As a self-proclaimed expert consumer and gadget geek I spend a considerable amount of time researching the latest electronics. One of the areas that I am particularly interested is Home Theater.

Most people get their Home Theater information from Best Buy or the local Hi-Fi shop, but these are really poor sources of unbiased information. You see, Best Buy (as well as all brick-and-mortar stores) only sells certain products. The products that they sell are typically exclusive to retail stores (so you can’t try it out at Best Buy then go buy it online for half the price), and they must have sufficient space to profit ratio. Shelf space at Best Buy is at a premium. They don’t want to sell an item with a low markup unless they have to. So there are niches and entire categories of products that never make it to the shelves of the mega-chains or hi-end AV stores. These missing products can often provide a significantly better value and are often of much better quality than what you find locally…and they only exist on the Internet.

Receiver/Amplifier

One category of product that you will never find at Best Buy (at least not a good one) is the Full-Digital Amplifier. About 10 years ago these came out on the market as very expensive alternatives to analog amplifiers. The problem with them was that the processor (similar to a computer processor) was not powerful enough to amplify the entire audio signal without some attenuation. So the result was a significant loss at the higher frequencies. Digital amps (or Class-D amps) got a bad name and were only used when size and power were significantly limited (cell phones, MP3 players, etc). But, as we all know, computer processors have come a long, long way in the last 10 years. So 3 years ago Texas Instruments released a new Class-D audio amplifier on a single chip that could be used for high(ish)-power applications such as 2-channel audio and 5-7 channel Home Theater. Panasonic was the only company to jump on the bandwagon with a consumer product (SA-XR50) 7-channel Home Theater Receiver/Amplifier. The results were astounding. This unit was released with a retail price point of $575 and was quickly being compared to $20k + amplifiers. The units were smaller, consumed significantly less power and thereby produced much less heat. The only real draw-back is that the Class-D amplifier is more power-limited than analog alternatives. The units are plenty powerful for a regular Home Theater setup, but are not appropriate for larger rooms or high-powered audio solutions.
The latest model (SA-XR700) can be had (online) for under $600 and will outperform anything for less than 4 times that price.

Join us next week for Part 2 of Home Theater on a Dime when we discuss HT displays.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 13th, 2007 at 2:38 pm and is filed under technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.