Gramophone’s Favorite Things

Going green with Gramophone

Gramophone is a founding member of a national organization called HTSA - Home Theater Specialists of America. HTSA recently developed a Guiltless Green Home Theater. Click on this link to see a video for more information.

We've been thinking a lot about what else we can do to help our clients reduce energy consumption and save on energy costs. Many people think of us for great sound systems and state of the art HDTV's or home theaters, but might be surprised to know everything else we do. The same easy to use remote control system that turns on the music around the house or runs the home theater can do a lot more. These days we design and install home control systems that can not only control the lights, shades, HVAC and more at the touch of a button, but can include occupancy sensors that turn lights off when no one's around, setback the thermostats when you leave the house and control motorized shades to reduce energy costs.

Sony has joined in recently as well with the introduction of their Eco series of TV's that will turn off the picture (leaving the sound on), when no one's in the room and after 30 minutes pass with no one in the room, can turn off the TV entirely.

Who knew going green could be so much fun!

Gramophone in the news

We have been getting some good press and thought we should share it with you. We were fortunate enough to win two awards in the 2009 Electronic House magazine Home of the Year awards. Check out these two links for more information including some great pictures of the jobs.

Theater:
http://www.electronichouse.com/slideshow/hoty/6042/941

Fun room:
http://www.electronichouse.com/slideshow/hoty/6039/928

Enjoy!

Classe is now available at Gramophone

Gramophone is very proud to announce the addition of Classe to our family of high performance audio & video products. Classe is a Canadian high-end audio company and have been around for going on 30 years. While many high end manufacturers lack the technical capability to design & manufacture products that incorporate today's latest technologies, Classe has the resources to design, engineer & build high performance products without the compromises that are so common in mass produced products from lesser companies.

Nothing can better attest to the quality of their products than the recent endorsement Classe received from the Abbey Road recording studios. Abbey Road uses B&W Nautilus speakers (as shown in the picture to the left), and they wanted amplifiers that could provide all of the performance that the Nautilus speakers are capable of. As a result, Abbey Road recently upgraded the amplifiers to the Classe CAM-400 watt monoblock amplifiers.

Classe's full line of products includes monoblock, 2 channel and multichannel amplifiers, integrated amplifiers, 2 channel preamplifiers, surround sound processors with high performance video scaling and the latest in HDMI, and CD disc players and DVD disc players. Please stop at one of our showrooms for a test drive of a 2-channel or multi-channel Classe system.

Check out the world of LED TV

At Gramophone, we try to always have the newst technology when it's ready for "prime time". We have on display the latest in HDTV's, flat panel TV's that use LED's for backlighting. We have TV's on display from Sony, Sharp and Samsung that use LED backlights. These can provide a significant performance advantage along with reducing power consumption. There are 2 styles (edgelit and full backlit) and 2 types of LED backlights (white LED and RGB LED).

Edgelit LED TV's allow for a very low profile (about 1" thin) - see the newest Samsung LED TV's at Gramophone. They look really good.

Full backlit TV's allow different areas of the picture to be dymically controlled for even greater contrast. We have Sony and Sharp TV's on display with full RGB LED backlighting. The RGB backlighting allows more accurate control of color temperature, for the most realistic color reproduction and the best picture contrast. For the very best in HDTV you need to check these out.

Today is DTV transition day!

It's a new day in TV watching today. If you are receiving your TV from a cable or satellite provider everything stays the same for you, but if you use a rooftop antenna or rabbit ears, your TV may not work the way it used to. The fix is simple - you just need a DTV converter box. If you have any questions about your TV reception, feel free to call either store for help. Columbia can be reached at 410-381-2100 or Timonium at 410-308-1650. We also have field service technicians who can get you up to speed if you need more personal service.

Gramophone welcomes Totem back

Gramophone and Totem Acoustics of Canada are partners again! We will have on display at both showrooms, Totem's Tribe series of on-wall and in-wall speakers along with a broad selection of other speakers from Totem including the landmark Model One Signature and the remarkable Mani2 Signature. These speakers have to be heard to ne appreciated and we hope you'll stop by for a demonstration soon.