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The Gryphon Audio Kalliope DSD DAC upon arrival here… (Photograph and image processing by Robinson) The world of DSD DACs has certainly exploded over the past four years, going from a relative "we happy few" to over 400 models to choose from. The price points vary wildly…from $189 all the way out to multiple tens... Read More »

Positive Feedback has a lively and diverse creative community on its masthead. One very unforgettable person, and a very close, dear friend of mine, is the inimitable Dr. Jim Merod, a Senior Associate Editor at PF. A professor at Soka University in southern California, Jim is widely renowned in the world of Jazz as The... Read More »

Herewith is Impressions:  Robinson's Brutus Awards for 2016, Part The Last. Part The First can be found HERE, Part The Second HERE, Part The Third HERE, and Part The Fourth HERE. Music Software/Record Companies/Download Sites Year in and year out, we audiophiles and music lovers rely on our trusted labels, recording companies, re-issuers, and download sites to provide us with... Read More »

Herewith is Impressions:  Robinson's Brutus Awards for 2016, Part The Fourth. Part The First can be found HERE, Part The Second HERE, and Part The Third HERE. This final installment of my Brutus Awards for hardware in 2016 (there will be a very last installment dealing with labels and music companies) concludes with cables, accessories, and system enhancements. In the... Read More »

Herewith is Impressions:  Robinson's Brutus Awards for 2016, Part The Third. Part The First can be found HERE and Part The Second HERE. There will be a fourth installment to cover this busiest of years...stay tuned! All photographs are courtesy of their respective companies, unless otherwise noted. Aurender W-20 Music Server The Aurender W-20 Reference Music Server, a technological... Read More »

Gather around, audiosports fans! It's that time of year again…Positive Feedback's Brutus Awards season. Here is 'Part The Second' of Robinson's Brutus Awards 2016. Part The First can be found HERE and Part The Third HERE. Electronics, Part 1 Gryphon Audio Kalliope Quad and Qcto (256fs and 512fs) DSD DAC The Gryphon Audio Kalliope DSD DAC upon arrival…... Read More »

Gather around, audiosports fans! It's that time of year again…Positive Feedback's Brutus Awards season. You can find Part The Second HERE and Part The Third HERE. At the end of each year, my unindicted co-conspirator Dave Clark and I give our Positive Feedback awards. These are our annual "best stuff we heard this year" plaudits. No padding, crap, junk food, or... Read More »

Johnny Hartman - Once In Every Life Reissued by Analogue Productions APJ 105 originally released in 1981 by Bee Hive Records BH 7012 A very difficult record to review! So much to say and so little room to say it. In 1995 Clint Eastwood directed and starred in The Bridges Of Madison County. In September... Read More »

No. Not the streaming media service. Turns out, there's a major high-end audio company in Germany, TIDAL Audio, which is joining the ranks of world-class audio design. In fact, TIDAL Audio, founded in 1999 by Jorn Janczk with the stated intent of building the finest audio systems on the planet, has been around years longer... Read More »

Rush Paul is an audio friend of mine, who happens to share my passionate love for LPs and Lloyd Walker's wonderful Walker Audio Proscenium Turntable, arguably one of the very best reference turntables on this humble rock. He's deeply into getting the best out of his albums. Rush recently sent me his notes summarizing his... Read More »

So here I am again, returning to one of the touchstone companies for DSD and digital audio:  Playback Designs. Am I surprised? Should anyone be surprised? Heck no. In fact, according to Andreas Koch, he and I first saw each other at the original DSD demonstration at Mobile Fidelity in Sebastopol, CA, back in September... Read More »

There's glory for you! In which our hero meditates… This isn't going to be anything like a standard review, which is something that I don't do anyway. No short-term romance…no quickie relationship…no three-months-and-done. No "Wow, what the hell was that?!" No "of all the turntables I've ever heard, this is another one." No, this is... Read More »

In which our hero meditates… What a year it's been. As I observed in the first of these "Brief Impressions" articles, on the Oppo Sonica (HERE), there have been so bloody many products and projects here at PF Central in 2016 that I'll be writing from here until the end of the year to cover... Read More »

Funny thing. You'd think that there wouldn't be any enormous mountaintops in Newark, New Jersey. And you'd be wrong…. Let me explain. Bill Parish of GTT Audio A couple of months ago I got an invitation from Dick Diamond of YG Acoustics, Bill Parish of GTT Audio, and Joe Kubala of Kubala-Sosna to attend a... Read More »

[UPDATED VERSION with new purchase links for NativeDSD.com included at the end of the review.] For quite a while now I've been sitting on an advance copy of an important Quad DSD recording, waiting for it to be released commercially. Now, I'm glad to say, the time has come…at last! The album is music by... Read More »

Great news! Positive Feedback and NativeDSD (http://www.nativeDSD.com) announce the release of a joint music project, the PF DSD Sampler, Volume 1. This project was done to celebrate NativeDSD.com's amazing achievement of passing 1000 albums at its site in early September of 2016. The PF DSD Sampler, Volume 1 is a collection of ten selections from... Read More »

Brief Impressions:  From an Editor's Notebook In which our hero meditates… What a year it's been. There have been so many products and projects here at PF Central in 2016 that I'll be writing from here until the end of the bloody year to cover them all. Some of these will require a more extended... Read More »

Well, right on, John Marks! Here's a real classic from the trove of audio loot. This week's album from The Tannhauser Gate (http://www.thetannhausergate.com) brings back a pile of memories from my junior year in high school, which was a time of ferment and fervor in my life, there with friends and life in the East Bay sprawl-town of... Read More »

Oh damn!! There goes my new dedicated power supply!