Chances are pretty good that an AV receiver is amongst the audio visual items present at your home. Said AV receiver these days is packed with advanced technology and features that all carry some abbreviated letter name of some sort. Many of us will have to admit, half of the time that fancy letterword may as well be mumbo jumbo. You can relax, it’s not you.:-)
But when it’s time to upgrade and with every supplier screaming how they’re the greatest thing since sliced bread, how do you make any sense out of that? I mean confusion reigns, no?

During our time as AV supplier and custom AV integrator, we’ve seen several home-owners placed in difficult situations because of incorrect pre-wiring by either themselves or a contractor.
We have a few tips lined up that will save you time and money in the future, and allow you to have a better finished product. Most of them come from personal experience, but we’ve been gathering a few excellent ideas from forums as well.

The 1^st of September is approaching fast and we have been very busy prepping for our Rapallo Launch Event. You see, mid-June we moved to our new location in 11A Allens Road and we thought it was about time we would have a little celebration with our customers. I hope you’re coming!

For our customers that aren’t Auckland based and won’t be able to make it all the way out for our Launch Event, don’t despair. We love you just as much, so keep reading. We didn’t forget about you. 

And there sure is plenty to be excited about.

When we were working on last week’s blog about how budget speakers have really raised the benchmark in recent years, we kind of got carried away and started talking about what our set-up would look like in the unlikely event of winning the big lottery ticket. 

Silly exercise, you may say. But I have an uncle who did it; and if he can do it, so can we! On top of that, it’s the stuff dreams are made of and what’s even better: it’s fun! It sure put a smile on our faces. 

The whole thing kind of went from ’I would like some fancy speakers’ to entire house renovations with all the whistles and bells. 

So what crazy splash-outs did we come up with? 

Last week we had one of our headphone distributers walk into our speaker demo room. His response? ‘Wow! That’s a lot of speakers!’. And we do. It’s something we’ve been working on. When we upgraded our demo room, we wanted to offer our customers the opportunity to really check out options.

Especially the budget bookshelf market lately has really stepped it up, with several options from different brands that all receive 5 star reviews as well as the ‘speaker of the year’ badge. So how do you make sense out of all that raving pick-me information?

Lately, we’ve been chatting about a lot of things, but we’ve been a bit quiet on the home theatre projector front. It’s easy enough to think that nothing much is happening  when it comes to projectors, but frankly, you couldn’t be further off the ball. Things are moving; and they are moving fast. In the last year, projectors have become cheaper and technology is getting more and more sophisticated. What used to be reserved for the fat wallets of the elite, is now accessible for most people who are passionate enough to forego some of the other perks of life.So what is our crystal ball saying about the near future of home theatre projectors? 

Recently, we’ve added the Yamaha Aventage Series to our offering and we’re really stoked about that. Why’s that, you may ask? Isn’t Yamaha just Yamaha? And you’re right. We’ve been recommending the Yamaha RX-V series to our customers for a long time and for good reason. It’s just good, reliable ‘stuff’ that doesn’t tend to ‘play up on you’. And in the odd occasion where it does, the support you get from Yamaha and the importer is excellent. So what’s the difference between the RX-V Series and the Aventage Series? The answer to that tends to be a little obscure. You definitely are not going to get a straight answer from the Yamaha website. So here’s a bit of an explanation of why it’s a big deal. 

ng of subwoofers SVS claims that whereas choosing a full-range speaker is a highly personal and subjective decision, choosing the best subwoofer for you is a complete objective process. Whether you agree with that or not, fact is that it’s fairly easy to break down a great subwoofer’s performance in five highly objective and easily understood ways. So what are these 5 things to listen for?

Remember the assemblies, plays, performances, …. In your primary school hall? Whether the memories are fond ones or not, fact is that the traditional kiwi school hall is a place that takes a special place in the heart of many, many kids. And traditionally, you would not link a school hall with an impressive audio experience. Guess, what? We’ve just changed that!The Rapallo installations team has been quite busy in the last few weeks and months. One of the projects we are particularly proud of, is one of our latest school projects. And it is all about the sound in the school hall….

Digital versus analogue….or Bart vs DeanoAt Rapallo, Deano and Bart represent 2 different (very subjective) views of the audiophile spectrum: Deano is all about vinyl, analogue, vintage, and stereo. Bart, on the other hand, is a firm believer in digital, CD, SACD, DSD, Dolby surround and DTS:X neural. The rest of the Rapallo team is amused by their passionate discussions about the subject. It seemed like a good topic to investigate and research a bit further, and here are our findings. Some are quite revolutionary, even Bart had to admit….