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Audioholics has posted a review of JBL’s latest entry in to their Studio L speaker line, the L880. The L880 is a 4-way floor-standing speaker consisting of a dual 6in woofers, a 4in midrange, a 1in titanium tweeter, and a 3/4in mylar super-tweeter. The drivers are housed in a well-braces cabinet made of 1/2in MDF. The reviewer expected big sound from these imposing floorstanders and was not disappointed but he was particularly surprised by the detailed midrange and airy upper end. At $1400, the JBL L880s appear to be a solid choice if you are in the market for a floor-standing speaker in the $1500 range.

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Audioholics has posted a review of NHT’s ambitious entry in to the high end audio market, the Xd System. The XdS consists of two satellite speakers (XdS), a powered bass module (XdW), and a processor/amplifier (XdA). The XdS contains a 5.25in magnesium woofer and a 1in aluminum tweeter; both are premium components manufactured by SEAS. The XdW contains two opposing 10in aluminum woofers housed a sealed cabinet and powered by a built-in 500w class D amplifier. The XdA contains a DSP processor designed by DEQX which contains provides the digital crossover and amplitude, phase, & group delay correction for the whole system. The XdA also houses a 4×150w amplifier which powers each individual driver in the XdS pair. The reviewer was extremely impressed with the NHT XdS giving it top marks in every category except for dynamic range where it received a 4/5. If you are shopping for a 2 channel system in the $6k range, the NHT Xd System should be on your short list.

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Audioholics has posted a review of the newest addition to Pioneer’s Elite Plasma line, the PRO-940HD. It is a 42 inch panel with a native resolution of 1024×768. The reviewer was particularly impressed with the superb black level and the plethora of inputs including two HDMI (1080p support), VGA, CableCard, and a 10/100 ethernet port for media center functionality. The built-in scaler/de-interlacer does an excellent job with 4:3 SD content. At an MSRP of $3499, the Elite PRO-940HD is near the top of its price range but the build quality, features and image quality justify the expense.

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Audioholics has posted a review of Denon’s latest entry in its 3900 line, the DVD-3930CI. It sports 10-bit Silicon Optix REALTA T2 Processing, 480i and 1080p HDMI output, digital keystone adjustment for front projectors, Burr Brown PCM 1796 DACS for the front LR channels, and HDMI 1.1 audio output. It scored perfect (130/130) on the de-interlacing tests which matches the previous Denon flagship player, the DVD-5910. The reviewer commented that the DVD-3930CI is a reference quality dvd player which matches or surpasses the DVD-5910 and at $1500 ($2300 less than the DVD-5910CI), it leaves almost nothing to be desired with regards to audio, video, or build quality.

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Sound and Vision Magazine has recently posted a review of JBL’s recent update to the venerable Studio series, the Studio L. The review system consisted of a pair of L820 mains, an LC2 center, a pair of L 810 surrounds and an L8400P subwoofer. The L820 and LC2 are both 4-way speakers which feature a 3/4in mylar supertweeter, 1in titanium tweeter, 4in Polyplas midrange, and a 6in Polyplas woofer (2 woofers on the LC2). Both the L820 and LC2 feature somewhat shallow sealed enclosures that were designed for wall mounting. The L810 is a 3-way speaker in a ported enclosure that omits the 4in midrange transducer found in the L820 and LC2 and utilizes a slightly smaller 5 1/4in woofer. The L8400 features a 12in Polyplas woofer in a sealed enclosure powered by a 600w amplifier. The reviewer was impressed with the system’s build quality and he lauded the it’s “clean, uncolored sound and impressive dynamics”. For a consumer that is looking for a sleek on wall system to compliment a plasma or lcd display, the Studio L series looks like a solid system that does not compromise its sound quality for a sleek form factor.
View Sound and Vision JBL Studio L Series review
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Audioholics has reviewed Onix’s long awaited entry into the budget speaker market, the X-LS. The X-LS is a 2-way bookshelf speaker that features a 1in soft-dome tweeter crossed over at 1.75khz to a 6.5in treated paper composite woofer. The ported cabinet is tuned to 42hz which yields usable bass extension down to 60hz. The crossover designed by Dannie Ritchie of GR-Research features aircore inductors and polypropelene capacitors and integrates the tweeter and woofer together for a combined frequency response of 60hz-23khz (+or- 1.8db). With a rated sensitivity of 87db and a nominal impedence of 6ohm the X-LS is relatively easy to drive and should pair nicely with just about any midrange receiver. Mark Sanfilipo of Audioholics was particularly impressed with the build quality of the X-LS given its asking price of $199. He was impressed with the speaker’s ability to resolve detail without emphasizing any specific frequency range which given the exceptionally flat frequency response is not hard to believe. The X-LS looks to be a great bookshelf speaker especially considering its price and paired with one or two of Onix’s subwoofers, it should provide a very satisfying two channel system.
View Audioholics Onix X-LS Review
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Panasonic has issued a press release regarding an update to their line of pure digital receivers. The SA-XR55 will be replaced by the SA-XR57 which includes a few important upgrades; HDMI 1.1 and HDAVI Control. The MSRP has been raised to $400 (the SA-XR55 was $300); here’s hoping the power supply has been given an upgrade despite the fact that the listed power output (100w/ch x 7) is the same on the SA-XR57 compared to the SA-XR55.
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Kris Deering of Secrets of Home Theater and High Fidelity has updated his dvd player benchmark with results from the Xbox 360’s dvd player. The results were somewhat of a mixed bag; in regards to deinterlacing and core performance it is comparable with an average budget dvd player. The reviewer was disappointed with the deinterlacing performance considering the Xbox 360 contains one of the most advanced graphics subsystems available. The MPEG decoding and deinterlacing is performed in software so maybe some of the issues can be addressed in a software update.
View Xbox 360 DVD Player Benchmark

Mark Sanfilipo of Audioholics has posted a review of SVS’s midrange dual driver subwoofer, the PB12-Plus/2. This subwoofer features two of SVS’s latest plus series drivers (dB12.2) in a large ported enclosure; the power is provided by a 900W BASH amplifier. The subwoofer ships in a defauly tune of 25hz (3 ports open); by plugging one or two ports and adjusting the corresponding highpass filter one can lower the tune to 20hz and 16hz respectively. The reviewer was equally impressed with the subwoofer’s performance on music and movies. If you are looking for a subwoofer that produces loud, clean, low, tuneful bass, the PB12-Plus/2 is the sub to beat in the < $1500 price range.
View Audioholics SVS PB12-Plus/2 Subwoofer Review

Kris Deering of Secrets of Home Theater and High Fidelity has posted benchmark results from the NeuNeo HVD2085 High Definition DVD Player. The dvd player uses an AMLogic video processing chipset for MPEG decoding and deinterlacing. This chipset also features support for HVD (high definition video on a standard dvd) and upscaling (720P, 1080i, and 1080p) for standard dvds on both the HDMI, component, and VGA outputs. While this feature set looks impressive on paper, the deinterlacing performance and core performance of the NeuNeo HVD2085 were found to be lacking.
View Secrets NeuNeo HVD2085 High Definition DVD Player review