What we are listening to.
The brands on our roster, the gear we have reviewed, the pieces worth pointing at and the occasional opinion — written after we have had the equipment in the showroom. Specifications and prices come from the manufacturer and are cited at the foot of each piece; the judgments are ours.
All pieces
The Blue Note A/V experience
Listen, design, build, calibrate, hand it over, and then stay. What a project looks like from the first call to Encore.
Why we certify a system before we agree to cover it
A response-time guarantee is only worth something if we can actually keep it.
From the Bench
The network is the house
Nine out of ten “the system is broken” calls are a network problem wearing a costume.
From the Bench
What twenty years of service calls taught us about specifying
The decisions that cause trouble are almost never the ones clients worry about.
Bowers & Wilkins, and what luxury sound actually costs
From the 700 series to the Nautilus — where the money goes, and where it stops mattering.
The Roster
Lutron: lighting and shading, done once
Why the keypad on the wall is the part of the system your guests will judge you on.
The Roster
Focal’s high-fidelity lineup, ranked
Utopia, Stellia, Clear MG and Hadenys — which one is actually the end of the road.
The Roster
Control4: the smart home solution, assessed
Twenty years of installing it. What it does better than anything else, and what it still does badly.
The Roster
ELAN control systems: the quiet alternative
Less talked about than Control4, and in several rooms we would pick it first.
The Roster
Samsung Lifestyle TVs: The Frame, The Terrace and where they belong
Good answers to two problems most integrators solve badly.
The Roster
KEF: engineering you can hide, or not
One driver idea from the reference towers to the ceiling to the flower bed, and the new outdoor line.
The Roster
Coastal Source: sound and light that outlast the weather
Ellipse bollards, buried bass, cast-brass light, and the connector that makes it last. The brand our Outdoor Living page is built on.
The Roster
Outdoor TVs: SunBrite and Neptune, and why the indoor one dies
Full shade, partial sun, full sun. The one number that matters, and which set for which patio.
The Roster
Sonos: where it belongs in a serious house
The platform everyone knows, the soundbars we reach for, the Amp in the ceiling, and where Sonos stops and the house begins.
The Roster
Sony: Bravia in the living room, Bravia on the theater wall
True RGB for 2026, the OLEDs, and the three native-4K laser projectors our dedicated rooms are built around.
The Roster
Eversolo: a refined way to stream
One box with a real screen, from the Play to the flagship A10, and where each one belongs beside a turntable.
The Roster
DreamWall: microLED, made for the home
The stadium-grade picture, engineered to run cool in a living room and sized to the wall instead of the box it came in.
The Roster
LG: the best picture, built to disappear
The reference OLED sold as design: flush on the wall, wireless, transparent, or hung as art, and Micro RGB for the big rooms.
The Roster
AMP Lighting: brass built to last outdoors
Solid-brass landscape fixtures with a lifetime warranty, from uplights to underwater, now with color control from the phone.
The Roster
The golf simulator room, end to end
Launch monitor, enclosure, projector, software, the room itself and one-button control: how we build a bay the whole house uses.
The Roster
Subwoofers: why one is never enough
Smoother bass in every seat comes from several subs placed well and calibrated with Dirac. Where REL, Bowers & Wilkins, Focal and SVS fit.
The Roster
The room is the first component
Bass traps, absorption and diffusion for what EQ cannot fix, then Dirac to correct what is left. Treat first, correct second.
The Roster
The network everything runs on
Wired first, business-class coverage, zones that keep the house safe, one rack, and a network we manage after we build it.
The Roster
Kaleidescape: cinema worth owning
Reference 4K, the original lossless soundtrack, and a library you own. The source a serious theater deserves, with a drag-to-compare against streaming.
The Roster
The reference home theater
Picture, processor, sound, brains, source and control, chosen to hold each other up and tuned to the room as one system.
The Roster
Movie posters, lit like a cinema
Authentic one-sheets in backlit Glowbox frames, placed with the room, powered properly and on the control system. The finishing touch of a theater.
The Roster
Theater seating, custom to catalog
Fortress for fully custom cinema seating, Texas Theater Seating for ready models at a set price. Both installed and wired in, built around the room.
Kaleidescape Strato K: the 8K flagship
Native 8K, the new 4K Cinematic format at full color, and the lossless soundtrack. The source for a reference theater.
Gear Review
KEF LS LUXE — the LS soul, sculpted
Ross Lovegrove, 12th-generation Uni-Q and 380 watts a side in a genuine art piece.
Gear Review
KEF XIO: a soundbar we can recommend without flinching
Six Uni-Q MX arrays and 820 watts in one bar — KEF’s first soundbar, and it is not a compromise.
Gear Review
Eversolo T10 + AMP-F8: a matched stack that punches above its price
Reference streaming transport meets 500 W of Class-AB, with an OCXO clock and SFP fiber.
Gear Review
Focal Bathys: wireless that a two-channel listener can live with
A 40 mm ‘M’-dome driver and a real DAC inside a wireless closed-back. The hi-fi survived the Bluetooth.
Gear Review
madVR Envy Extreme MK3
The processor that makes a good projector look like a much more expensive one.
Gear Review
madVR Envy Core: the same magic, less of it
Dynamic HDR tone-mapping frame by frame, in the smaller Envy box. Most of the magic, less of the money.
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