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Ever want to be the conductor of a world class symphony orchestra? Got a desire to enjoy a performance of a stellar big band and ease on to the Duke's piano bench during a Columbia recording session? Maybe you would like to take a chair during the performance of a Beethoven piano trio? Then just... Read More »

Gold Note of Italy are makers of bland black boxes for audio with a low functionality quotient. Not. I've had Gold Note's PH-10 phono stage in for review, and wow it's nice to look at. It's a distinctly elegant design with a clear attention to detail, aesthetic, and functionality. My sample arrived in black, but... Read More »

The following review is from our guest contributor, Sarah Grant. Sarah is a dear friend, as well as a music, coffee, and beer lover. Plus she is cool. This review might have an especially affirmative character to it but I have a deeply personal relationship with this product after months of use. And although I am... Read More »

F1 Fractal™ Interconnect by Townshend Audio On the heels of the ridiculously superb (passive) Allegri+ preamplifier (HERE), with its secret sauce…fractal wire…comes the introduction to America of Townshend F1 Fractal Interconnects. (There are speaker cables also, but I did not have them for review.) The interconnects are extremely exotic looking and terminated in excellent shielded... Read More »

As the science of astronomy moves forward, many of the ideas about how the universe has formed continues to evolve. The accepted theory used to be that galaxies formed from gas clouds and star clusters coming together. Over time gravity gathered enough material together to form the various galaxies in the universe. Only lately has... Read More »

About five years ago, I'd just gotten an HRT Streamer HD DAC with balanced outputs, and had also just upgraded my system amps to a pair of Emotiva XPA-1Ls. The Emotivas were (and still are!!) capable of fully-differential, balanced Class A operation, and I was itching for a balanced preamplifier to help me enter what... Read More »

Under the leadership of ​the brilliant Mitch Ko, President and Chief Designer of UIT Products, comes the long awaited PMP Speaker Cables. In both single-wire and bi-wire configurations, pricing is not the same type of truly super-attractive deal of the UIT interconnects—being in the $2500 - $3000 range—but the complexity of the speaker cable, silver... Read More »

You know the phrase "size matters", I'm sure you've heard it before. Does it matter with a speaker? If you're attempting to reproduce low frequencies, you bet it does. Most of the time I've had subwoofers not larger than 10". I was always under the impression that if you go too large, that you would... Read More »

The wind is in from Africa and last night I couldn't sleep. I laid there instead contemplating the review of the Mad Scientist Audio Flexible Carbon Fiber/Graphene balanced interconnects I was preparing. For those not familiar with Mad Scientist Audio, they came on the scene circa 2013, based out of New Zealand and run by... Read More »

One of the better rooms I heard at the 2017 Los Angeles Audio Show featured the Silverline Audio Minuet Grand speakers. These relatively small, two-way stand-mount speakers were putting out a big, big sound that was dynamic and engaging when I came by. Unfortunately, I didn't have much time to spend in this room, but... Read More »

This review started out an examination of the popular EAT C Sharp Turntable, but ended up a phono playback review. Only focusing on the turntable meant I was ignoring the cartridge and phono cable. A poor cable or cartridge meant I was only reviewing the weakest link in the chain! With that oversight fixed, the... Read More »

"Whattya got in these things—gold bars?" chortled the mover; he and his partner grappling the last of the heavy crates around the turn in my staircase. "Nah, better than gold," I replied, electric drill in hand. "These are stereo speakers." His eyes went wide. The Wilson Audio Alexia Series 2 had arrived, and in the... Read More »

If you ask five guys what's the best way to configure AC power for an audio system, you're likely to get five—or more—answers. Everything in audio is contentious; AC power delivery is no exception. At one point I was advised, "Every component needs a dedicated line, especially your amps if you're running monoblocks." The reasoning... Read More »

The personal portable market is a really tough one, especially when you're attempting to market anything towards audiophiles. The biggest problem seems to be the opening price point for anything considered audiophile-quality or Hi Res certified—with just about anything that seems to appeal to anyone who's "serious" about music playback being somewhere around the $1K... Read More »

From the inventor of the world's first practical equipment and turntable isolation devices, the first practical and most utilized ribbon super tweeter, the most effective turntable/tonearm design with both isolation and active tonearm damping, and probably other "firsts" I am unaware of, comes the first totally passive audiophile preamp (no power cord, no tubes, no... Read More »

The Zesto Audio Andros Allasso Step Up Transformer Once upon a time, full-featured preamplifiers like the ARC SP-3 ruled the audio scene and contained a phono stage. Phono cartridges were high output MM or MI, and so the preamps of the day had only about 40 dBs of gain, max. Then along came the low output... Read More »

I've been doing this for a long time, playing with audio gear since early 1970s. But it was heading to Rochester, NY for college in 1975 where I was finally in a city with several high quality audio shops and people I could hang out with who owned nice (dare I say high-end) audio systems.... Read More »

Little in Name Only After a number of reviews of products from Indonesian company Vermouth Audio it was time to sample where it all began. The company's founder, Hendry Ramli, started the company on loudspeakers, so I was excited to finally listen to a pair. Enter the Little Luccas MkII Limited Edition (with what Hendry... Read More »

"In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes." Andy Warhol didn't foresee the internet, but he sure nailed a defining characteristic of how we live today. You could make a case that master clocks for digital audio had their 15 minutes when they were featured on audio magazine covers—sort of like MQA digital... Read More »