Or about computer sound recording systems It all started in January 1971 with the world's first LP with digitally recorded material. In a long chain of successive recorders—among Denon Digital, Soundstream, 3M, ProDigi, DASH, ADAT, RADAR - DAW, or Digital Audio Workstation, is the latest development. And this is its story. DIGITAL SOUND RECORDING –... Read More »
Frank Doris is a good audio friend, and the Editor of PS Audio's Copper magazine. From time to time he shares articles from Copper with Positive Feedback, to bring his excellent writing to our readership. All such articles are re-published with the permission of PS Audio and Copper. We've all experienced burnout in one form... Read More »
Time for some real fun! I, like many others who work in high-end audio publishing, spend a lot of time at my desktop. Just because I'm working, though, doesn't mean that I don't want the best possible sound in the near-field conditions of desktop audio. On the contrary… Years ago, I put a pair of... Read More »
Roger Skoff writes about an all-too-common Audiophile problem From its very beginning, our hobby has been one of tinkering and do-it-yourself-ism. Much of that was for very good reason: in the mid-19th century, when the first telephone was attempted; in 1877, when Edison built the first phonograph; and even in 1920, when KDKA, the first... Read More »
Re-published from Copper magazine, Issue 133, and used by permission of PS Audio. Many audiophiles are tinkerers. We're constantly striving to squeeze the last iota of performance out of our audio systems, or we just like to putz with stuff, or we're obsessive-compulsive. Tinkering often involves experimentation. And (cue evil horror movie laugh), the experiments... Read More »
Norman Varney of AV RoomService Ltd. has joined Positive Feedback as a Senior Technical Editor as of Issue 113. His expertise in his field of audio acoustics and experience in the field makes him a helpful voice in our creative community for the audio arts. As has been our wont from the beginning of PF,... Read More »
With this article, Positive Feedback continues its content-sharing relationship with Enjoy the Music where Maurice Jefferies visits the home of Greg Weaver, also known as the Audio Analyst Dr. David W. Robinson, Editor-in-Chief The New Apartment Lounge's Maurice Jeffries visits the Audio Analyst at home for the third time. Report By Maurice Jeffries What would we do without... Read More »
Beware! Wildly broad generalizations coming below... Interesting conversations get started over morning cappuccinos in our household. Today, the discussion was about files from the HDTT (High Definition Tape Transfer) catalog versus modern recordings from the NativeDSD catalog. Ann opined that, overall, she found the NativeDSD files in our library were the files to which she... Read More »
The Absence of the Presence. Happy Valley, OR, 2022. Photograph and image processing by David W. Robinson. About my Brutus Awards… For years I have reiterated what our PF Brutus Awards represent. This is especially for the benefit of new readers who are unfamiliar with what we have in mind for this special recognition. Another... Read More »
Remastering is a technique applied to improve sound quality. It can be done in digital or analog domain. There are few audio manufacturers who also release their own recordings. One of them, and probably the most interesting, is the Japanese Esoteric, which remasters classical music from the world's best labels. Esoteric is a brand owned... Read More »
Enid Lumley, the long-ago first female reviewer for The Absolute Sound, was possibly a little over the top, but at least a major portion of her observations were dead on. She was right, for example, in thinking that lifting speaker cables off the floor (she ran them over short pieces of two-by-four) would improve the... Read More »
So, this is going to be a trip of sorts… one where we take you from our early audio system beginnings to where we are today. Yeah, just like most audiophiles we have seen many changes in our systems, rooms, and listening habits. No doubt for many, music preferences as well. We figure that for... Read More »
Frank Doris's article is republished from PS Audio's Copper magazine, Issue 131, and was submitted by him as one of Frank's ongoing contributions to Positive Feedback. As a hard-core audiophile, I've spent the better part of my life working on improving my audio systems. I'll admit—mostly because of selfishness. I want to hear music reproduced as... Read More »
Ye Olde Editor at RMAF 2019, in water color mode. Photograph by Scot Hull; image processing by that very Robinson himself…. About that One Step… Audiophiles who are tuned into things analog, reissues of same, and record collecting are certainly aware of the recent controversy regarding the processing of Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs (MFSL, or... Read More »
Cables are controversial among many in high-end audio. Nay-sayers, skeptics, audio cheapskates, and those-who-just-like-to-argue abound. Roger Skoff herein provides a rational structure for those in audio sales to operate within, expressed in a way very similar to a sales memo to an audio company staff member. PF publishes it for what it's worth; if you... Read More »
The Gold Note P-1000 MKII Preamplifier Regular readers of my essays and columns are aware of the fact that I have been publishing some interesting updates from Gold Note. This is an Italian high-end company whose products have really caught my eye and ear. Part the Last of my impressions of the Gold Note PH-1000... Read More »
Ye Olde Editor lighting one up, Happy Valley, OR, 2021 (Photograph and image processing by John Robinson) I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Very few high-end audio products require (or deserve!) a The Brothers Karamazov treatment. Or Melville. Or Proust. Or Solzhenitsyn. Very few. And logorrhea is no virtue. Piles of hyperbole,... Read More »
Ye Olde Editor with pipe: a portrait by John Robinson Hold the phone! Every now and then I run across a new audio design whose virtues are so obvious that I need to make our readers aware of it as quickly as possible. In this case, the discovery came immediately after PAF 2022. Having been... Read More »
Do you know what a "bad hair day" is? No, it's not just something for women to worry about; anybody can have one, even—at least figuratively—your system. And it's not just bad days, either; less than optimal times can happen at night, too. As with hair, one of the things that can start matters going... Read More »