 35 inches (90cm). Now from Sweden comes the colossal 37.5 x 49 x 12 inch (95cm x 125cm x 30cm) "Wall of Sound", which can boom out 125 Watts of ground-shaking, tube-driven audio from its 28 speakers.  Read More

Just when you thought your room wasn’t big enough for a home theater, JVC has come to the rescue with its ultra-slim amplifier and speakers, designed to sit perfectly alongside or underneath your ultra-slim 50-inch TV or projector screen. The SP-FT model from JVC is a pair of 31mm thin satellite speakers and matching amplifier which pump out an adequate 80W total output over four independent channels and support Dolby Digital, DTS and AAC formats.  Read More

We’ve been living in a digital age for a while now and many of us access all our music from digital formats like CD and MP3. But has anyone managed to perfect a purely digital amplifier? NAD believes it has with the Master Series M2 Direct Digital Amplifier.  Read More

August 4, 2008 Of all the equipment we use in our hi-fi and home theater systems, the thing that’s changed the least over the past 20 years is the speaker. After all, there’s only so many ways you can move air to produce sound. With that in mind, matching speakers to an amplifier should be easy, right? Well...it’s not rocket science, but there are a few key specifications that affect their overall performance. Our AV expert Tim LeFevre explains.  Read More