After more than a year of demos and anticipation, Harman Kardon will be delivering one of the very first consumer products to offer Dolby Volume. This technology is seen as a long-overdue blessing to many couch potatoes with spouses, kids, and/or sensitive ears, effectively assuring consistent volume levels across different content, different channels or even when switching between various source components.

Using a psychoacoustic model of human hearing, Dolby Volume analyzes, measures and ultimately adjusts the volume levels that we perceive so that these jarring volume level changes go away without impacting the quality of the sound. The most dramatic demonstration thus far has been on a typical transition form a TV show to the commercials, which are legally allowed to be broadcast at much higher--often jarring--audio levels in an effort to grab your attention, and hopefully your dollars.  Dolby Volume nips this right in the bud.

So "Bravo!" to Dolby and to Harman Kardon as well, for the elegant, well-featured AVR 7550HD audio/video receiver. It is also the first receiver to incorporate Texas Instruments' new DA710 audio digital signal processor in a dual-DSP implementation, which provides previously impossible processing for a new level of multichannel audio performance. Dolby TrueHD lossless and HDMI version 1.3a connectivity with 1080p upscaling are here of course, for the Blu-ray/high-def crowd, and even the graphical on-screen menu system in rendered high-definition. An ample 110 watts of power are supplied to each of the seven channels.

The Harman Kardon AVR 7550HD will be available in January 2009 at a suggested price of $2,799.

More information: www.harmankardon.com