Deano, our Rapallo man of all things audiophile has a message for you: Make sure that all your precious AV gear and Hi-fi components are adequately cooled. We let him explain why he thinks you might need a reminder.

Hi-Fi & Audio Visual components tend to offer us joy by the truckloads, but they also tend to be heavy on the wallet (which considering the high level engineering that goes into them is understandable). This fact means that every single one of us has every intention of looking after our precious investments. But what does it mean to look after your gear?

Ok. It’s confession time.

Bart has been a movie lover since his teens. Sure, I love a movie. But not LOVE a movie, the way Bart does. So, when our time came to get into the real estate market, a home theatre was very high on Bart’s wishlist. Every home that had our name on the purchase agreement was pre-wired for home cinema. However for many reasons the actual dedicated home theatre he’d been dreaming of didn’t materialise until a few years ago.

For the last few years, Bart spends every night in his home cinema. Every night. And every Friday, it’s ‘date night’ and I join him for a Friday night movie session.

And here’s the confession: I’d never thought I’d say this but having a home theatre is awesome! I’d prefer to watch a movie in our home cinema a million times over a visit to Hoyts (Sorry Hoyts, but it’s true). I thought I didn’t care much about large screens, immersive viewing, Dolby surround sound and great contrast. Boy, was I wrong.

Some speakers like the ELAC Adante’s or the new ELAC Vela’s, the Klipshorns and the RF7 III, the SVS Ultra’s, the Dali Epicons and the Q Acoustics Concept 500’s come with two pairs of terminals (binding posts) at the back of the speaker, allowing you to bi-wire or bi-amp. Huh?!

Mainly it’s a right reserved for high end speakers, but some very affordable speakers like the Emotiva Airmotiv’s T1 floorstanders offer the option too. The topic of bi-wiring and bi-amping is the cause of many heated discussion on audiophile forum. Even people who know a thing a two about AV don’t always agree on their merits.

Time for us to give you our 5 cents worth of insight.

Room acoustics is a rather broad topic that encompasses a wide range of issues and solutions. As a matter of fact, it’s quite a science in its own right. Bart  has a bit of a passion for the science of waves, how they behave and how they can be tamed. It started off with some papers on acoustics during his engineering training, but he became rather fascinated by it when building his music/recording studio and later on his home theatre. ‘Complex’ doesn’t begin to describe it and it tends to scare off many audiophile and movie lover. But we’ll make an attempt to take you through the muck without leaving you with a headache at the end. 

Whenever I post something on Facebook about Blu-ray players or CD players, guaranteed somebody will reply:’ Do people still buy these?’ While obviously nowhere near in the same amounts as say 15 years ago, the answer is still ‘yes’. Despite the convenience of streaming and the romance of vinyl, the truth is: CDs are still an excellent music format. 

At the Rapallo home, Spotify Premium gets a lot of use for all sorts of reasons (the presence of young people not being the least of it). But we’ve also got hundreds of CDs in the cupboard, and we’re not getting rid of them. After all, the humble CD player still offers high-quality audio that trumps a lot of the streaming services out there.

This is the story of three shades of black: grey, white and black or the intriguing story of projection screen fabric.

One of the holy grails in projection is how black the “colour” black can be. As we are projecting light on a white surface, and the light is then reflected on our retina, black can never be really black. Black is an absence of light reflected on a white surface, so black becomes….dark grey, sort of. Unless, of course, you change the projection screen fabric colour from white to….black (or grey)!

At Rapallo, we have been supplying projection screens for over a decade and we have had a great relationship with our supplier. So when they sent us their new grey acoustic transparent projection fabric, we jumped at the opportunity to test it and see what the difference was. The results are interesting, to say the least.

On the back of a blog we wrote a few months ago about multi-room audio, we got the following question: Is there such a thing as multi-room video? You may scratch your head when you hear the term “Multiroom video” and think…what the heck is that? 

At Rapallo, we regularly receive inquiries from customers who would love to have the ability to share a few video sources such as their Sky box, Apple TV and Blu-ray player in different rooms. It’s a great way to save time and money. And you guessed it, depending on your situation there are a few solution to choose from. It can really be as sophisticated or as simple as you want it to be.  

Which brings us to the question: How do you go about creating a multi-room video system?

If you’ve never installed a projector or screen before, the process can be quite intimidating and maybe even confusing. The general idea is simple, and you probably already have a good idea of where you want each piece to go, but the specifics are unclear. Which is mounted first, the screen or the projector? How far back should the projector be from the screen? How high should the screen be? How do you fine tune the projector’s position to fill the entire screen? This guide answers all of those questions, and hopefully any others you have about how to mount a projector and screen as well.This guide answers all of those questions, and hopefully any others you have about how to mount a projector and screen as well.

We have some introducing to do. 

In the weeks before Christmas, Rapallo saw a small flood of new products that landed in the Rapallo showroom. 

But… the new ELAC Vela speakers kind went under the radar a little bit. I don’t know what it is with European brands (UK brands being the exception), but they are rather complacent when it comes to marketing. Every single one being outstanding products, there seems to be some assumption that quality will sell itself. The result is that on this side of the world at the very least, these very same high-quality products remain unnoticed. And that should absolutely not be the case. 

Time to change this, we say. 

Just like soundbars, satellite speakers often get frowned upon by the audiophiles and AV enthousiasts. The problem they are referring to is the limited mid and lower range they are typically able to provide because of the small speaker cabinets.
But satellite speakers do have a place in certain situations. We highly recommend them as a first step in the process of building full blown home theatre set-up without compromise. What’s more, sound quality has improved a lot over the years. And we haven’t even started talking about some of the cool designs out there.
The trick is to know what to look out for and you may be very pleasantly surprised about what some of these little satellite speakers are capable of