May - June 2016
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Audio Discourse
John Marks Welcomes You to The Tannhauser Gate...and I Welcome...
I have had a long acquaintance and friendship-at-a-distance with John Marks of John Marks Records, and, until recently, a contributor to Stereophile....
The Neoteric Listener - The Ayon Scorpio Integrated and CD-07s...
The Ayon Audio Scorpio is a heavy, Class A integrated amplifier made of high grade aluminum and powered by gleaming KT88 and 12AU7 tubes. One look and...
Journeys in Audio Subjectivism - Part Five
(Not) Another $18,000 Challenge, or: "Whoa! This system costs how much?!" "I like Downbeat, you know?" This was the first sentence Graeme Humfrey...
Impressions: The Stillpoints ESS Reference Rack System
"Take him hence; to the rack with him! We'll touse you Joint by joint, but we will know his purpose." William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure The...
Impressions: AXPONA 2016 and my Audio Oasis! Awards, Part 2
In part two, I cover the balance of my Audio Oasis! Awards for AXPONA 2016. As I said in part one, these notes are presented in no particular order,...
Jenna & Alex: Live Concert Broadcast in DSD
Jenna Mammina and Alex de Grassi (Photo: David Pappas) On April 21st, a bit of music history was made as singer Jenna Mammina and guitarist Alex de...
Hardware Reviews
Dynamic Design’s Neutron SW16 Digital Power Cord
An importer/distributor I know has taken to calling me "the stalwart reviewer." At first we both laughed, although I wasn't sure what he meant. On...
Audio Tekne TEA-2000 Phonostage
It happened only once before that High Fidelity tested the same product twice. It was the Nagra's PL-P preamplifier, that was firstly reviewed in our...
Gorgon Interconnect Cable from Stage III Concepts
"That is a…a…a power cord?" It's a guilty pleasure witnessing visitors' disbelief when I show them a Stage III Concepts cable. Even seasoned...
iFi iDAC2 and iUSB3
The impact of computers as a source for high quality musical enjoyment cannot be underestimated. Computers allow listeners to store and stream massive...
Audio Sensibility Cables: Musings on Price and Prejudice
"I can cable an entire audiophile system for $1000" This was back in May of last year, and I was on the phone with Steven Huang of Audio Sensibility...
LampizatOr Euforia
Apparently, I left a few readers in the lurch by closing my LampizatOr Euforia review saying I'd discovered a difference making change and that I'd...
Interviews
Seong-Jin Ho - The Man and His Music
The winner of the 17th International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition The 17th International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition which took place...
Music Reviews
Notes of an Amateur: Tchaikovsky, David Matthews, Ben Johnston,...
Tchaikovsky, Symphonies 1, 2, and 5. Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. Vasily Petrenko. Onyx 4150 (2 CD's) Vasily Petrenko found the poetry in...
Todd Hunter Trio – Eat, Drink, Play
Like most audiophiles who are into jazz, I tend to reach way back into history for my sonic fixes. I'm talking late '50s and early '60s, of course, and...
Foundations of Burden by Pallbearer
When listening to this album, I found it difficult to do so with a strict, examining state of mind. I wanted to capture all of the technicalities and...
The 3.5.7 Ensemble’s Amongst the Smokestacks and Steeples
One of the advantages of writing about LPs and turntables for the last 18 years is that sometimes records just show up in my mailbox without warning or...
Music from Prokofiev, Sylvia, Gabrieli, and More!
Prokofiev, Scythian Suite & Symphony No. 3. Orchestra: Sao Paulo Symphony. Conductor: Marin Alsop. Recording: Naxos NBD0047 There certainly are...
Notes of an Amateur: Ibragimova’s Mozart x 2; Return of Eighth...
Mozart, Sonatas for Violin and Piano, Alina Ibragimova, violin. Cédric Tiberghien, piano. 2 CD's. Hyperion CDA 68091. Most of us know when we're...
New Old Stock - Articles from Our Days in Print
Positively dB’s Feedback
This article, by Doug Blackburn, originally ran when Positive Feedback was in print - Vol. 6, No. 4, 1997. There is so much stuff going on here lately...
Our Friends at High Fidelity
Clones Audio 25iR Integrated Amplifier
Funjoe, the owner of CLONES audio, left his well paid job of a graphic designer to take on his life's true passion—audio. He is not the first as...
Audio Alto DMI 3H Integrated Amplifier
I'll elaborate on that later but let me start with information that products by Slovenian company Audio Alto are custom made—to be exact they are...
High End Exhibition 2016 - Munich, Germany
The original plan was completely different: the Old Pinacotheca (German: Alte Pinakothek - collections of paintings from the 14th to the 18th century),...
Sikora Reference Turntable
Lublin is a city in the south-east part of Poland and the capital of Lublin Voivodeship (province). The name Lublin, exactly the same as today which...
Pylon Audio Sapphire 23 Loudspeakers
Considering the present times and other Pylon Audio products, 23 loudspeakers from the Sapphire series have untypical proportions. If they had been...
Show Reports
Behind the Booths & Back Vol.2 - T.H.E. Show Newport 2016
"There's always somethin'..." Howard Mercer I don't mean to bite off my friend and co-PF scribe Andy Schaubs' style by leading with a quote for this...
Munich 2016, Part 2: “Affordable” Standout Rooms
Now that I have highlighted the systems that for me were the top of the show, I will now turn attention briefly to a few systems that were still...
Report from AXPONA 2016
The 2016 edition of AXPONA (also known as Audio Expo North America) was held at the Westin O'Hare hotel in Rosemont, IL just a short distance away from...
A Munich 2016 Show Report Part 1: My Top 5 Systems at the...
As usual for the Munich show, the numbers of rooms that I can call truly excellent were quite limited. Now, one can debate as to whether this was due...
Images of the High End Exhibition 2016 - Part 3
Tape cassettes recorded directly from an analog master tape, the so-called "Master Compact Cassette". And the box! The Hemiola Records company...
Images of the High End Exhibition 2016 - Part 2
The Italians from Pathos have a sense of style—in the photo there is the new INPOL Heritage integrated amplifier, which resembles the INPOL topology...
