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Used to be, the only people needing fancy in-ear monitors were wasted rock stars or serious looking dudes protecting the President. The rest of us settled for crappy little earbuds that could only produce one sound accurately: "Good riddance!" High end IEMs were reserved for world class X-Games competitors barreling off the mini-ramp. But times... Read More »

Strap yourself in your seat, because we are going to go on a VIP ride with the VPI Avenger turntable. And yes, you dear readers are the VIPs in this adventure. This is part 1 of a 3 part series. The reason for the three parts is that I am going to review all three... Read More »

Roger Skoff writes about audio's bottom line - bass and Hi-Fi. When I was twelve years old, I had never heard bass. Really. Oh, I thought I had, but when you actually think about it, my guess is that not only will you understand and agree with what I just said; you may even discover... Read More »

The KRONOS Pro LE Turntable with Black Beauty Tonearm, photograph courtesy of KRONOS Audio. Take a breath. A shift of gear, now. From reference-grade DSD DACs to reference-grade turntables. This will be the third of three turntable evaluations that I've done over the past year, rounding out what's turned out to be the top three... Read More »

So I've been playing around more with headphones (headphones from Sennheiser, Audeze, AKG, and OPPO are in my usual rotation of references), but after hearing the new ELEARs from Focal… uh, we got to have these. At an event held over in Torrance at The Source A/V a while ago, Carol and I, along with a throng... Read More »

USB Cables… my last Rambling's column centered on the Purist Audio Luminist Revision Neptune cables and how, well either differences in cables are there for you or not. For whatever reason applies here—you hear it, you don't hear it, you can't hear it, or won't hear it… really doesn't matter as everyone finds their happy... Read More »

Our audio compadre John Marks herein rightly brings to our attention Abraham Lincoln's deep affection for opera and the stage. He was assassinated, after all, at Ford's Theater in April of 1865, much to the grief and anger of the narrow-minded pietists and pharisees of his generation. Lincoln considered the theater and opera to be... Read More »

"Man, it was easy! Five acres of solar panels, and I killed it!!"

John Marks' final installment about his recommended Steinway and Sons office system is below. He focuses on the Grace Design m920 DAC as the digital heart of the system. Read on for his summary. And remember that John's blog site, The Tannhauser Gate (http://www.thetannhausergate.com) is a fine place for audio commentary and music/video reviews! Recommended. Dr. David... Read More »

In part three of this series, John Marks introduces cables to his small office audio system recommendations. While John has his own Esperanto Audio line of reference audio cables, he concentrates on Audioquest's very good price-t0-performance cables. This is shaping up to be a very pleasant office/desktop system; I appreciate the useful advice contained in... Read More »

Parasound's Zamp v.3 stereo amplifier One of my favorite lines from the original Star Trek TV series (and please, nobody forget that Alexander Courage's theme music borrowed heavily from Mahler's symphonies 1 and 7) was something like: I bet five Quatloos on the feisty newcomer! Well, Parasound's Zamp v.3 is hardly a newcomer, but, it's... Read More »

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 »

Flemming Rasmussen of Gryphon Audio Gryphon was never the adopter of technology for the sake of technology on its own, we always found it intriguing and followed it closely, but our experiments remained in the lab for the right timing. Right timing? Gryphon made it first appearance 30 years ago with a revolutionary HEADAMP, taking... Read More »

John Marks gives us a recommendation for a stereo system that offers a great deal of musical satisfaction with a small footprint and at a more reasonable price point. This four-part series will explore his thoughts on this package. May it serve you well! Dr. David W. Robinson, Ye Olde Editor Photo of Eric Feidner... Read More »

Maria Schneider (photograph courtesy of Soka University) Maria Schneider is an unrivaled American composer in the grand tradition of Vivaldi, Bach, Mozart, Schubert, Chopin and Ellington, a transcendent lineage that defines western musical maturity. A once undiscovered orchid, Maria's risen to a plateau of melodic delight and aesthetic delicacy without equal, an achievement accrued in... Read More »

Finishing graduate study at Stanford, 1970-72, I was Director of Admissions at the The Athenian School, a small and innovative prep school on Mt. Diablo in the Bay Area. It was funded by the Ford Foundation as a tribute to Dyke Brown, its longtime Vice President, a going away present supporting educational objectives he'd championed... Read More »

Cables, cables, cables. What are we supposed to do? Yeah, there are those who feel that regardless of what one hears, they can't be hearing what they are hearing, because, well you can't hear that as cables done correctly do nothing... to the sound. That is, cables cannot make a difference as long as they... Read More »

Acoustic Revive RPC-1 Power Supply Conditioner The intrigue usually starts with a message from Yoshi-san or Elia-san from the MuSon Project in Osaka, Japan, who export Japanese audio exotica to The World. Every time I get a message from Messrs. Hontani I get pretty excited, because long experience has taught me that with their extremely... Read More »

Greetings from the underground, fellow music lovers and seekers after audio nirvana. As I may have conveyed in my last ruminations many, many moons ago, I am luxuriating in the aural glow of an extended series of incremental tweaks, which coming as they have, in drips and drabs, have brought me to the point where... Read More »