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For many modern music lovers, listening to songs from FM-radio stations in the car or streamed over computers at home from websites like You Tube is how they (er… we) discover new music. If you're lucky enough to have a Sirius-XM radio subscription or can afford to stream high-resolution digital music from various online providers,... Read More »

Listening Impressions There's an elephant in the room, and I mean that almost literally. Certain frequencies, the lowest ones, simply aren't reproduced faithfully by most loudspeakers. They'll wobble along, giving the impression of bass, but when you sit in the chair you're left wondering: can you feel it? Subterranean frequencies are not just meant to... Read More »

Sliding the PS Audio PowerPlant 20 into my system wasn't like unboxing a new amplifier or speaker. It doesn't announce itself with power meters or driver cones. Instead, it quietly rebuilds the very electricity your system relies on. Yet, from the first few tracks, it was obvious this wasn't a subtle change. For my particular... Read More »

After living with a handful of Class D amps over the past few years, it's been a real joy to get back into a serious Class AB amplifier. The Pass Labs X350.8 has reminded me why these big, heavy beasts are still so special. There's simply more weight, more authority, more current on tap, and... Read More »

When the Support System One (SS-1) from Node Audio came to my attention, I was smitten by its elegant looks, intrigued by its intelligent design, and impressed by its very sensible list of materials. Welcome to SS-1, a modular component support eco-system that isolates equipment from its support, drains equipment vibrations, and focusses stray magnetic... Read More »

  What happened to all of the luxury Japanese turntables? You know the ones I mean: those tall, chunky, rosewood-veneered JVCs and Denons and even Hitachis, with their fully-automatic feature sets, dead-on direct drive propulsion and wildly over-engineered parts like servo-damped tonearms? While other companies like Rega were trying to simplify turntable design, these folks... Read More »

So you want to travel back in time to the mid-1970s to buy a brand new (back then) 1975-era pair of Quad ESL-57 loudspeakers. Okay… I get it. The primary difficulty, of course, is that all of your efforts to build a time machine out of a Delorean have failed; completely and utterly failed. Is... Read More »

Rarely does technology trickle up into the high-end realm of two-channel audio playback. Yet, in the case of Class D amplification, this has indeed happened. The Class D circuit was invented in the mid-1950s by Alec Reeves, and the first commercial product was released by Sinclair Radionics in 1964. A bit further down the road,... Read More »

Kapow! Right in the noggin! Wobbling like a UFO saucer in the finest Ray Harryhausen tradition, the record sailed crazily in the air, then jetted straight into the hapless boy's forehead. Score! A direct hit! The lesson here was, while some may argue about a Dynaflex record's sound quality, it's pretty tough to dodge in-flight.... Read More »

Bob Levi, a portrait. (Photograph and image processing by David W. Robinson) I am delighted to have the first opportunity to experience the perfected Schumann Generator S1 and the Inline Speaker Signature Silver for the first time in America. They are both exquisitely finished products and enhance the listening experience in vastly different ways. From... Read More »

When Nelson Wu, CEO of RAY Tubes offered earlier this year to send a full complement of RAY Select and Reserve tubes for evaluation in my PrimaLuna EVO 300 tube integrated amplifier, I jumped at the chance. I've never looked back; RAY Tubes have lifted my analog system performance and musicality to new heights, providing... Read More »

Backdrop loudspeaker drivers image courtesy of ATC Like a surgeon's scalpel, the ATC SCM40A loudspeaker is a serious instrument, deftly cutting through sinew, fat, and bone to the heart of music with surgical precision and clarity. A three-way floor-standing model at just under 40 inches tall, it is unobtrusive and remains at the top of... Read More »

A colleague once postulated that audio gear invariably sounds like the people who make it. The line of thinking goes that, if the person is big and bold, then their speakers look and sound the part. High-energy, constantly moving personalities turn out cables big on dynamics and tilted up tonal range. Quietly brilliant masterminds bring... Read More »

While browsing the photo gallery on the Node Audio website, I came across a group shot of five finely crafted, elegantly designed objects. They appeared to be variations on a theme, but what was the theme—what were they used for? Sometimes you come upon objects that grab hold of your attention, yet their purpose remains... Read More »

It seems a lifetime ago. For my side hustle as a mobile DJ, I honed my beat-matching and mixing skills with a pair of Technics 1200 turntables at home to apply on the road with a Pioneer CMX-3000 Dual DJ CD player, but after I married Belle in 2011, I sold my gear, reinvested the... Read More »

The Maestro himself! (Portrait and image processing by David W. Robinson) My LP life When writing audio reviews, reviewers are often called on to describe things we readily hear that aren't always easily quantifiable. We use adjectives like 'open,' 'free,' 'effortless,' 'relaxed,' etc. The list goes on and on. Every once in a while, we... Read More »

Over the course of the last twenty-five-years, I've carved out a fairly satisfying niche in audio journalism. One that finds me most often focused on reasonably priced gear that frequently performs beyond its price point—while also playing nicely in more pedigreed audio systems. Many of the companies I deal with focus exclusively on that segment... Read More »

When Mark Schifter hooked me up with the first two devices from Vera-Fi Audio's new trio of power conditioning equipment, I simply wasn't prepared for the dramatic differences they made to my all-analog system. That system uses single-ended RCA connections throughout, and it had a couple of problem noise areas I couldn't seem to eliminate,... Read More »

Dean Waters:  a portrait at home  (Photograph and image processing by David W. Robinson) Not long ago, I penned an article reviewing the Dejitter It Switch X product (HERE) and how it can substantially enhance the audio experience when using networking for streaming as well as command and control functions. Now we'll spend a few... Read More »