In the days leading up to CES 2014, McIntosh extended a special invitation to Audio360 to check out a prototype of their upcoming headphone amplifier: the MHA100. Having reviewed their D100 digital preamp just prior to CES, and having found it most worthy, we were of course thrilled to accept the invitation.
EMERSON, LAKE & PALMER, Island/Victor Entertainment VICP-78001 (1970/2014) TARKUS, Island/Victor Entertainment VICP-78002 (1971/2014) PICTURES AT AN EXHIBITION, Island/Victor Entertainment VICP-78003 (1971/2014) Platinum SHM-CD is the newest and best CD pressing technology. I have no doubt about that. Although its advantage over "regular" XRCD and K2 HD releases differs from title to title, even the smallest difference... Read More »
Here at Audio360, we hear all kinds of wonderful stories from our fellow personal audio enthusiasts... stories of joy and delight at finding the perfect IEM to reach audio Nirvana.
It happens all the time, and we never get tired of hearing these tales (so keep your audio success stories coming).
But as heartwarming as those tales are, none of them can compare to the time we heard this:
"My IEMs helped save a man's life."
Come again?
That might be hard to fathom, as we have all kinds of cool gear just laying around waiting for us to listen to it, right? Kevin has a few reviewers whom he admires for the way they describe their experiences with the gear and the music.
Eno & Hyde have never missed as far as I'm concerned. That's a true rarity. Actually, I can't think of any other cooperative artists projects that have been consistent in holding my attention on every record like these gents have. Every studio album of theirs I've discovered, even a few live bits are all something... 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 »
Blu-ray recordings may be video, audio or most commonly video plus audio. If the video is a distraction turn it off though I would suggest watching the video at least once; at times it can be interesting or entertaining. Naxos is again following up with more high definition (Blu-ray) audio only releases. For many listeners... Read More »
Turning; turning back. 2014. Another year, another THE Show Newport Beach in the books. This has become a favorite audio event on my calendar; the combination of southern California weather at the end of May, a great venue, a solid organization, and a great turnout from audio and music distributors from all over. Richard Beers... Read More »
Dana Zemetsov, Enigma. Works of Solo Viola. [Kreisler, Stravinsky, Hindemith, Kugel, Penderecki, JS Bach] Channel Classics CCSSA 35714. We come to recital CD's for the musician or for music we are unlikely to hear anywhere else. In this case, there is also the instrument—a viola, a peculiar instrument when on its own rather than as... Read More »
Have a look at the pictures in John Marks' listening room. What do you see? What caught your attention? I was struck by the ubiquity of records and the ATC standmount speakers placed upside down. They point to John's "out-of-the-box" thinking on the one hand and to his love for music. This is not just... Read More »
Prokofiev, Violin Sonatas. Five Melodies. Alina Ibragimova, violin; Steven Osborne, piano. Hyperion CDA 67514. I am reported in an ad on the Hyperion website for a new Ibragimova recording as saying that "when you're listening to Ibragimova, she is the only possible way to go." Is this true of her new Prokofiev CD? My favorite... Read More »
There are few genres more polarizing than minimal electronic music. This is totally subjective; but I believe you have to experience this music in a live setting in order to fully appreciate it outside the club: with perhaps a little chemical booster on-board in order to enhance the senses (or maybe not—Dr. David Robinson and... 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 »
Rumen Artarski is a hunk of a man. Tall, handsome and ramrod-straight. He could serve in Special Forces or join the Honor Guard. He could be a grenadier or serve in the praetorian guard of the Caesars. There is some inner strength in Rumen—he is big, but not bulky or sluggish. When he first wrote... Read More »
Wow! I've been swimming in the new HDTT transfer to Double DSD of Duke Ellington's superb recording, Duke Ellington Indigos. The Duke has a special place in my jazzic heart, and has for a long time now. In fact, one of the early SACDs that I glommed onto was the "old" Mobile Fidelity's Blues in Orbit, now... 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 »
Phonat has created a collection of tracks for the sonic adventurist, and it turns out to be a splendid audible journey. From the first track to the last; the sounds ebb and flow, collide, mesh, slide and glide
In a large, superbly designed and printed book titled The Absolute Sound's Illustrated History of High-End Audio dedicated to loudspeakers, we will not find a single word on the company Albedo (Robert Harley and others, The Absolute Sound's Illustrated History of High-End Audio, Austin 2013). And it's no wonder—among the distinguished pioneers and veterans of the loudspeaker industry... 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 »
How the Kiss Gained its Polish The 93rd meeting of the Krakow Sonic Society has been arranged at the request of wykop.pl and related web portals. This report from the meeting is intended for people who like to think and act. I would like to apologize to all those who only like to think and... Read More »
Taken from the closing remarks of a Myspace blog post that Kevin thumbed out sometime in 2006, that serves as a reminder of how important portable audio is for so many people. Music fuels the soul. It is not something to be left behind when we leave the house. It's not furniture.
Tonsil, a former giant and the largest manufacturer of drivers and loudspeakers in this part of Europe, located in the Polish town of Wrzesnia, has recently published information about a photo contest featuring speakers from this company. The winning photos showed older but no less interesting designs, meticulously restored, kept alive and—most importantly—still being used.... Read More »
The Air Force One turntable from the Japanese manufacturer TechDAS that I reviewed in March was a true revelation to me and its presence in my system (see HERE) made for an exceptional experience. It embodies all the design concepts of Mr. Hideaki Nishikawa, his whole experience and heaps of money from the Japanese company Stella, which... Read More »
TVLogic is a Korean manufacturer of audio components and UHD (Ultra High Definition) TV monitors. It just so happens that its research department is behind creating one of the most interesting audio file transports, the W20. Milled from an aluminum billet and equipped with a SSD drive, ultraprecise Oven-Controlled Crystal Oscillator (OCXO), jitter reduction circuit... Read More »
By calling his turntable Little Super Deck (LSD), Arthur Khoubessarian (you can see him on the head picture made during the High End 2014 show in Munich) displayed a sense of humor. You can't deny him that, nor his talent and intuition. Looking at his first designs he presented under the Pink Triangle brand or... Read More »
When I returned to Warsaw, I got a phone call from Franciszek Walicki asking for some photographs of Czesław, because he had just hired him for the band Niebiesko-Czarni. I thought that they had all lost their minds and said that I didn't take pictures of bad singers. Walicki got seriously angry. He retorted: You'll see,... 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 »
Six months ago, we caught our first sight of Woo Audio's WA7tp prototype at CanJam 2013. It was unassumingly dressed in a faux WA7 enclosure, and plainly labeled as a "Prototype Tube Power Supply for WA7 Fireflies."
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