Parts Express has the Dayton BR-1S Shielded 6-1/2″ 2-Way Monitor Kit on sale for $99 per pair. The kit comes with everything including the internal dampening and finished cabinets. The crossovers need to be assembled, but that’s easy enough with the included directions and your own surgical precision soldering. Shipping is not included in the price, so you guys in Alaska and Hawaii may want to hold off on this one.

If you are in the market for some budget surround speakers or bookshelf speakers, these are definitely worth taking a look at.

Source: Parts Express

Trafomatic Audio of Serbia has followed up on its stunning tube powered Experience One and Two integrated amplifiers with new phono stage and line stage preamps. The Experience Phono One preamp uses three 6N23P double triodes and an EZ81 tube rectifier, and is available in either moving magnet or moving coil versions. The Experience Line One uses two 6N1P double triodes and an EZ81 rectifier. It features five single-ended inputs and a fixed tape output, a toroidal transformer, Mundorf capacitors, and a remote control.

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I know, I know, it isn’t April 1st yet and I shouldn’t be pulling off such pranks. Sad to say, the cloners are at it again, this time victimizing the Apple iPod Shuffle 2G by including a much needed LCD display as well as an integrated FM radio – something the actual Shuffle sorely needs with requests for either falling on deaf ears at Cupertino.

It retails for less than $10 on eBay (before shipping), which is a far cry from the real deal in terms of price despite packing in 1GB of memory too.

If you’re a big fan of the iPOD Nano 2G design and regret the arrival of the 3G version of this tiny DAP, you’ll be pleased to see the Zarva V1 (1GB), a Nano 2G lookalike (88×40x6.4mm, with a 1.46″ display)). It supports many audio and video codecs like: AVI (Mpeg-4), MP3, WMA, WAV, FLAC, APE, JPEG as well as TXT files.

A lot of high quality headphones and earphones find there way onto my desk. Over the past few years I’ve tested the best from Shure, Ultimate Ears and Etymotic Research, to name but a few. I was therefore curious when Sony announced a new set of headphones sporting a truly radical design.

Although I was keen to hear what these new Personal Field Speaker headphones had to offer, I wasn’t expecting too much when it came to sound quality. And that’s the problem with preconceptions, they are all too often proved well and truly wrong, which is very much the case in this instance. Put simply, the sound produced by the Sony PFR-V1s is staggeringly good, so good in fact that I’ll be first in line to buy a set, with my intrepid news hound Hugo right behind me in the queue!

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If you haven’t heard of Planar before, don’t worry; it’s not one of those fly-by-night dodgy Far Eastern brands that turns out some cheap piece of tat and then disappears again as fast as it arrived. In fact, Planar is a very well established brand in the US, and now it’s decided it wants to get itself known over in the UK too.

Regular readers may recall that the 42in PD420 is not the first Planar product we’ve reviewed. We’ve previously checked out and been very impressed by a couple of entry-level DLP projectors and one of the PD420’s bigger siblings, the 47in PD470. But with its approachable £1,800 price tag and living room friendly dimensions, it somehow feels as if the 42in PD420 could really be the product that puts Planar on the UK consumer map.

That said, the PD420 isn’t exactly designed for the mass market, for it ships with neither a built-in tuner – digital or analogue – or speakers included as standard. In other words, it’s ‘merely’ a screen rather than a fully fledged TV.

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Another current work in progress from AV123 is the X-Plosive subwoofer. The X-Plosive uses a custom 10″ woofer and 12″ passive radiator in a slot-loaded enclosure, powered by a 150 watt amplifier. AV123 claims that the use of the highly efficient woofer makes the X-Plosive comparable in output to other subwoofers with 500 watts of power.

Approximate dimensions are 24 3/8″ D x 15 3/4″ W x 16 1/2″ H, with weight yet to be determined. The X-Plosive will come standard with a satin black finish priced at $399. Cherry, Moho, Palisander Natural, and Palisander Rosa real wood satin finishes will be available as $50 options.

Words from AV123:

Features:

• Driver: Custom 10″ active and 12″ passive drivers
• Amplifier: 150 watts RMS (the driver is ultra-efficient so you should compare this to 500 watts with a normal driver)
• Cabinet: Typical excellent AV123 build quality. Well braced. Choice of real wood veneers.
• Dims: 24 3/8″ Deep x 15 3/4″ Wide x 16 1/2″ high (approximate!)
• Weight: TBD

When it comes to getting the best sound from your computer, it pays to invest in a pair of good quality headphones. These latest cans from Hauppauge promise to deliver Dolby 5.1 surround sound with no wires in sight.

To do this the headset comes with a HomeRF transmitter, so you plug the dongle into your PC’s USB slot and as they are already paired, they’re ready to use.

The reason for RF instead of say, Bluetooth, is that it offers a greater bandwidth rate, so a better signal can be maintained, even if you’re sitting over 10 metres away from your PC.

However, the first thing you’ll discover about these headphones is how sturdy they feel. The support arms are stiff but hold the cans firmly on your ears. The cups have a good deal of padding too. Continue Reading…

Philips has also today unveiled the 9000 FlatTV collection.

The 9700 series comprises screen sizes 42-, 47- and 52-inch models, and the 9600 series features 32-, 37-, 42- and 47-inch televisions.

They are all built around the Perfect Pixel HD Engine, which has the mighty claim of being able to deliver “the highest possible picture quality found on LCD TVs”.

This is because it delivers what are said to be the fastest Clear LCD refresh rates in the world at a speed of 2ms at 100Hz, outputting 2.250 trillion colors in 1080p resolution.

A second key feature is the Ambilight Spectra technology, which identifies dominant onscreen colours and projects them from the back of the TV set against the wall and towards the viewer further “enhancing the TV viewing experience”.

And the 9700 series adds “Perfect Colours” which combines optimised colour input, 17 bit Colour Booster processing and wide color gamut displays. Continue Reading…