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Continuing with my Audio Oasis! Awards series from AXPONA 2019... Synergistic Research/Scott Walker Audio In the Synergistic Research/Scott Walker room Ted! I spent time in the SR/Scott Walker room, checking out Ted's latest innovations at Synergistic Research. There is always something interesting going on with Ted and company, and I've had nearly 25 years of... Read More »

Reference Recordings RR-145, SACD and HDCD™ Price:  $19.98; high-resolution download file, $24.98 While I don't do music reviews on a regular basis, there are times when a particular album really strikes me, and I have to say something…usually brief, but definite. This is one of those times. I just received a new SACD from my... Read More »

With assistance on room lists from PF Senior Editor Myles Astor David W. Robinson, Munich 2018 (photograph by Wojtek Pacula) A glance backwards, and AXPONA 2019 fades into history. It's already being overlaid by Munich 2019, which occurs too quickly after the event in Chicago. Then again, the calendar for high-end audio events has been... Read More »

Ye Olde Editor in action at RMAF 2015 (photograph by Jeff Day) Three things for you… As AXPONA 2019 is looming next week, I have three items that I need to write about briefly before I hit that trail to Chicago. These will be short and to the point…not everything needs to be War and... Read More »

Yon Olde Editor (portrait by John Robinson) A prologue:  of memories, music, and dreams… To start:  An extended and quite famous passage from Proust. Just read it, it will do you good. Many years had elapsed during which nothing of Combray, save what was comprised in the theatre and the drama of my going to... Read More »

The STAX T80009S system package So, this set of impressions will be (relatively) short. Sweet, though. Several years ago, I got a chance to spend a few months with the STAX SRM-007tII tubed electrostatic headphone amp driven by the SR-009 combination. At the time the SR-009 ‘phones were the reference for STAX. They were modern... Read More »

Ye Olde Editor (photograph by John Robinson) By way of explanation… The final batch of my Brutus Award announcements for 2018 was significantly delayed by a major project that had to be attended to by the entire PF Web team:  the transfer of the entire PF site and content to an entirely different Web host,... Read More »

David W. Robinson:  a portrait by John Robinson Onwards into Part the Fourth of my Brutus Awards. PASS Labs HPA-1 Headphone Amplifier Wait! I'm not done yet with reference headphone amps. Early in the year, the good folks at PASS Labs sent along their HPA-1 Headphone Amplifier for my evaluation. I was pleased to get... Read More »

Continuing... ZYX UNIverse Optimum X MC What a year for phono cartridges 2018 has been. I've already extolled the seductive charms of the Air Tight PC-1 coda and the return of the van den Hul Colibri Signature Stradivarius in this year's Brutus Awards. Magnificent achievements, both of these, whose awards were richly deserved. But there... Read More »

van den Hul Colibri Signature Stradivarius (the second coming!) Late in 2017, Randy Forman…he of Finest Fidelity distribution fame, and a jolly good gent…got me a van den Hul Colibri Signature Stradivarius (CSS). It got its break-in and fun run-out in the later days of the class vintage professional turntable, the direct-drive EMT 948's visit... Read More »

Unbelievably enough, it's the end of the year 2018…already! I know that I say this every year, but every year it's worse and worse; time whizzes by faster and faster, and the final quarter always arrives long before I'm ready for it. The Earth rotates, and faithfully follows its annual orbit around yon Sun, so... Read More »

Last weekend I traveled to Buena Park, CA, to attend the 25th Anniversary Gala Weekend for the Los Angeles and Orange County (LAOC) Audio Society. Some background:  The LAOC was founded originally with the help of two of my partners at Positive Feedback, Carol and Dave Clark. They recently told the story of that development... Read More »

High-end headphones and Personal Fi. I've evaluated a goodly handful of 'phones and headphone amps over many years, with some excellent results. Some were large cost-no-object designs, built for home, listening room, or office use only; others were compact and portable, for the music lover on the go. (I do a fair amount of flying,... Read More »

Ye Olde Editor, late summer 2018:  a portrait by John Robinson A late-year glance backwards. Memory, music, people, associations… "No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me. An exquisite pleasure had... Read More »

Ye Olde Editor:  a portrait by John Robinson Numbers. I don't usually get too hung up on round numbers and anniversary metrics…they happen all the time. But as we get ready to launch our next issue and go into 2019, I wanted to stand up, take a stretch, and note two things that are at... Read More »

Ye Olde Editor with pipe weed. Portrait by John Robinson. This seems to be a season for culminating projects. Given that autumn is upon us now, I reckon that the time matches the season, and the mood matches the moment. Having finished my summing up of the Audionet STERN and HEISENBERG reference products, it is... Read More »

Ye Olde Editor:  a portrait by John Robinson Audionet's STERN and HEISENBERG:  Back to the mountaintop again! Fair warning:  This is yet another one of my evaluations that is not going to be a typical "review." No, not with these designs. This is going to be more of a culminating mediation on my experiences with... Read More »

I just back from a quick (two day) trip to Chicago, courtesy of the good folks at Linn in Scotland. On Tuesday, September 18, a very limited number of audio press representatives received an important briefing about new developments at the company. In addition to myself, my longtime audiobud Greg Weaver of The Absolute Sound... Read More »

The Beat MagDrive™ Turntable with Schröder Linear-Tracking (LT) Tonearm Ye Olde Editor, in medias puffus (photograph by John Robinson) Me, I call it "Big Red." Here was a real mountaintop moment for me with turntables earlier this year. It came in two parts:  First, getting to meet Steve Dobbins, the creative master turntable craftsman at... Read More »