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The 2014 Rocky Mountain Audio Fest is fast approaching. Running from October 10-12, this event has been one of the great regional high-end audio events for years now. For the past few years I have been moderating a series of seminars on DSD audio developments. These have featured many of the leading persons in the... Read More »

During The Show in Newport Beach in May, I was walking in the parking lot between the two hotels that host the event when I spotted Cookie Marenco from Blue Coast Records. Readers of Positive Feedback know that Cookie and her company are among the pioneers in releasing DSD downloads. Earlier this year, she was interviewed by... Read More »

Thank goodness for Michael Mercer. While other Positive Feedback writers cover headphones, DACs, and amps (Warren Chi, Bob Levi, and our editors spring to mind), nobody proselytizes from the headphone pulpit with as much relentless enthusiasm as monsieur Mercer does for this publication and on his website, Audio360.org. And there's a need to keep the momentum going, judging... Read More »

When I saw the promotional material announcing this book project from The Absolute Sound and learned that it was first going to be available in limited, numbered copies at CES 2014, I was distraught. For the first time in 15 years, circumstances prevented me from attending the 2014 annual industry event. That meant that not only was... Read More »

Some things take a long time to write. Some things come easy.  And not everything is War and Peace.  So this is not going to be a typical review. I'm not going to spend much time with the usual sort of hardware sling, other than a quick summary of the basics. No, this will be more... Read More »

Lukasz Fikus of Lampizator One of the newer companies making Digital to Analog Converters (DACs) in the audio world is Lampizator. The name comes from a nickname given to company founder Lukasz Fikus, who designs and manufactures his DACs in Poland. "Lampa" is the polish word for vacuum tube, and "The Terminator," well, everyone knows... Read More »

The Duelund Coherent Audio/Tannoy Westminster Royal Special Edition Project article I wrote for Issue 70 of Positive Feedback was the most fun I've had writing about audio ever!  In that amazing project we took a 'no holds barred' approach to building ultra-high performance external crossovers for my Westminster Royal SE loudspeakers using the exotic, hand-crafted-in-Denmark, Duelund CAST capacitors, inductors,... Read More »

Admittedly I wasn't interested in high resolution files until I could bring that music with me. Having amazing-sounding music stuck on my hard-drive would've been the worst possible tease! As a confessed music addict, I need the ability to grab whatever music I choose from my digital library and take it with me. If I... Read More »

The amazing Astell&Kern AK240… native DSD in the palm of my hand! The DSD revolution continues… Just about everywhere you turn in the world of fine audio, you find DSD in the news and views of a growing number of companies and audiophiles. It's no longer mainly underground, the turf of determined die-hards fighting for... Read More »

It started with a dare. A good friend of mine has always been very respectful and complimentary of my current system. I have to give him much of the credit for getting the sound to reach the level of excellence that now exists. All our late night listening sessions and passionate if not heated discussions... Read More »

The e-Onkyo Music web site (see link below) continues its support of newly Direct Stream Digital (DSD) music in download form with today’s release of Listen by the DSD Trio. This is a Stereo, Double Rate DSD (DSD128) download on the Shiosai Zizo label. (A separate Stereo CD edition of the album will be released in Japan... Read More »

AK240 Astell&Kern is a company that is advancing high fidelity playback and while introducing new and exciting—innovative products—for portable audio. Astell&Kern is the high-end division of Iriver. Iriver was founded in 1999 when seven former executives left Samsung with a vision. Located in Seoul, Korea, the company's first products were MP3 players that were sold... Read More »

QUESTION: "What cans do you like to listen to? What do you hear as differences between speakers and headphones in terms of how they present sound?" ANSWER: "Good question. For myself, I use an ALO modded Grado 225 and Senn 600 for some recording work but I find the midrange on the Senn is not... Read More »

"And you may ask yourself How do I work this? And you may ask yourself Where is that large automobile?" —"Once in Lifetime" by David Byrne, Brian Eno, Chris Frantz, Jerry Harrison, and Tina Weymouth It took a really long time to get to review the Ayre QB-9DSD and even then they had to send... Read More »

Roger Skoff, for the first time ever, actually advocates blind testing! Any of you, who have followed my writings, either here or in other publications, should already have a pretty good idea of where I stand on the issues of measurement and double blind testing as related to High End audio. Even those of you... Read More »

Everyone has at one time or another fallen prey to a never say never moment. My most recent gaff? Never, even in my wildest dreams, did I ever expect to write a follow-up to "Paper or Plastic? Vinyl's Final Resting Place: The Next Installment" (http://positive-feedback.com/Issue38/lp_sleaves.htm). In fact, I would have bet the house that the... Read More »

For years, I've ripped CD's, or downloaded music from the Internet (legally, of course) and have always found it difficult that most people simply don't understand how to properly tag the metadata! Little things that matter; Disc numbering, album art, proper "various artists" tagging (don't even get me started on this one!) These things really... Read More »

The loudspeaker survey that I started a year ago culminates with the Gauder Akustik Berlina RC7. (Gauder Akustik formerly known as Isophon). These are rather interesting—and clearly different than the other loudspeakers I have written about in the survey—in that their 'tear-dropped' (or perhaps winged) shaped cabinet is composed of stacked 'layers' of ribs made... Read More »

This is unequivocally NOT a review; it is also the most difficult non-review I've ever written. This is an experience of the audio-kind; a transitory recounting of a few months with one of the unique products in audio; the Unison Research Unico Upower Booster Amplifier. I became interested in the Upower after reading about it... Read More »