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Pass Labs is on a roll. The new Xs lineup that includes the Xs Preamplifier ($38,000) and Xs-300 Monoblock Amplifiers ($85,000) has been receiving rave reviews worldwide. Definitely considered state of the art contenders by even the most discerning critics. Bottom line, my short time with them in my system was a revelation. Now we... Read More »

Phase Three: The Search is Over! This is final installment of my three-part series on upgrading my turntable. I've made low budget isolation tweaks, added fabulous accessories, and modified the tonearm wiring and the counterweight. The last piece of the musical puzzle was adding a new phono cartridge. While I let the cartridge choice out of the bag... Read More »

I like surprises. I especially like them when they bushwhack me. You know…when I'm not looking and all. This doesn't happen in audioville very often. Usually there's a reasonable expectation of the quality of what I'm going to hear when products come in for review. Most of my review projects are by invitation; I generally... Read More »

Westchester, New York, November 6, 7 & 8 Roaming the sparsely populated halls of the Rye Brook Westchester Hilton during opening day of "New York Audio Show 15," the event looked to be a bust. Instead of the usual throng of audiophile fiends blocking access to popular rooms, one could stroll the show's two floors,... Read More »

Die Caas-Vorstufe bezaubert mit einen aus dem Vollen gearbeiteten Gehäuse, bietet drei symmetrische Eingänge, wird nicht in China gefertigt und ihr Preis bewegt sich – noch – im vierstelligen Bereich. Käme sie aus den USA würde man locker auch die doppelte oder dreifache Summe für angemessen halten. Und die Monos stehen ihr in nichts nach.

Momentan beschäftige ich mich recht intensiv mit Streaming und Kopfhörern. Und deswegen folgen hier ausnahmsweise zwei Produkte eines Herstellers direkt nacheinander, denn in einer größeren Sendung von Audioquest befand sich nicht nur der Nighthawk, sondern auch der Jitterbug, den ich gleich ausprobierte. Es wäre fahrlässig, nicht sofort darüber zu berichten.

In letzter Zeit wurden an dieser Stelle häufig Kopfhörer kleiner Manufakturen vorgestellt. Der Nighthawk hingegen dokumentiert, was dabei herauskommt, wenn ein weltweit erfolgreicher Kabelhersteller wie Audioquest nach reichlich Entwicklungs- und Vorbereitungszeit in eine neue Produktkategorie einsteigt.

Den Ergo AMT, einen Kopfhörer mit Vollbereichs-Air-Motion-Transformer, gibt es schon geraume Zeit, und vor Jahrzehten wurde der schwere, riesige Pickering in Zweiwege-Technik gebaut, der als Hifi-Kuriosität bei uns im Wohnzimmer hängt. Der oBravo vereint beide Besonderheiten meines Wissens nach zum ersten mal: Hier wurde ein Air-Motion-Transfomer mit einem Konus-Tieftöner kombiniert.

Dynaudio offeriert zwei Modelle ihrer traditionsreichen Contour Linie in der Sonderversion LE. Im Vergleich zum Serien Pendant sind die Standbox und die Kompaktbox noch aufwändiger. Die kleine Contour S 1.4 LE haben wir uns auf den dazu empfohlenen Ständern angehört.

Dies dürfte wohl der erste Test eines AURALiC Mini überhaupt sein, aber der Artikel könnte genauso gut statt mit „Test“ mit „Grundlagen“ überschrieben sein, denn es geht hier auch um die Frage, ob drahtloses Streaming besser klingt als kabelgebundenes. Anlass für eine Reihe von Experimenten war der Besuch von Carsten Hicking in Gröbenzell.

Now, more than ever, the audiophile world is awash with digital to analogue converters. Not a day seems to pass by without entry to the market of yet another shiny box sporting the latest chipset and the ability to decipher the Enigma code. Sarcasm notwithstanding, the audiophile kingdom has a plethora of choice at its... Read More »

Audiophiles are often use to trying many different methods and ways of thinking to improve the sound of their playback systems. One can find countless varieties of tweaks, accessories, and approaches to produce even small changes in the audibility of our favorite music and sound recordings. But one of the least understood of these is... Read More »

A few times a year there comes a revolutionary product from a vendor. Sometimes it's a well known vendor with the usual high-dollar offerings. With those, it's usually an automatic—"well, they have the money since their products are not cheap" so the logic is maybe they didn't skimp on R&D? But when the underdogs come... Read More »

The only thing "entry level" about Audio-Technica's new AT-LP1240-USB is the price. MSRP is $530, and the street price is closer to $450. It's easily competitive with any source I can think of for that money—analog or digital—and it runs rings around some of them. Sorry if that's vague, but I wanted to let you know upfront that this... Read More »

The TAVES Consumer Electronics Show is one event that I always look forward to. It is, by far, the show with the friendliest crowd that I have ever encountered any high-end audio show that I have attended over the past 35 years. It is also very well organized and always features a good number of... Read More »

"How can I even try I can never win Hearing them, seeing them in the state I'm in" —"You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" by Lennon–McCartney I haven't written a column on digital music servers in a very long time, and I think that's because I haven't really had anything new to say. Everything... Read More »

This is my second installment investigating surround preamplifiers that might function as a reference two channel preamplifier. Leaving my Onkyo 885(b) for the NAD M17 was an encouraging, nearly thrilling start to my investigation. Happily there are an increasing number of promising offerings from bona fide audiophile firms. I naturally alighted on Classe's newly released... Read More »

New Seasons. Gidon Kremer. Glass, Pärt, Kanchelli, Unabeyashi. Kremerata Baltica. Deutsche Gramophone. DG 4794817. Violinist Gidon Kremer is a musical phenomenon most of us have come to admire and even love. His energetic and (at least to my ears) near vibrato-less sound brings a vigorous directness to everything he plays from Bach to Glass. In... Read More »

I have to confess. Since moving away from CDs and other physical digital media (at least from a playback standpoint) I actually listen to music digitally more than I ever imagined I would. Looking back over the last year or so, I probably have more actual listening time using my budget digital server system than... Read More »