“It is surprising to me how often the A/V Furniture is at best an afterthought for people.”

First of all there are just about no TV’s still available designed to sit on the floor.
In the days of the big rear projection sets you just rolled the monster into position and you were done with the TV. Not anymore; now the television must be placed on a piece of Furniture, a stand, or even hung on the wall. Now what about all that other stuff that goes with it? You have an A/V Receiver, Blu-Ray Player, Cable or Satellite box, etc., etc. Where is all that stuff going to go? What will keep it from getting all dusty? Can you hide the wires? Do you have to really see the gear for the remotes to work right?

Happily, we have an answer…or should I say a number of great answers;
all from the BDI Furniture Company.

or “Becker Design” is a company that makes a very full line of TV stands and A/V Furniture to match almost any room, in many styles and finishes; including the new Chocolate Walnut that beautifully matches many dark European Wenge speakers.

Best of all, the designers at BDI are obviously Audio / Video guys…or at least very good listeners.
All of their furniture features things like removable back panels so you can easily access your gear for wiring and making equipment changes. All the cabinets are on hidden wheels…even fully loaded with equipment you can easily roll the furniture out from the wall to make your work easy, and return it to the correct position when you are done. All of the shelves and base panels are vented; this is so air flows easily through the shelves and your gear; because we all know heat is the enemy of electronics.

How about soft close hinges?
Even if you accidentally toss the door closed it will catch itself and close slowly and softly. All the glass in the cabinets is smoked so it is very hard to see any of the gear hidden inside, but it is still clear to IR…so your remotes work right through it.

What are you going to do with that center speaker you ask?
Many of the models have a drawer or a cut out in the center so your speaker has a great looking and great sounding home. Plus now many of the cabinets have an option to add a TV mount directly to the cabinet itself. This lets you mount the TV on a mount that makes it look like it is floating; but without actually going through all of the work of having the set mounted on the wall. You know in case you ever decide to re-arrange your room!

What about wire management?
All of the furniture and TV stands and mount feature great wire management…because no matter how nice your furniture is if you still have an unsightly tangle of wires it would still be ugly.

BDI is also really furniture…
not some knock down, good luck ever getting it built project with instructions written in some other language and a host of leftover parts when you are done mess, like so many other brands out there. You take it home, take it out of the box…sometimes put on the feet or wheels and away you go.

“This is furniture made to last.”

So take a few minutes to peruse their website at www.bdiusa.com or even better stop in our showroom and actually experience the quality of the BDI Furniture in person…we know you will be impressed.

Ask Ron About Audio Video Furniture

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“We continue to offer products from brands that provide a high level of performance, dependability and value.”

Over the past two decades, Ask the Advisors has carried many brands of car audio- from some of the biggest names including Alpine, Eclipse, JL Audio, Morel, Rockford Fosgate, Pioneer, Phoenix Gold, Tru Technologies and others.

Over the years, the industry has changed, and many of these solid brands from “back in the day” have either disappeared or have been sold to overseas manufacturers that offer “cheaply made shadows” of what those original products were once like.

In selecting the right Car Audio brands, Ask the Advisors has always selected products that were reliable, full of valuable features and had reputations consisting of great warranties alongside solid customer support.

-And this year, we’re proud to offer the Excelon lineup of Car Audio from Kenwood!

Kenwood brings a legacy of more than twenty years in car audio and offers quality products from head units, navigation, amplifiers and speaker systems.

What the Excelon line provides is higher performance, backed by a two-year warranty.

Kenwood’s new DNX-9960 Head Unit and XR-4S Multi-channel Amp

Some of the new and exciting additions you will see in our showroom include the new DNX Series of Navigation Head Units, XR Series Class “D” Car amplifiers, X Series High Performance Speakers and the incredibly flexible XW series 8 inch/ 10 inch thin subwoofers.

The ultra-slim XW-1000F 10” Woofer and High Performance X-1730P Components

These new products illustrate perfectly why the Excelon line of car audio is a perfect fit for our clientele, who demand great performance and quality.

Check out the new Excelon line from Kenwood at our showroom today!

Ask Chuck about Kenwood Excelon

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Quite surprising to us all is the number of people that have written us and asked us to get going again. It seems that there are a good number of people that actually read and enjoy what we write.

Heck there were even a few people that admitted they learned a few things from us! I cannot tell you how surprised and happy I and the rest of the crew were to hear this.

The internet is a heck of a big place and it is really easy to just keep churning out stuff and never know if anyone ever pays it any attention at all. So to all of you who took the time to write to us…Thanks, and we will try to get a steady stream of information going again.

A few words of caution however…remember that everything I write is my opinion. Strangely enough this is easy to forget. People some times seem to think that if they read it on the Internet it is true…Despite the fact that I and my colleagues here at Ask The Advisors have many, many, many (some of us many more many than this many many’s) years of experience in this industry; at the end of the day you are reading our opinions.

So, let’s move on to something a little bit more interesting.

What is new at Ask The Advisors?

Kenwood Excelon Car Audio has been added to the mix. This is great looking and sounding gear with a huge slate of features. I am sure Chuck will be writing about it soon.

On the flip side Eclipse Car Audio is gone. Not our decision on this one. Fujitsu Ten, the parent company of Eclipse has decided that Eclipse did not need to continue to exist.

JL Audio has a brand new line of Class D car amps that are smaller and cooler than just about anything you have ever seen.

We will be adding Peachtree Audio’s very cool Integrated Amp / DAC soon…keep an eye out for more information in the near future.

Sonos has landed…if you are looking for a cool and easy way to get music throughout your house you have to check this out.

New Turntables and even more accessories are here from Pro-Ject Turntables. If you have an interest in Vinyl you need to check these turntables out.

Transparent Audio has launched a new line of Performance HDMI cables at great price points… they are flexible, and have small ends and we love them.

We have the Klipsch HD theater packages on display in a couple of spots. These are great if you have small space and yet want big theater sound.

We have several new Audio/Video cabinet styles from our good friends at BDI Furniture. And some great prices on a few closeouts as well.

B&W has introduced what may be the best sounding and looking Soundbar yet…the Panorama is on display and available.

Ok, enough teasing for now…but check back often for more information on all of these new goodies and the other things we will be getting in throughout the year.

Ask Ron About What’s New

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Chuck,

I just wanted to say thank you for all your help and I appreciate all the advice you've given me. The sub sounds great and I could not be happier with the set up. I will be sure to come back if I choose to replace the speakers.

K.K. Palm Beach

I am writing to express my sincere thanks and gratitude…..

for the recent A/V refit of the M/Y Odyssey.I was truly impressed with the work ethic of Brad specifically, and with the rest of your team. The install, communication, product, and scheduling were all above professional grade.

The owner and I are very grateful for you involvement in this project. We appreciate all the extra effort and dedication you team offered the vessel during the challenging refit.

We look forward to seeing you in Makkum to wrap this project up and apply the final touches as well as the work we will surely bring you in the future.

Best wishes,
P.S. Holland, Netherlands

The current trend has consumers searching for reliable solutions to interface iPods and MP3 players with existing factory (OEM) car stereo systems, and for the most part, there are good solutions out there that work.

Some of the companies offering interface solutions include Axxess (Metra), NEO Car Audio, NAV-TV and PAC (Pacific Accessory Corp.) with enable simple AUX inputs and full iPod integration.

AUX input vs. iPod Interface:

The type of interface you will want to purchase depends on which type of MP3 player you have. There are many “standard” MP3 players available and you can even use the audio (headphone) output on most Smart phones to play stored MP3 music files as well. The specific design of the iPod presents a different option, in that you can utilize controls on your factory radio (and steering wheel controls) to run an iPod, if applicable.

This means you control tracks, playlists and can even have your radio display the track information (text) if your radio already supports this. These interfaces also allow for charging of your iPod while in use, which is a great benefit.

Examples of an AUX input MP3 interface and full iPod control interface

How they work:

The MP3 or iPod interface works with the factory car stereo by using either the radio’s Data-port or CD Changer Port, which are located on the back of the unit.

These ports allow for signal input and provide (if equipped) the ability for data transfer with audio to provide text information on the radio’s display.

Most interface manufacturers list the requirements your car’s radio must meet in order to work with their products, so it’s important that you get the details.

When properly connected, these interfaces allow for AUX audio input from any MP3 player either via the AUX or CD button on the front of the radio.

In the case of the iPod, a dedicated iPod plug is provided that plugs into the bottom of the iPod and enables control right from the front of the radio via the TRACK UP/ DOWN buttons and can even allow the user to access personal playlists if applicable. All this with charging capabilities!

The last option:

When neither of these options is available, you can still get audio from your iPod or MP3 player through your car radio by using an RF Modulator, which transmits the audio signal over an FM frequency, such as 87.7FM.

While the audio quality is not as good, you can still get audio through your radio.

Audiovox’s FMM100A Modulator Kit

The fine print:

While the technology for these great interfaces is available, you may run into situations with some vehicles that are not compatible with these devices, either because the radio does not support the technology, or because the interface is still being developed.

The best way to find out if an interface is available for your car is to contact your local car audio specialist (Like Ask the Advisors!).
One such reliable brand that we offer, NEO Car Audio, offers a great way to stay informed about an interface that isn’t available whereby you provide contact information (phone number and email address) and they’ll contact you when the interface is available! -Pretty cool.

iPhone,iPod, & Auxiliary Interfaces

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Integra is the High-End division of Onkyo, and was formed 10 years ago to serve the needs of custom integrators like Ask the Advisors; and you the more demanding client.

Custom Integrators like us had specific an unique product needs, and no one was filling them.

Going back 10 years a lot of the major electronics companies were just starting to realize that Integrators like Ask the Advisors needed more in the products we were selling and installing to fill the needs of our clients. It was no longer ok to try to make the units designed to sell at Big Buy work for our installations; our clients demanded more. A new direction was needed and a line of products designed specifically for companies like Ask the Advisors had to be created.

Onkyo decided to address this

First their engineers went out into the field and talked to a lot of specialist companies like Ask the Advisors to see what we wanted and neededthen they went back to the drawing board to try to deliver the things we asked them for. When all was said and done the products were so different and so advanced that a new name was needed. So Integra was born.

Now 10 years later…

Integra just keeps on doing what they set out to do all those years ago. All of their Audio / Video products are designed to have all of the latest features you would expect. All of the products sound great, and have 3 year warranties. Most importantly for us all of the products are designed to be extremely flexible and controllable in the home. Integra is now a complete line of Audio / Video Receivers, CD Changers, Blu-Ray Disc Players, Amplifiers, I-Pod Integration everything we need to do a complete system; and it is all RS232 controllable to make it easy for us to integrate and control in the home.

Integra, like many of the products we offer at Ask the Advisors, is not available everywhere.

Products like these are designed for the Audio / Video specialist to sell and install for our clients that demand more than the basic product quality and features they can get at the Big Buy stores. So if you are one of the many, many people looking for something better send me a note or better yet visit our showroom and design center in West Palm Beach for a truly better experience.

Ask Ron About Integra

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“Keywords – integra receiver 30.1., integra receivers”

So you are ready to shop for a Home Theater speaker system and you have some questions; probably a lot of them. Hopefully the following information will help.

First, be sure and print out all of the spec sheets on all of the speakers you are thinking of buying. These will make wonderful lining for your birdcage, or make it easy to find packing material the next time you need to ship something fragile someplace. You see most if not virtually all of the specs on a speaker mean little or nothing to you. Things like anechoic chamber measurements, and made up power handling numbers do not tell you anything about how a speaker sounds; or how it compares to other speakers. Listening is how you choose speakers.

Great, so now what do you do? Go and visit a really cool store that has a group of people that know what they are talking about…that have listened to and installed a bunch of systems, and have a whole bunch of speakers actually on display that you can listen to. This would be here at Ask the Advisors for example. We also very strongly recommend that you never buy speakers out of a van in the parking lot of a mall.

Now start by letting us know where you would like your speakers to be. This would be floor standing, bookshelf, in-wall, in-ceiling or some combination. This is a good place to start because no matter how great a speaker is…it has to fit into your room to matter to you. The good news is the companies we deal with like B&W, Snell, Klipsch, Aerial Acoustics, Sonance, Velodyne and JL Audio make systems that can fit virtually any environment and provide great sound for just about any budget.

Now tell us what that budget is. I know this sounds dangerous, telling some low life commissioned salesperson how much money you have is just an invitation for them to figure out how to take it from you. Good news, no one at Ask the Advisors is commissioned or spiffed in any way…we are all paid to be here…and because we do not spend a ton of money on advertising we rely on you being thrilled with the system you buy from us so you will tell all of your friends how cool we are; then they will come and buy stuff from us. This only happens when you are completely happy with what you got from us. Also, the speakers are the best place in your entire system to spend a little extra money if you can. Better speakers will always be an improvement!

Now listen…to a pair of speakers…playing music…all by themselves with no sub-woofer playing. Or compare a couple of different pairs to find the sound you really like. What? But I am trying to buy a Home Theater system…have you forgotten that?

No I have not forgotten, and yes you are, and you need to know that a speaker that sounds good playing music can very definitely sound good playing a movie. If someone someplace else has told you that good music speakers are not good movie speakers; or that good movie speakers are not good for music…run from that place now. Think of it this way; there is very little that is more complex to play than music…so if a speaker is good for music it will be good for anything you want to put into it. A great speaker is a great speaker. Also, if you get a pair of speakers you really enjoy; you might find out you play more music on them as a side benfit. Also, we always recommend that you listen to even small speakers without a sub-woofer, because even though your Home Theater will of course have a sub-woofer; you have to be able to enjoy the speakers on their own to really enjoy them when the sub-woofer is added.

Great, so now you have a pair of speakers all picked out. From here we can guide you as to what is the correct center channel to match up to them, as well as recommend the correct rear and possibly side speakers to complete the system. If you have a large room the side speakers are added making your system 7.1 to aid in the delivery of sounds moving or panning around the room. Finally, we will make a recommendation on a sub-woofer that will match up to the speakers you have chosen; and provide enough output to fill the room your system will be in. You see a great Home Theater system is all about balance. Buying an amazing pair of left and right speakers and then skimping on the center speaker will not make a great system. We can make sure you get a system that plays well together.

You will also hear a lot of discussion about having 2 sub-woofers instead of just 1. Adding a second sub-woofer is a very good idea, and believe it or not this is not about power or playing louder. You see a sub-woofer has a lot of interaction with your room; this causes areas where there is a lot more or a lot less bass. 2 woofers placed correctly in the same room will help reduce these “room modes” dramatically and makes the bass much more even throughout the entire listening area. If your room and your budget allow it, add a second identical sub-woofer to your system.

So now you have a little bit of an idea where to start. So come on over to Ask the Advisors and let us help you pick out the speaker system that will make you happy for years to come.

Ask Ron About Your Speaker Selection

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“We’ll take care of everything”.

“It’s all covered, soup to nuts”.

“Your check will be in the mail in no time”.

Familiar terms these days to those of us buying extended service contracts. Clichés which are hurled across the retail store floor with abandon in an effort to get us to fork over as much cash as possible as quickly as possible.  They are thinly disguised efforts to convince us that we need something we usually don’t, at a price that’s far too steep to begin with.

The talking heads push extended warranties at every level, at every price point.  From stock clerks to salesman to store managers, they are all trained to go for the jugular on one of the highest margin, lowest return products in the retail business.  In the world of home electronics, the Extended Warranty has no peer.  This is a largely worthless piece of paper underwritten by any one of a number of insurance companies.  Some of them are reliable and well known, others not so much.  They all pretend to protect our stuff from our selves, our children and even mother-nature.  Make no mistake, they don’t.

What they do is take your money, sometimes a lot of it (up to 15% or more of the gross amount of your total invoice!) under the guise of providing a long-term blanket of protection for your delicate, software driven electronics.  Unfortunately they don’t tell you that their blanket is full of holes and that the warranty doesn’t cover software, even though software pretty much powers everything you buy these days, or moving parts, you know…like hard drives and motors in CD or DVD changers.  That’s the stuff that breaks, the stuff that warranties ought to protect!  Heck, they often won’t even cover the labor provided by your AV integrator required to actually use the extended warranty.  Extended warranty plans for custom electronics never give you the peace of mind you seek, and they definitely make our job as your service and product provider much more difficult.  Even the venerable and neutral Consumer Reports says Extended Warranties are not a cost effective way to spend your hard earned money. For the record, we at Ask The Advisors couldn’t agree more.

Please understand manufacturers offer warranties on their products for a specified period of time for a reason.

Murphy’s Law says if you’ve got a 90 day warranty; expect a problem in 100 days, a one year warranty, in the 13^th month and so on.  Extended service contracts are designed to appeal to your natural impulse to protect your purchase for a longer period of time than even the manufacturer thinks their product should actually last, which is just silly.  Yet many of us fall for it time after time.  Take a closer look however, and you will conclude that extended service contracts can easily end up as a negative ROI.  And let’s not even begin delving into the muddled mess your service provider (yours truly) gets to wade through in an effort to actually get reimbursed from one of these companies.

They don’t understand what we do and never will, so they have no grasp on what we need or why we need it to make your system functional again.  Suffice it to say every part sold, component used and minute of our time has to be justified in triplicate just to get the OK to proceed with servicing your system, and even when the red-tape is all spooled up nice and pretty it could take weeks before we get the OK to dispatch a technician to your home, and you need service now!  Talk about playing both ends against the middle…

The bottom line: spending three, four or even five figures to pre-pay for potential future service over and above the already generous manufacturer’s warranties offered these days is a rip-off. This is 100% profit to the seller and the underwriter for service that you may never need or want.  In fact, it is almost always more expensive than calling on us to service your system as and if the need arises.   When you take into account how often electronics companies value engineer their products to be less expensive with more features, many of us simply choose to upgrade rather than repair anyway because it is simply more cost effective to replace commoditized components of your system than it is to repair yesterday’s technology.

“Extended Warranties bring no benefit to anyone except those that market them.  Just leave all that stuff to us, we’ll take care of everything.”

So I got the chance to take a Sonos  multiroom music system home with me last week.

So I brought the system home and unpacked the “Bundle 250” and got started. The first thing I did, and I recommend you do the same, was plug in the charging base and get the C200 charging. Once turned off, it won’t turn on unless it is plugged into a powered charging base. Don’t worry, it’s only powered down for shipping, once you turn it on at home, you’ll never really turn it all the way off again.

Next, the ZP90 went in the Family room where the primary system was already located. It was simple enough as my cable modem and router are already there. So I just connected power from the Panamax M5300-PM, the (included) ethernet cable went to my Airport Extreme, and an analog audio patch cable completed the connections as analog was the only available input at the time.

I should mention that though the Sonos system works both wired or wireless, you must have at least one piece plugged in to a hard-wired Internet connection. For me this was the ZP-90 I mentioned above. But you may not have a wired network connection at any of your Zone Player locations. For this, Sonos developed the Zone Bridge. It’s a little $99 box that lets you have your one hardwired connection without spending $349 or more for a Zone player you won’t use.

Next was the ZP120 in the bedroom. I just plugged it into the Panamax M4-EX and hooked up my trusty B&W CM1 speakers and that was it.

Finally came the S5. I set it on the Kitchen counter and plugged it into the wall. That’s it. Wow, this was just getting easier and easier as I went. Surely something was going to blow up soon.

Instead, once the pieces were all connected, setup was pretty painless. I popped the CD into my computer and followed the directions, registered the system, and bam, everything was done.

I topped it off by adding the C200 and my iPhone as system controllers and I was ready to play. One note about the controllers – iPhone or otherwise – they will only work when connected to your network. You can’t use the iPhone from the office to freak out your spouse at home by turning on creepy Halloween music. It’s a bummer, I know.

Anyway, using the system was a breeze. Finally I had my last.fm, Rhapsody, Sirius, and Napster accounts all in one place at one time. Not to mention the seemingly endless free Internet radio stations. You want traditional Irish music from Ireland? No problem. You want to listen to the news in London for a few days before your next trip there? Just a few clicks on the super-slick C200 controller. It looks like an iPhone clone gone wrong, but it really works like a champ. It’s lightning fast and very easy to use. Oh yeah, it makes for a pretty good alarm in the morning too.

Notice I didn’t say alarm “clock“. While the clock on the C200 is certainly accurate, and it never failed to turn on and wake me up, it really doesn’t get dim enough to be good at night, and there is no setting to make it stay on for more than a few hours when in the cradle, so you’ll still need a clock if you like to know what time it is on occasion. Plus, if your spouse doesn’t have an iPhone, they will always be stealing the C200 to listen to all this new music right at their fingertips. So if you do use it for an alarm, make sure you can find the C200 or your iPhone to turn it off in the morning. Otherwise you have to stumble across the bedroom to hit the “Mute” button on the unit.

As for the Zone Players, the Z90 sounded great, and so did the Z120. That little amp outperforms its size and its price quite well. As for the S5, it really likes to see a better quality source than most Internet radio stations can provide. But if you feed it some 192k or better music from your computer or NAS drive it will wake right up and sing quite beautifully. It plays pretty loud, too. Drag it out on the back porch at a party and I doubt you will be disappointed. It doesn’t run on batteries, but once you hear it, you’ll understand. I’ve never heard anything battery powered that sounded this good.

Speaking of better sources, if you’re going to use your Sonos system a lot, and prefer the better quality afforded by using your existing music, invest in a small NAS drive. It will use a lot less energy than your computer will and may even pay for itself in about a year. A small NAS will draw 25-30 watts of energy and your computer draws 200-300 watts or more. You can save your music on the NAS and tell iTunes to use that as your Library or run the sync software that comes with most NAS drives and then you’ll also have a backup, which is never a bad idea. This way your computer only needs to be on when you’re actually using it. You know, for important stuff, like paying bills online, or Internet porn, or paying your Internet porn bills online.

So I was really impressed with the Sonos system. And not just because I expected it to suck and it didn’t. It is a legitimately good system that is well thought-out and works and sounds great. I was actually quite disappointed to have to pack it back up and give it back. My fiancée loved it too, so I’m hoping we can get one of our own to keep soon.

Ask Jason About Sonos