Zu Audio: divine, evil, beautiful, disgusting; Or, "Careful with that tone, mister." So what kind of sound are you after? Accurate? Musical? Okay. But according to whom? Because, the fact is, each of us has a brain that's unique, including in what it perceives as being accurate and musical. Does this make us all somehow... Read More »
AXPONA 2016 welcomes a number of new exhibitors, showcasing the very best in high-end audio equipment. Rosemont, IL, April 15-17 AXPONA (Audio Expo North America), the defining high-end consumer audio show in the United States, returns to the Westin O’Hare Rosemont April 15-17, with over 20 new manufacturers and dealers making their debut at the show,... Read More »
Bruckner: Symphony No. 3 in D minor, "Wagner" (Nowak ed., 1877) Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Amsterdam/Nikolaus Harnoncourt Teldec 4509-98405-2. TT: 54.35 The "historical performance" movement that arose in the 1960s proved more popular, at first, among academics than among regular listeners; eventually, however, its notions of performing older scores without the stylistic accretions of later eras... Read More »
THE Show announces the death of Richard Beers on January 25, 2016, due to lung cancer. This is the text of their press release, which arrived minutes ago: "Dear Industry Friends, My name is Maurice Jung and I am the interim President for T.H.E. Show Newport. It is with heartfelt sorrow that I must inform... Read More »
I love writing about what we audio geeks call "reference-level" audio components. By reference-level we mean state-of-the-art, "reference" meaning close to referencing the real thing: The sound of music in real time and space.
Aurender, a leader in award-winning, high-resolution audio products, announced that their latest downloadable software upgrade, System SW 4.5.58 (5.5.58), adds several new significant features, including: Qobuz high fidelity streaming, and the company's unique Smart Copy® function that allows direct music uploading, within their Conductor App, to any Aurender Music Streamer/Player's internal HDD directly from your... Read More »
Star Wars Original Soundtracks in Stereo DSD and Analog Tape Horch House has released the first three original soundtracks from the Star Wars Series: Episode 4: Star Wars – A New Hope, Episode 5: The Empire Strikes Back and Episode 6: Return of the Jedi in Stereo DSD, analog tape, and WAV formats. The albums... Read More »
George Frederick Handel, Water Music. Academie fur Alte Musik Berlin. Harmonia Mundi HMC 902216. Handel was German, but he was also a Londoner for 47 years and lived and studied for four years in Italy. We can hear all of this in his music, an extremely satisfying blend of three distinct baroque musical cultures. He... Read More »
"Help!" —The Beatles In memory of Lee Weiland, the man who introduced me to the concept of a digital music server and whose Locus Design cables I still use All my audiophile friends have NAS clusters. There's tremendous peer pressure for me to have one, too, and I tried an inexpensive one to see how... Read More »
Sony Electronics is expanding the company’s High Resolution Audio line with a new Car Audio System, Turntable and Universal Disc Player which all support Double DSD (5.6 MHz) and PCM music files during 2016. The new products build upon the company’s High Resolution Audio line which started in 2013 and was timed to support the... Read More »
F703 SENNHEISER × FREITAG URBANITE limited edition fuses one-of-a-kind style and a club sound on the move Sennheiser’s award-winning URBANITE headphones have become the definitive choice for great sound, deep bass, and rugged style on the move. Now, a new collaboration with Swiss accessory manufacturer FREITAG – creators of the iconic messenger bags made from... Read More »
Reference 3A has a brand new monitor out called the Reflector. It’s the most advanced speaker they have ever made. http://www.reference3a.com/reflector.html The REFLECTOR is the pinnacle of Reference 3A and the finest standmount monitor we have ever released. Cabinet sides have layers of thick glass, laminated with an absorbine material in constrained mode, structurally integrated... Read More »
Not sure how this came about, but man do I have a lot of stuff here to review… the PS Audio BHK250 amplifier and their AC12 and AC5 power cables, the Aurender N100H streamer, the Entreq Poseidon Grounding box and cables, several items from Synergistic Research (Black Box, Atmosphere, MiG, and HFT), iFi Audio's new... Read More »
When I first encountered the vertical walls of houses and the hard, straight lines of streets I was still suffused with a memory of something altogether different. It's no easy task to describe this memory. I guess I knew it mostly by contrast to the new world into which I was suddenly dropped. After all, how... Read More »
Label: Aigle Music | Universal Music UK/Warner Music Japan WPCR-17045 Released: Nov. 20th 2015 Format: Mini LP CD Dark Sky Island is the 8th studio album by Eithne Ní Bhraonáin, known rather as Enya. Her career started in 1980. She, together with her family, became a member of the band called Clannad. She became really famous... Read More »
How our memory works is still a mystery. We know where memories are stored, we can literally point out parts of our brain responsible for that. But the answer to a question of how it actually works still eludes scientists. They know some, they assume some but they can't be really certain. It is possible... Read More »
Roger Sheker, left, Chief Engineer for Audience LLC, with President John McDonald. Born in Ft. Dodge, Iowa, on Christmas Day, 1942, Roger was a self-made man and a certified (Mensa card-carrying) genius. Though he never attended college, his diverse and comprehensive education came at the hands of both the U.S. Army and his time working at General... Read More »
All of us who love music and audio have some sort of history that goes way back into our past. In my case, it was my Dad's love of all things classical and flamenco related in the vast world of the guitar. I grew up listening to Segovia, the Romeros, Sabicas, Montoya, and Bream, on... Read More »
Manufacturer plans big launch for first non-cable product in its thirty-one year history Rendering of the Vero HCA 29 Class A/B Headphone Amp MIT Cables new Vero line of products has thrust the manufacturer into the more popular personal audio and headphone market. The newest product in the Vero line, the Vero HCA 29 Headphone Amplifier, is... Read More »
Audeze Nails It Yet Again As I sit on the back porch bobbin' my head to A Tribe Called Quest's "Lyrics To Go" off Midnight Marauders via TIDAL through Audeze's new Titanium EL-8 closed-back planars, I'm feelin' the music like I do when I'm using one of my usual portable systems. The sound is full-bodied, engagingly... Read More »
Located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and with over 20 years of experience building world‐class systems forclients, David Lewis Audio has established itself as a premier dealer. Representing some of the mostaccomplished brands in High‐End Audio, we are extremely proud to announce that David Lewis Audiohas selected the Endeavor Audio Line of loudspeakers by VSA as the... Read More »
Aurender, a leader in award-winning, high-resolution audio products, introduces the N10 Caching Music Server/Player. Designed to be used with high performance digital-to-analog converters, the Aurender N10 is the only Music Player to support on-the-fly precision DSD to PCM on SPDIF and AES/EBU outputs with user-selectable choice of 88.2 or 176.4 output sampling rate. Enjoy DSD... Read More »
What Could Make a Phono Stage Worth $45,000? When an audio company proposes to sell a phono stage with a Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price in the United States of $45,000, a decent respect for the opinions of mankind would seem to require that they explain and justify such a remarkable price. Pass Laboratories is... Read More »
Andrew Singer has earned a well‐deserved reputation as a discerning audiophile and business ownerwho personally selects all the components he represents for uncompromising musicality. VonSchweikert Audio is honored to announce our loudspeakers will now be showcased at Sound by Singerof New York, NY. The greater New York metropolitan area is a vibrant market and having... Read More »
High Fidelity Partners Co., LTD., a Japanese corporation, has acquired the intellectual property for the products produced under the brand "Black Cat Cable”, as well as the brand itself, from The Signal Collection, LLC, a U.S.-based corporation located in Cumming, GA. “This is mostly a formality pertaining to our physical move from Atlanta, GA to... Read More »
So there is this controversy of sorts… well not really for many of us, but certainly for some of us. See, the argument is that USB cables cannot and will not change the sound since it is just passing along 1's and 0's from point A to point B. It is all digital and so there... Read More »
This is one of those tests I've been wanting to do for a few years; but it kept being postponed and at one stage it seemed like it would never happen. In the meantime ownership of the company changed, the Model 88 I was originally planning to test has been eclipsed by the Maggiore ("reference")... Read More »
If you return to previous interviews with journalists that I have conducted as part of "The Editors" series, you will find out that they represent both print and online magazines, as well as those that used to be printed and now are published on the Internet. You can use the same categorization to divide my... Read More »
Stefan Wolpe. Compositions for Piano, 1920-1952. David Holzman, piano. Bridge 9116. I decided I couldn't leave Wolpe where I left him last time out. Yes, he can be cerebral but there are other Wolpes whom I really only hinted at, mainly because Four Studies (1935-36) on the Bridge 9344 recording left such a strong impression.... Read More »
85% of DirectStream performance, built-in Bridge II, $3,999! PS Audio, maker of fine audio components for over forty years, is pleased to introduce the DirectStream Junior DAC. Junior offers the same FPGA (field-programmable gate array) technology that is at the heart of the original, award-winning DirectStream, at a much lower price. Following the success of DirectStream,... Read More »
Elijah Audio Konvertible Lite (160mm version shown): The first USB audio cable that allows removal of the 5V lead before or after the PC/DAC “handshake” without requiring 2 USB ports at the source. DATA: twisted pair of Mundorf Silver/Gold solidcore conductors in silk sleeving. The fixed GND and detachable 5V leads are Audience Cryo Cu.... Read More »
Industry leaders, critics and audiophiles alike praise the QP1R’s “Current Mode” amplification and True DSD lossless music playback The QP1R continues to receive praise for its design and product concept and just received a coveted international iF Design Award for product design Questyle Audio, the innovative leader in digital music players, headphone amplifiers, Digital-to-Analog Converters... Read More »
High-res dual-mono DAC supports 11.2MHz DSD, 384kHz PCM, and DLNA network audio TEAC has produced the NT-503, an exquisite-quality dual-mono USB DAC and Network Audio player that supports the latest high-res formats. The AKM 4490 DACs is one of the finest available, supporting resolutions up to 11.2MHz DSD and 384kHz/32-bit PCM rates for unparalleled audio... Read More »
David Belles of Power Modules is proud to announce the new ARIA integrated amplifier. The old adage that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line has application in the realm of high‐end audio. When the distance between the various components necessary to reproduce a clean, accurate audio performance is straight and direct, the results can be truly... Read More »
I cherished this spectacular article Harry Pearson wrote for his HPSoundings blog a couple years ago about his stereo systems being Time Machines. It was like he channeled my brain directly for that piece, because I feel the same way about my systems: Headphone and stereo in-room.
The $18,000 Challenge, or: "Where the heck was I just now?" The gods of inspiration picked the moment I was fishing out leaves from my pool to wallop me in the head with an idea so unassailably right and fair and potentially fun it felt like I'd been granted a power to make the average... Read More »
It's Still Good… Roger Skoff writes about buying and enjoying older gear My sister called me the other day and said that she and her husband (a no-kidding world famous junk sculptor) had fifty or a hundred old vinyl records; nearly that many tape cassettes; and "a bunch" (unspecified) of CDs that they wanted to... Read More »
