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The Pioneer VSX-1131 AV Receiver is Named One of 2016’s Best

The Pioneer VSX-1131 AV Receiver is Named One of 2016’s Best

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So Make Sure to Add it to your Black Friday Shopping List

Today marks the official start to the holiday shopping season and everyone is panicking. So many gifts to buy, so little time! Perhaps you’re looking for a fantastic gift for the music lover in your life? Or maybe you are searching for the perfect addition to your own home entertainment system to show off during holiday dinners? Look no further:  as a proud partner of top audio-visual company Pioneer, Blackfire Research is happy to announce that the Pioneer VSX-1131 AV Receiver, powered by Blackfire Research’s “FireConnect,” has been named one of the best AV Receivers for 2016 by Thewirecutter.com and Themasterswitch.com – so make sure to add it to your Black Friday shopping list!

The Pioneer VSX-1131, which features Blackfire’s FireConnent, placed “runner-up” for Thewirecutter.com’s “The Best Receiver” of 2016 award. On their decision to include the VSX-1131 as one of the year’s best AV Receivers, WireCutter expressed that “the VSX-1131 has AirPlay, Bluetooth, Spotify Connect, Dolby Atmos, and integrated Wi-Fi support. It will convert an analog video signal to HDMI, too, so you need to run only a single cable to your TV. It even offers…component-video and phono inputs…[and] features Google Cast for Audio support, which we really like to see.”

As if one wasn’t enough, Themasterswitch.com has ranked the AV Receiver as #10 on their list of “Best A/V Receivers of 2016,” stating that “[t]his is a good, solid all-round system” and that “it’s one of the more reliable units out there…We do like the increased HDMI ports, and we really enjoyed the room correction system, which calibrated the system nicely.”

The Pioneer VSX-1131 AV Receiver “has seven amplifier channels [and] the serious home cineaste can also operate a Dolby Atmos loudspeaker set with its additional ceiling speakers. With 160 watts per channel, the amplifier output meets higher demands, similar to the seven HDMI ports, one of which is located on the front panel. This allows you to quickly connect external players without much hassle. The VSX-1131 supports 4K UltraHD with HDR on every HDMI port, while it can convert Full HD into 4K using its powerful video scalers.” (Pioneer 2016)

The receiver also features “various streaming options [already] installed. With Spotify, Tidal and Deezer, all the payment streaming services are supported…TuneIn adds thousands of web radio stations, while AirPlay, Google Play and Bluetooth provide matching wireless access to every tablet or smart phone. And if you’re planning a multi-room system in the near future, you’ll be happy to know that the VSX-1131 is already compatible with FireConnect and so able to feed all connected sources into a corresponding system.”(Pioneer 2016)

Pioneer explains that Blackfire’s Fireconnect “enables any audio source connected to the receiver—from vinyl to streaming audio—to be sent wirelessly to a compatible speaker placed anywhere in the home.”

“The new Pioneer AV receivers with FireConnect enable the concurrent playback of every audio source connected to the AV receiver via an optional wireless speaker. Conveniently control the multiroom playback with track selection and volume via smart phone and tablet.” (Pioneer 2016)

Congratulations Blackfire Research and our partners over at Pioneer. Let’s keep setting the standard for wireless home entertainment.

You can purchase the Pioneer VSX-1131 on Amazon, Best Buy, or Walmart.

 

 

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Music Review: Solange, “A Seat at the Table”

Music Review: Solange, “A Seat at the Table”

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The third studio album by singer/songwriter Solange Knowles is by far her most impressive to date. Receiving wide critical acclaim and landing Knowles her first number-one album on Billboard 100 (US), A Seat at the Table is a powerful statement on black womanhood. Knowles’ vocals soar, never distracting from the Album’s core meaning, only signifying its force. Among the R&B, Funk, and psychedelic-soul tracks that make up the album, Knowles peppers in spoken word Interludes, recordings of her parents, her family, and herself, discussing black culture and their experiences with systemic racism in America.

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Blackfire Research
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 Introducing Blackfire RED

  Realtime Entertainment Distribution framework

  Built into products that have the                       Logo

 blackfire cio review award

RPM

Real-Time Packet Management

RPM streams up to 4K video and lossless 24-bit/192kHz Studio Quality HD audio to any device, any room - it’s how we make sure that there are no gaps or drop-outs in your music.

Read more

TIS

Traffic Independent Synchronization

No matter how much bandwidth you’re using on your network, TIS makes sure that your speakers stay in sync.

Read more

DSB

Dynamic Stream Balancing

When streaming to multiple devices, DSB keeps it all in balance, ensuring your devices have all the data it needs - exactly at the time it’s needed.

Read more

Blackfire Audio Solutions

The Blackfire RED framework works with any Wi-Fi chipset. So whatever hardware or OS you

have, Blackfire RED delivers a seamless media experience

Wi-Fi products from the following companies are powered by Blackfire

All products with the following marks have the same Blackfire technology built in

Features

Up to 24-bit/192kHz

Multi-Room, Multi-Channel

Multi-Video Sync

1, 2.1, 5.1, 7.1 Home 

Theater (Surround Sound)

Lossy or Lossless operation

BT & Aux Input 

Rebroadcast

Multi-Source Play

Auto discovery, Setup

Grouping, Control

Specifications

802.11n 2.4/5GHz

I2S Audio Input/ Output

Supports GPIO and UART Control

<150usec synchronization accuracy

RPM

Real-Time Packet Management

Some wireless audio systems are so susceptible to signal interference that they compensate by buffering the signal data before they start to playback. Without buffering on these systems you’d hear drop-outs due to the lost audio data. 

Today’s most popular wireless speakers use a conventional WiFi protocol which has to queue the data. When you select a playlist from your smartphone or tablet, it takes several seconds for the first song to fill the buffer before it begins playing. While that first song is playing, the system is already buffering the next song to minimize gaps between songs. This is fine until you add another song before it can re-buffer. Also, because of this delayed playback, you won’t be able to use these popular wireless speakers as a soundbar with your TV without a wire (i.e. an optical cable connection).

Real-Time Packet Management (RPM) is the Blackfire solution to buffering. RPM uses a special multipoint, real-time feedback signal from each speaker to monitor the effect of noise on the audio data stream. This allows a much shorter queue and requires much less buffering. 

TIS

Traffic Independent Synchronization

TIS produces better management and precision operation when it comes to synchronizing any number of wireless speakers and devices - from multi speaker 5.1 audio systems, stereo systems, even your entire home theater.

One problem facing conventional methods of synchronization is that its performance is tied to the performance of the network environment. TIS ensures that the synchronization of any device is not dependent on how well your router works. 

Another problem with conventional synchronization is that the more devices you have on a given network the slower it runs, which could produce an extended lag between multiple speakers and between your TV and the speakers - even total drop-outs. Unlike conventional technology, our patented TIS technology always maintains latency between audio and video pairings and among the speakers themselves. With TIS, the sync of the speakers in your wireless home entertainment system will remain undisturbed by heavy network traffic, so you’ll never miss a single moment of your favorite song or movie again.

DSB

Dynamic Stream Balancing

Dynamic Stream Balancing (DSB) is the way Blackfire makes the best use of the available WiFi bandwidth. If you have a wireless, multi-speaker system that uses conventional WiFi protocols, chances are that some speakers will be more affected than others by interference and heavy network traffic, which causes your music to break up and for speakers to go out of sync.

DSB monitors a special multipoint, real-time feedback signal from each speaker to identify the effect of noise on the audio data stream. By precisely identifying which packets are statistically most likely to be affected, DSB can then use the available WiFi bandwidth to selectively and predictively resend data just to the most vulnerable speaker before interference can cause any audible drop out. 

This is especially helpful when using a wireless surround sound system to watch video. With DSB, your Blackfire wireless system has minimal lag between the video on your screen and audio through your speakers. HD Audio in up to 24-bit/192kHz Studio Quality and even 4K Video can be streamed to any device from any room, losslessly.