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Each Zion weighs nearly 75 pounds As I sat in my listening room with the lights dimmed, I began to take a journey. My journey started with the Red Hot Chili Peppers' Unlimited Love, and I then found myself listening to Mark Knopfler's Down the Road Wherever. After awhile I ventured onto St Vincent's MasSeduction, with a short... Read More »

The brilliant late audiophile, J. Gordon Holt, once wrote that if the purchaser of a fine system was torn between buying a great pair of speakers or a great amp, one should choose a great amp and a good pair of speakers that fit your basic needs. He commented that he had heard numerous systems... Read More »

Octave Audio is a German company founded in 1968 by Karl Heinz Hofmann; initially it produced transformers. In 2000, his son, Andreas Hofmann took over the business, and from then on it has been called Octave Audio. We are testing the top Jubilee system. Although the first Octave amplifiers were made in 1975, and since... Read More »

A while back Triode Lab's Frank Ng asked me if I would like to listen to a pair of his very exclusive—only four pairs are scheduled to be made—cost-no-object, limited edition Triode Lab 2A3 parallel single-ended-triode (P-SET) RSR monaural amplifiers, that incorporated all of Frank's design insights for state-of-art high-performance SET amplifiers (HERE, scroll down... Read More »

Every once in a while, a piece of gear comes into the listening room that immediately makes its presence known as something special, something just a bit elevated from the other shiny boxes that make our hearts beat faster. Such was the case with arrival of the Parasound JC 5. However, in all fairness, I... Read More »

Greetings friends, I hope you are doing well. I know there's a lot of Leben HiFi Stereo Company fans out there, and today I want to tell the Leben fans in the audience about the rather rare and exotic Leben CS-300F vacuum tube integrated amplifier (photo below). Over the years, I've either owned or written... Read More »

Justin Weber, the owner of ampsandsound, has been on a roll lately. 2021 has been a big year for him. He introduced two new headphone amplifiers (The Rockwell, and the Agartha), had two of his products put on the 2021 Stereophile recommended component list, and introduced a new set of mono block speaker amplifiers known... Read More »

Prologue I've had the Magneplanar LRS loudspeakers in my daily-listening system for over two years now; every time I swap them out for something else, they invariably seem to find their way back in. And that's despite being devilishly difficult loudspeakers to drive; their 2.8 ohm impedance (almost constant across the entire audio spectrum) presents... Read More »

I was first introduced to Rotel products back in the mid 70s when I bought my first Rotel turntable from the Stereo Buff in Springfield, MO. I was a poor college student, and they had very affordable prices. I ran that table through a Yamaha integrated amp along with a Aiwa cassette player and Genesis... Read More »

I first came across Triangle Art around 7 years ago while scrolling through a familiar webzine. It was fortuitous as I was getting back into vinyl after abandoning it decades ago, leaving behind my thoroughly thrashed Garrard that carried me valiantly through my childhood and teens. What caught my eye in that webzine's ad was... Read More »

Whether musing about the greater understanding the Belle II particle physics experiment at KEK may bring to questions around Standard Model predictions, dark matter, and the asymmetry of matter and antimatter in the universe, or the exciting themes of parallel universes, the multiverse, and time travel that we see imaginatively explored in science fiction, physics... Read More »

All Creatures Great and Small As a mid-50s baby boomer, I face the daunting but simultaneously liberating task of deciding which of my possessions to keep and which to jettison. For most of my adult life, I have chosen smaller, carefully curated living spaces over "mcmansions," a preference more and more Americans have embraced, young and... Read More »

For the last five weeks, I have had the opportunity to sit back and enjoy one of the best amplifiers I have heard in a long time. It all started when I got a phone call from the owner of ampsandsound, he said he had something new and special in the works. I was intrigued,... Read More »

It's funny. As we move up through the echelons of the audio world, the pieces that produce our sonic magic become more and more singular in function. The jobs which devices perform move into larger and more separate boxes as if no component can do two things well at once. Stay in your lane. In... Read More »

Part 2 (Part 1 can be found HERE) I originally titled this discussion as "Don't Pass, Go!" I meant, don't pass on the XA30.8, go! I didn't expect I'd disappear, but... this past year has been difficult for all of us. Covid-19 put a kink in things for all of us, I added to my... Read More »

Headphones and the personal audio scene are a healthy and vibrant niche in our hobby, with a growth curve that has exponentially accelerated over the past decade. The selection of headphones, headphone amplifiers, and specialty cabling manufacturers is impressive, with a width and breadth of companies that is on par with any other sector in... Read More »

A System For All Seasons It seems like a lifetime ago I reviewed the Karan Acoustics KAS 450 stereo amplifier. My conclusion was "This is an amplifier I could live with for the long haul," and was planning on adding it to my system. If not for a train wreck of an experience with a... Read More »

WestminsterLab is a company founded in London (hence the name), currently headquartered in Hong Kong, run by Angus Leung. Its offer includes connection cables and amplifiers, belonging to the top high-end level. For this review we received the Quest preamplifier and REI monoblocks; the preamplifier has its premier in HF. There are brands in audio... Read More »

While I was evaluating AGD Productions' "The Audion" Amplifier (HERE), there was a rumor that AGD Productions was going to release a new flagship monoblock amplifier. This new amplifier would be based off a more powerful GaN Tube, a technology unique to AGD that utilizes state of the art Gallium Nitride transistors, and offer enough... Read More »