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Greetings friends, I hope you are doing well! In August of 2019 the Shuguang Electron Tube Factory was shut down in preparation for a move to a new location. By March 2020 the World Health Organization declared Covid-19 a worldwide pandemic, which would result in the shut down of most vacuum tube production still operating... Read More »

Greeting friends, I hope you are doing well! This article is about the Audio Note (UK) CD 5.1x Red Book CD player ($30,850 USD), a CD player that rewrites what kind of performance I thought was possible from CD players and the Red Book CD format.  A unicorn is a mythical creature of ancient lore:... Read More »

Founded in 1964, and for 59 years now, Mactone has continuously manufactured high-fidelity vacuum tube audio components, longer than any other company in Japan. Steve Mishoe (In Living Stereo) started importing Mactone audio components to North America in late 2018, after visiting the Matsumoto family—who owns and operates Mactone—in Japan. Steve recently contacted me and... Read More »

Greeting friends, I hope you are doing well, and Happy Holidays to you! Today's article is about the Audio Note (UK) AN-K/SPe compact high-performance stand-mounted loudspeakers ($5665 USD per pair HERE), along with their intended AN-K stands ($936 USD per pair HERE). The Audio Note (UK) AN-K/SPe Loudspeakers The Audio Note (UK) AN-K/SPe loudspeakers are... Read More »

Did you happen to know that one of Planet Earth's great writers, Garrett Hongo is also a music lover and audiophile?  That's right, Garrett Hongo is one of us. Garrett has written over thirty works in over seventy publications, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in poetry in 1988 for The River of Heaven,... Read More »

Greetings friends, I hope you are doing well! Today's article is about the new Audio Note (UK) Meishu Phono Silver Tonmeister 300B single-ended-triode (SET) integrated amplifier (MSRP $19,300.00 USD, website link HERE). Long time readers know I have a special fondness for high-performance integrated amplifiers, as they represent what I consider to be the value... Read More »

Greetings friends, I hope life is treating you well in 2022. Today I have an impressive Red Book CD player to tell you about, the Audio Note (UK) CD 4.1x Red Book CD player (MSRP $14,331 USD). The Audio Note (UK) CD 4.1x CD player is an expensive high-fidelity Red Book CD player with a... Read More »

A while back Triode Lab's Frank Ng asked me if I would like to listen to a pair of his very exclusive—only four pairs are scheduled to be made—cost-no-object, limited edition Triode Lab 2A3 parallel single-ended-triode (P-SET) RSR monaural amplifiers, that incorporated all of Frank's design insights for state-of-art high-performance SET amplifiers (HERE, scroll down... Read More »

Greetings friends, I hope you are doing well. I know there's a lot of Leben HiFi Stereo Company fans out there, and today I want to tell the Leben fans in the audience about the rather rare and exotic Leben CS-300F vacuum tube integrated amplifier (photo below). Over the years, I've either owned or written... Read More »

Whether musing about the greater understanding the Belle II particle physics experiment at KEK may bring to questions around Standard Model predictions, dark matter, and the asymmetry of matter and antimatter in the universe, or the exciting themes of parallel universes, the multiverse, and time travel that we see imaginatively explored in science fiction, physics... Read More »

My highlight of 2019 was visiting with Peter Qvortrup (below) and the Audio Note (UK) 'family' in Brighton, England. Meeting Peter Qvortrup, Daniel Qvortrup (Peter's son, below), Andy Grove, and Darko Greguras was a real treat. Peter and Daniel walked me through the Audio Note (UK) operation, and told me about some of the exciting... Read More »

Back in October of 2020 I did a straw poll among readers of Jeff's Place and Positive Feedback to find out what audio products they would be most interested in having me write about. The most popular and intriguing request among readers was the artisanal and custom-made Triode Lab 2A3 EVO single-ended-triode integrated amplifier from... Read More »

A friend of mine was looking at these Sophia Electric vacuum tubes, and she told me "They're so pretty, they look like works of art."  These Sophia Electric vacuum tubes really are works of vacuum tube art. The Sophia Electric 45 mesh plate triode (above) and Aqua 274B rectifier (below) vacuum tubes are not only... Read More »

I was really impressed by the Pass Labs XP-12 line-level preamplifier that I wrote about in Positive Feedback Issue 111 (HERE), and I have been looking forward to telling you about my time with its intended phono preamplifier partner, the Pass Labs XP-17. Given that Nelson Pass and Wayne Colburn both use Tannoy 15-inch dual... Read More »

In my article about the Audio Note (UK) Oto Phono SE Signature Integrated Amplifier for Positive Feedback (Issue 108 HERE) I discussed how impressed I was with the Oto's performance powering my vintage Duelund-Altec Project "Stokowski" loudspeakers (Issue 105 HERE). The Oto and Altec-Duelund combination really wowed me with its superb musicality and sonic performance,... Read More »

I have been looking forward to telling you about the Pass Labs XP-12 line-level preamplifier, as I've found the XP-12 to make for an excellent match to the Pass Labs XA25 Class A stereo amplifier (reviewed HERE), as well the First Watt SIT-3 single-ended stereo amplifier (reviewed HERE), which are my current benchmarks for relatively... Read More »

It has been quite some time since my last article for Positive Feedback about the Sophia Electric vacuum tubes developed and offered by Sue and Richard in McLean, Virginia. It was all the way back in August of 2017 that I wrote about the Sophia Electric EL34-ST (photo below) and Aqua 274B vacuum tubes (HERE),... Read More »

I've had my Leben HiFi Company CS-600 integrated amplifier for over a decade now. I purchased it after the review, and I have enjoyed every minute with it. My Leben CS-600 has been totally reliable, excels musically & sonically, and it is beautiful to look at. The CS-600 was also a very well thought out... Read More »

At the enthusiast audio shows I have visited in the USA over the years, I've always thought that year-to-year, the Audio Note (UK) rooms had some of most consistently excellent musicality & sonics of all the show rooms I visited. The fact that those Audio Note (UK) show rooms utilized relatively modestly priced equipment and... Read More »