2021 Audioholics Product of the Year Awards
We’ve made it to the closing weeks of 2021. That means it’s time to reflect on the highlights of this year’s very best in consumer audio-video! It was only a year ago in the 2020 Audioholics Product of the Year Award that Gene confirmed 2020 was the “…year of suck”. Little did we know that baby New Year 2021 was about to say: “Hold my beer!”. The challenges of 2020 manifested even in the world of A/V, with chip-shortages, supply chain problems and for many, even more lockdowns that may have impacted product releases and retail sales. So, like 2020, we weren’t able to review quite as many new products as we had in previous years, but through it all, 2021 saw some great new releases worthy of our highest praise.
2021 Audioholics Product of Year Awards Youtube Discussion
Lest you think we’re entirely negative about past year, let’s not forget that 2021 presented some bright lights for the A/V industry. As movie theaters reopened, long-delayed films finally began screening in 2021, many of which are available to stream at home. This year brought us historic film-industry renegotiations with theater chains that permit home screenings of ever-newer films. Meanwhile, two of the biggest music streaming services, Spotify and Apple Music, raised the bar on sound quality with upgraded lossless streams, Apple even offers its lossless and Spatial Audio by Dolby Atmos free of additional fees. To help you get the best out of music and film media in 2022 and beyond, here are our product review highlights from 2021!
Storm Audio ISP Mk2 | Review | Buy Now
MSRP: $24k (as configured)
Building the new Audioholics Smarthome provided me a unique opportunity to showcase the accumulation of the knowledge I’ve learned over the last 20+ years running this website. I wanted to build a theater room that not only surpassed the performance of the AH Showcase home built back in 2005, but also push the envelope of technology. The Storm Audio ISP MK2 is unlike a conventional AV processor from the big brands. It is not a single CPU PC type platform either. Instead, it’s a modular DSP based processor built around a preamp. This affords Storm incredible configuration flexibility and expandability that would otherwise be impossible to achieve. Storm Audio offers 16CH, 24CH and 32CH variants of this platform via analog outputs or AES/EBU or AES67 optional digital inputs/outputs (only the Trinnov Altitude has this same capability). With the ISP MK2, it is capable of processing up to 32 channels with 24 channels of native decoding. All three immersive surround formats (Dolby Atmos, DTS:X Pro and Auro 3D) are supported, with future firmware updates to also support IMAX Enhanced features that are now in the works. The Storm ISP MK2 has the most advanced bass management and bass routing I’ve ever seen from any consumer product regardless of price. Not only was I able to run digital signals for my front LCR active RBH Sound SVTRS speaker system for the best possible fidelity, I was also able to route LFE + summed bass from «small» channels to them while ALSO having a dedicated subwoofer channel for the other subs in my system. The result, epic bass on a scale I’ve never been able to achieve before with conventional processors. With a 20 band PEQ per channel and DIRAC Live on board, you’re able to customize your sound in a way that very few alternative products can offer. The Storm Audio ISP Mk2 did well on our bench tests, and future expandability looks very promising (ie. HDMI 2.1 and new audiophile DAC in the works for 2022). We look forward to continuing the support for this AV processor in our primary theater reference room so please come back to the review link for those updates.
Storm Audio ISP MK2 Youtube Video Overview
If you want the very best decoding for Atmos, DTS:X and Auro 3D, with the most sophisticated bass management facilities, and the most elaborate speaker layouts, the Storm Audio ISP MK2 is your ticket! If you still want the elements that make this processor so great but only plan on a channel count of 16 or less, check out their ISP Core-16 for more economical pricing.
Perlisten S7t Tower Loudspeakers | Review | Buy Now
MSRP: $15,990/Pr
Perlisten S7t Tower, Certified THX Dominus
In 2021 Perlisten forced us to ponder the eternal question: Can a loudspeaker achieve perfection?
At the unequivocal apex of the high-end tower speaker category, sits the Perlisten S7t loudspeaker. The company brought us their new S7t speakers for testing in mid-2021 and at the time of the review the Perlisten had built the first and only speakers to ever achieve THX Dominus certification. The S7t is designed to front a line from Perlisten that includes a complete set of matching speakers and subs for the ultimate home theater that might well be anyone’s end game system. Perlisten’s complete Dominus line has met THX’s highest rating, sufficient for up to a 20-foot viewing distance inside a 6,500 cubic-foot room. So stringent are the requirements that it had long been speculated that no speaker would ever earn a Dominus rating. But Perlisten came through THX’s rigors with a line of speakers that deserve consideration for the finest available at any price.
The S7ts are impressive to behold, a blend of elegance and science fiction with dark hard-wood finish enveloping a symmetrical esthetic. Standing at just over 4-feet tall, they may not be the largest tower speakers we’ve seen, but the front-facing, 5-driver array can be described as awe-inspiring. According to James’ review of Perlisten S7t speakers specialize at wide horizontal dispersion of sound to maximize optimal listening-space, a requirement for playing inside large spaces.
Every element in these speakers are a clinic in craftsmanship with the latest high-tech materials, right down to the drivers made with the same TPCD material, composed of broad weaves of carbon fiber with the strength of steel in lightweight, sensitive cones. You’ll find similar levels of spare-no-expense technology throughout these loudspeaker’s design. The resulting sound quality put our reviewer into a quandary where he could find no discernible weakness or the kinds of trade-off you’d expect in any speaker design. The only Con we could list in our review for the Perlisten S7t was its $16K price per-pair, but as the engineers at Perlisten could tell you, it’s difficult to put a price on perfection.