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Herb Reichert and Lynn Olson at the Rocky Mountain Audio Fest, 2015 (photograph and image processing by David W. Robinson) In my sophomore year in college (in Claremont, California), I applied for several Federal summer jobs in Washington, D.C. since my parents lived there (my father was transitioning from the Foreign Service to Marine Midland... Read More »

Original version published Feb 20, 2015. Revised after stumbling onto Positive Feedback's Carol Clark's recent post, My Journey into Audio Pandora, Carol Clark (image by David Clark, Positive Feedback) It looked like Carol recently had a similar experience as I did in 2015 that "left [her] stewing." We have been friends with Dave and Carol... Read More »

Roger Skoff writes about everybody'd favorite controversial product While the debate continues on the internet over whether different cables sound different, those of us with the ears and listening skills to hear it and the systems and listening environments of sufficient resolution to show it know that it's not just different cables that sound different,... Read More »

I heard an interesting theory last year at the California Audio Show. Basically, I was informed that women aren't audiophiles because they're not wired that way. It seems boys spend time with their fathers working on cars, taking things apart and putting them back together, and are thus programmed to be gear heads. Girls, on... Read More »

Self-portrait, 2017 In medias res… From time to time, I shake out my ongoing audio journal, and comment on some products and items that have accumulated over the past few months. Nothing too lengthy or intense, but quick thoughts and bullet points indicative of fine audio designs/products that I think our readers should be aware... Read More »

In this installment of the New Apartment Lounge, Maurice Jeffries takes a long hard listen to the stunning Mola Mola amp/preamp suite, an almost affordable turntable from Kronos Audio, and some smooth-sounding new cables from Kubala-Sosna Research LLC. With a fresh set of ears and new insights, he also revisits an old and trusted friend.... Read More »

I'm a music lover. I am an audiophile. I'm an electronics technician. I am an acoustician, a sound engineer. I am a philologist with a PhD. I am a reader. I am a journalist, a specialist journalist, let's add. I am each of them individually and all at the same time. Such thoughts come to... Read More »

Concluding our video interview series from Munich 2019, courtesy of NativeDSD.com, here are the final three interviews from that event. Many thanks to Jared, Jonas, and Floor of NativeDSD for sharing this series with the readers of Positive Feedback worldwide. Dr. David W. Robinson Grimm Audio presents the MU1 Eelco Grimm introduces the MU1 music player... Read More »

Time for cables Cables are one of the elements that constitute an audio system. It is neither more, nor less important than the remaining ones, but it is still approached with suspicion and from a distance by many engineers and music lovers. However, those who have already gone through this stage—St. Thomas's stage—do not need... Read More »

I grew up listening to records. These days we call then LPs or vinyl, but I will still think of them as records. My first record player was a toy, but eventually I graduated to an all-in-one system that was a receiver with the turntable on top, and speakers attached to the sides. In those... Read More »

Common Wave Audio is the most recent audio store to open in the greater Los Angeles area. Owned and run by Wes Katzir, this store, or better yet consider it to be a destination, is simply an amazing place to visit. Not your typical audio store, Common Wave is more about being a "place" to... Read More »

Back to the Midwest-SR In late January 2019, over the MLK holiday weekend no less, I ventured north by northwest from Florida to the wilds of exurban Indiana to pay my close audio bud, Greg Weaver, a long-overdue visit. I made a similar trek a year earlier to hear his then reference setup, namely Audionet's... Read More »

To close out my reflections on AXPONA 2019, I am publishing my photographic portraits from AXPONA 2019…the faces and moments seen, and created. Many of these were published several at a time at Facebook immediately after the event, as mementos. Now they are available all at once, given in no particular order...a photo book of... Read More »

Here is the final installment of my Audio Oasis! Awards from AXPONA 2019. A major event; a major set of articles reflecting upon the awards that I gave. Daedalus Audio/Vacuum Tube Amplification/LampizatOr/WyWires In the Daedalus Audio/VAC/LampizatOr/WyWires room…great beauty here! Lou Hinkley, Fred Ainsley, Kevin Hayes, and Alex Svetinsky were making beautiful music in Room 496,... Read More »

Continuing my long march through AXPONA 2019, here's Part the Fourth of my Audio Oasis! Awards. The Audio Company/Von Schweikert Audio/Valve Amplification Company/MasterBuilt Audio/Critical Mass Systems/Aurender/Esoteric Lukasz Fikus of LampizatOr taking it easy with the VSA Ultra 11 and VAC amplification:  a portrait Once again at AXPONA 2019, Von Schweikert Audio linked up with VAC,... Read More »

How many times have you read a review of some recording, some system, or some individual piece of gear that said something like this? "The orchestra was rendered perfectly, with each individual instrument hung in its own separate space, emerging from a perfectly black background…" Or maybe the reviewer had enthused that "It was easy... Read More »

Continuing my Audio Oasis! Awards, reflections on AXPONA 2019, and my photographs... Merging Technologies/Evolution Acoustics/Wave Kinetics/darTZeel/Durand Tonearms/ATR/Analog Audio  In the Blue Light Audio room…world-class components, all! Another big-time non-surprise:  The Blue Light Audio et al. room was gassed, stoked, and ready-to-go! once again. Jonathan Tinn, Kevin Malmgren, and Joel Durand hosted a really seductive room,... Read More »

This note reflects, essentially, my first toe in the water of a higher end headphone setup, at least as a reviewer. I've heard high end speaker systems for decades. My first "high end" headphone setup was sometime in the late 1970s, an unknown model of magical Stax "earspeakers." At the time I thought them better... Read More »

Continuing their video interview series from Munich 2019, the good folks at NativeDSD share more of their conversations with people from that event. Great stuff! 1. Giulio Cesare Ricci, Fonè Records Floor van der Holst from NativeDSD Music catches up with Giulio Cesare Ricci from Fonè Records at High End Munich 2019. They discuss 2... Read More »