Kevin Reylek's blog

There was a time when shooting HD video meant big equipment and even bigger budgets. Nowadays, you can shoot amazing HD footage with something that costs under $200 and fits in your pocket. But how about great sound, or even surround sound, to match that awesome video? Like HD video, surround sound used to be bulky, expensive, and reserved for use by the pros. Nowadays, thanks to a company called Holophone (not to be confused with the instrument from Futurama) just about anyone can add 5.1 surround sound to their home movies or independent films without having a duffel bag full of equipment or a Hollywood budget.

Over the last few years here at B&H, I've done my fair share of hands-on headphone reviews. However, I haven't really spent much time looking at the wireless options that are available. To be honest, I've never really had a great experience with various wireless headphones in the past. Recently, I took 3 offerings from Sennheiser for a spin and let me just say, I may be a wireless convert from here on out.

Recently, I wrote a review about the Beats Studio and Beats Tour around-ear and in-ear headphones from Monster and Dr. Dre. Well, the Renaissance doc has teamed up with the sound monsters again to bring you an on-ear headphone called the Beats Solo (left). There's also a new artist in town, whose in-ear headphones might just make your HeartBeats go Gaga. Let's plug in and see how

With tons of microphones available, how do you choose the right one? Some are all-purpose; others are meant for vocals and musical instruments; still others are designed for specific applications such as picking up the tones of a harmonica. We'll be focusing here on broadcasting microphones and what makes them ideal for capturing speech. Broadcast mics are widely used in radio studios. They're ideal for voiceovers and announcing.

We've all experienced audio that's out of sync. When audio doesn't match up with video, it feels like we're watching a poorly dubbed movie. When your studio hardware isn't synced to a good clock, it creates an odd echoey scenario that can be so subtle you may not realize your overall sound is being degraded. So what can be done in order to keep audio in perfect sync? In a word, a word clock. A word clock is a nifty bit of technology that has the sole purpose of keeping perfect time and preventing data errors with digital audio.

It feels like Adobe is fairly new to the audio editing game. While they're the kings of photo editing, they're not the first company you may think of when it comes to professional audio editing. However, they've been at it longer than you might think. With Audition 3, the latest version of their pro-level recording and editing software, Adobe puts themselves right at the front of the line for comprehensive features and ease of use.

In my previous article about in-ear headphones, one model that wasn't explored was the SA6 from Sleek Audio, which is a unique offering from a relatively new contender in the headphone world. What's interesting about the SA6 is that it's a completely modular system, and it has customizable treble and bass response. To my knowledge, this is the only pair of in-ear headphones on the market to offer this feature, and it does so at a pretty reasonable price.