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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 »

I have been publishing periodic updates from Gold Note, an Italian high-end company whose products have really caught my eye and ear. As I've been commenting on the Gold Note PH-1000 reference Phono Stage and their PSU-1250 reference Power Supply in tandem with Dohmann Audio, Phasemation, and Schröder…Part the First of which can be read... Read More »

My Dinner with André MFSL’s Herb Belkin Herb Belkin (second from left), with members of the band Genesis circa 1974. Atlantic Records/ATCO Author's Note: The following autobiographical sketch is for the purpose of setting the stage (or giving the backstory) about how a total "Mr. Nobody from Nowhere" (i.e., John Marks) managed to get his... Read More »

Greg Weaver of the audio analyst and I have been working to extend our readers/viewers understanding of DSD at all levels, including the use of DSD256 in the production of LPs, such as Mobile Fidelity has been doing for a number of years now. Other companies like ABKCO have done the same in projects like... Read More »

We started our downsizing journey four years ago. I've written about that journey in four parts beginning HERE. I thought that after four years of experience with our all-digital, headphones-only listening system, an update might be worth sharing. As we headed into the realm of digital-files-only listening, my heels were dug firmly into the dirt trying... Read More »

Ye Olde Editor contemplating... Tiberias, Sea of Galilee, Israel, 2022. (Photograph by John Robinson; image processing by Ye Olde himself.) We're in the final stretch! Some of the best rooms I've saved for last...and here they are. Daedalus Audio/VAC/Lampizator/WyWires In the Daedalus/VAC/LampizatOr/WyWires room…delicious! Going into this space was a reminder of why I always enjoy... Read More »

Onwards to Part the Third of my Pacific Audio Fest 2022 Photo Essay and Audio Oasis! Awards report... Genesis/Merrill Audio In the Genesis/Merrill Audio space It's hard to know what to say about Gary Koh's good-sized Genesis room, featuring Merrill Wettasinghe's very special next-generation (MX) amplification from Merrill Audio. There was so much really unique... Read More »

The ocean swells of the recent controversy about Mobile Fidelity and its unannounced (until now) use of DSD256 continue to roil, whether useful or not. Greg Weaver and I had a long conversation about this, provenance, processing, and the (to my mind) vital role that DSD256 has to play in the future of analog LP... Read More »

Ye Olde Editor with some very fine coffee. Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 2015. (Photograph by Lila Ritsema.) Time to continue my Pacific Audio Fest 2022 Audio Oasis! Awards. Part the Second, then...onwards! Parasound/Innuos/Marantz/Dr. Feickert/Norstone/Straight Wire/KEF Here's an eyeful of an earful of a fine-sounding room… The Parasound/Innuos/KEF/etc. room featured some designs from companies that I knew…JC... Read More »

Did you happen to know that one of Planet Earth's great writers, Garrett Hongo is also a music lover and audiophile?  That's right, Garrett Hongo is one of us. Garrett has written over thirty works in over seventy publications, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in poetry in 1988 for The River of Heaven,... Read More »

A special Positive Feedback guest editorial from John Marks, J.D. and James Tuomy, AES John Marks has been a longtime audio friend of mine, and a respected member of audiophile recording and loudspeaker design community. He recently approached me to publish a technical paper that he and James Tuomy had written regarding proposed modifications to the... Read More »

In the early days of our hobby, one reviewer reigned supreme. From his first "test report," in 1957, until his retirement in 1998, Julian Hirsch is said to have written— either as himself, or as Hirsch-Houck Laboratories—some 4000 "laboratory test reports" on the hi-fi equipment of his time. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Hirsch). All of those were, reminiscent of... Read More »

Jim Merod: a self-portrait. Sony's LSPX-S3 glass sound speaker can be regarded as a leaner, no less enjoyable sonic anomaly which the paradigm-setting Harmon Kardon three-unit stereo playback device, a decade or so back, brought the convenience of music's joyful digital miniaturization. This inexpensive, highly-compatible audio triumph depends not so much on Bluetooth flexibility, but... Read More »

Dr. David contemplating the mysteries of Life. Happy Valley, OR, 2018 (Photograph by John Robinson; image processing by Ye Olde Editor) Last month's reflection upon the good things happening at Gold Note in Italy concentrated on some of their key people, as profiled on their YouTube channel. It was good stuff, people being the most... Read More »

Sensitivity First, I measured the sensitivity of the Audeze CRBN, comparing it to the Stax 007. My headphone measurement instrument is the Mini DSP "Ears," which is far from a standard. However, using my ACO Pacific SPL calibrator, I was able to calibrate the Mini DSP for SPL at 1kHz within about a dB, I... Read More »

As you probably know, I'm not just a writer and a long-time audiophile (I and my friends call ourselves "HiFi Crazies"), but a manufacturer of High-End audio cables, originally XLO, now RSX. As such, to some of our HiFi brethren, that automatically makes me and anything I might say suspect. They insist—often based more on... Read More »

At the 18th High Fidelity Anniversary In the past, before I started to work as a journalist, I heard several times from one of the audio distributors that audio magazines were "leeches" and "parasites." He said it deadly serious and pissed off. Which did not prevent him from partying, having fun, laughing and joking with... Read More »

Written by Tom Methans While browsing around Steve Guttenberg's The Audiophiliac channel on YouTube, I came across several videos featuring Devon Turnbull, a multi-talented audio engineer and former clothing and graphic designer and graffiti artist, who now runs a small audio company in Brooklyn called Ojas (Devon's original graffiti pen name pronounced with the same "j" as in jazz... Read More »

David W. Robinson making the photograph "Departure." Happy Valley, OR, 2022 (Photograph by John Robinson; image processing by Ye Olde Editor) Pushing ahead with my brief notes on Gold Note from last month, and progressing onwards in my discovery of their company, this month I'll share a couple of very brief videos that they've produced... Read More »