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Mention Crystal Cable in an audiophile conversation, the adjectives that likely come to mind are thin, elegant, top-drawer fabrication, and expensive. With an unflinching eye on aesthetics, the color scheme has always featured silver, often accented with gold—the regal metals—in a visual palette resembling the colors of a painting. The association with luxury goods has... Read More »

I live on the fourteenth floor of an apartment building on a busy avenue in NYC. Even this high up with the windows closed, the sounds of the city—automobile horns, pulsating boom boxes, people arguing—filter in. It's annoying, especially when I'm having a session. Unexpectedly, though, I found it sets up a good test. If... Read More »

The brochure included with the XACT S1 music server hammered on the point again and again. Digital that doesn't sound like digital. More like vinyl. The single-minded focus caused me to reflect on the scene and our recent history. What began with Perfect Sound Forever in 1983 is now snubbed in 2024. The new standard... Read More »

For many years I scoured the fleas and thrifts, scarfing up cheap classical and, to a lesser extent, jazz LPs. The getting was good and the leaning towers behind my speakers mushroomed, inevitably forcing the zero sum rule of collecting: if something comes in, something else goes out. It only works if you're rigorous about... Read More »

We had a pair of Row K center tickets for the Dover String Quartet at Alice Tully Hall in Lincoln Center. Everyone knows that's the eleventh row, but we found ourselves settling in four rows from the stage. What happened? An usher informed us management had enlarged the stage for this event by removing a... Read More »

There's no getting around it, cable lifts are controversial. With so many competing designs and theories all claiming to remediate the same issues—mechanical vibrations, interactions between wires, and RFI/EMI contamination—sorting them out can make your head spin. One company says the best RFI solution is lifting the cable with a minimum of mass, coming close... Read More »

When is enough, enough? That's a rhetorical question when posed to an audiophile, because in matters of the hi-end, we never cross the finish line. Just ask Joe Cohen, the proprietor and lead designer of PranaWire, for his take on the subject: "Common wisdom holds that there is a point beyond which continued effort and... Read More »

I was chatting with an exhibitor at last year's tiny NY Audio Show 2022 and mentioned I found the treble in his room had too much bite. I got no argument: "I like that. That's what I hear at concerts." Hmm…his comment made me pause before I continued with the rest of my list: boomy... Read More »

The last of the Fono Acustica cables had been sent back about six months ago. Already, their sonic profile was receding. It's difficult to retrieve what you can barely describe in words because sounds are not stored in long-term memory. So it was amazing and a testimony how fast that profile resurrected when the newly... Read More »

I'll share a snippet from an email exchange with Alan Kafton, proprietor of audiodharma, the company that makes the Cable Cooker. The subject is the long anticipated, but now available, Ground Breaker adaptor set for the conditioning of power cables. Good morning, Alan I just finished cooking a pair of power cords. One PC used... Read More »

Guys who own digital master clocks are very serious about extracting the most from digital sources. If a stock power cord came with the clock, very likely it's still unwrapped in the box, because that would be self-defeating. Audiophiles shooting for the max are OK with substantial outlays for after-market power cords—they've heard the solid... Read More »

In the brightly lit labs of the professional or the informal workshops of the DIYer, cable designers labor diligently, permuting materials, listening critically, then doing it again, ad infinitum. The process mandates a high degree of scientific rigor. With experience, the designer acquires an intimate understanding of their materials. They know when they tweak this... Read More »

The natural order of things is to start low and aim high. Buy a low-cost product; get acquainted with it, even as you scan the horizon checking out options; become dissatisfied; then pull the trigger. That's what we do: the avid audiophile never stays put very long. Sure, you can jump-start the journey by handing... Read More »

Six years have passed since Stage III Concepts introduced their Medusa Speaker Cable, which the brand distributor claimed to be the world's first with a vacuum dielectric. This was no ordinary wire product. I gave it a Writers Choice Award in 2016. The Cerberus Speaker Cable, a new top model in the vacuum line, followed... Read More »

When something is not as advertised, I have no problem calling it out. So it was when music streaming came along. I read reviews, heard the demos, and my ears told me it was a step backwards, plus it was always crashing. I stayed on the sidelines until about four years ago when my DAC... Read More »

It was around the midpoint of my Hi-end audio journey when I heard my first passive power distributor and I can still recall the shock. At this time—I'm talking decades ago—the Hi-End embraced the philosophy less is more. Virtue lay in the fewest electronic devices and the shortest signal paths. Minimalism ruled. The goal of... Read More »

Last Sunday marked a return to Town Hall, New York City, for a concert by ECCO (the East Coast Chamber Orchestra), a group of 18 youthful, professional string players. These guys (actually, most were female and Asian) were really digging in, using the full bow when they had to and, alternately, approaching near silence in... Read More »

When the Monet power cables from Crystal Cable were offered for review, first thing I went online for a look-see. The photos suggested a slimmed down cable with no surplus parts, nothing more than the elemental hardware required for the task at hand. The Monet is the thinnest power cables in the new Art series... Read More »

Last year I spent quality time with the Armónico cable from Fono Acustica. The wires left a lingering impression of intense musicality, along with a desire to audition more of their products, including the top-of-the-line Virtuoso model. Felix Avalos, the proprietor of Fono Acustica, teased me along with, "The Virtuoso is a whole different cable... Read More »