2nd Edition
Musical Fidelity V90-DAC D/A processor
They can't sound very good--they're not big enough. As we all know, in hi-fi, big products mean big performance. Musical Fidelity's V90 series can't be any good. They don't cost enough. With your golden ears, you must pay through the nose.
Dynaudio Focus 160 loudspeaker
These are great times for hi-fi gear, especially loudspeakers. I latched on pretty fast to Dynaudio's Excite X12, but I wasn't the first at Stereophile to discover that loudspeaker. That was Bob Reina. Drat!
A Capital Show Starts Friday
The annual Capital Audio Fest (CAF), the Mid-Atlantic States' premier playground for audio, returns to the Sheraton Hotel in Silver Spring, MD on July 25–27.
Johnny Winter
t’s been an exceedingly tough week for music deaths: Maestro Lorin Maazel, the last survivor of America’s greatest punk band, Tommy Ramone, unforgettable Broadway singer and actress Elaine Stritch and now the great Johnny Winter who died on Wednesday in Zurich, Switzerland at the age of 70.
Know Thyself: Audio Existentialism
Playing recorded music in the home is a complex, coded, cultural experience: We sit, we listen, we think and dream--and, when it feels just right, we admire. We admire who we are and how we arrived at this beautiful moment.
Recording of August 2014: Turn Blue
There was a time when calling the Black Keys "sexy" would have been thought perversely stunted, given that they were a two-man, raw-as-hell, blow-me-down, frat-rock grinder that jammed and pounded and convinced everyone that their version of Tony Joe White's groove was something new and revolutionary.
Music in the Round #67
It seems more and more that I'm reviewing equalization products in this column, and that such components are less often dealt with in the magazine's formal equipment reports. But it's not as if the problems created by room acoustics affect only multichannel systems.
R.I.P. Charlie Haden
Charlie Haden, one of the great jazz bassists, died this morning, at age 76, after a long illness.
Before Elvis
Even casual music fans know the story: rock ‘n’ roll as “invented” by Elvis Presley and was just African American blues music set to a faster beat and in some cases with less salacious lyrics.
Kenny Burrell: Midnight Blue from Music Matters Jazz
Music Matters Jazz is going 33. As all high-end vinylphiles know, MMJ is the LA-based company that's been reissuing classic Blue Note albums cut at 45 rpm, spread out over two slabs of 180 gram virgin vinyl, encased in a gatefold cover that meticulously reproduces the original's artwork on the outside and gorgeously reprints session photos of the musicians on the inside.
1st Edition
The Quality Deficit
I grew up with a healthy disrespect--almost a dislike--for rich people. My father grew up on a farm and I seemed to inherit his farm-grown distrust for those who have money.
Ripping LPs with Pure Vinyl 4
"Our goal is not just to create a portable digital copy of an analog LP; it is to honor the high-fidelity aspects of vinyl by making a digital copy that sounds indistinguishable from the original."
Revel Performa3 F208 loudspeaker
The year: 1999. The city: Minneapolis. While taking a break from partying with Prince like it was, well . . . that year, I wandered into a local audio emporium to see what new and exciting goodies were on display.
Luxman DA-06 D/A processor
In the summer of 1999, Sony held a press event in New York City to mark the introduction of the Super Audio Compact Disc, then the sole domestic embodiment of the Direct Stream Digital (DSD) technology, jointly developed by Sony and Philips.
Audio Streams #1
I'm the editor of AudioStream.com, Stereophile's sister website devoted to computer audio. I envision my new Stereophile column, "Audio Streams," as an extension of this mission--and the addition of that trailing, plural s gives me some leeway to explore a wider range of hi-fi topics.
Listening #139
With a parts list that includes 18 new-old-stock Black Cat capacitors, 16 vintage-style Cosmos potentiometers, two Tango chokes, one Tango power transformer, and some of the loveliest steel casework I've seen on a contemporary product, no one could accuse Noriyuki Miyajima of skimping on the build quality of his company's only power amplifier.
Hi-Res Audio and More at the 2014 CE Week
New York's CE Week occurs every June and is a miniature version of the January CES held in Las Vegas.
Bobby Womack
Bobby Womack who died on Friday at the age of 70, will go down as one of the finest, if undervalued soul singers of his or any other generation.
Led Zeppelin Remastered
our first sip of beer beer. Your first drag on a cigarette. Maybe even that first kiss. Led Zeppelin was the soundtrack for the Seventies and now, you may want to file those cherished but worn LP copies and replace them with the much ballyhooed reissues from Rhino.
Joseph Audio Perspective loudspeaker
For exhibitors, showing off their products at audio shows is a crap shoot. The vagaries of arbitrarily assigned hotel rooms with unpredictable acoustics can play havoc with the sound of even the best-sounding systems.
Phase Technology PC60 CA loudspeaker
Phase Technology, a speaker-making division of MSE Audio based in Jacksonville, Florida, celebrated their 30th anniversary last September, at the 2013 CEDIA Expo, by reissuing of one of their first products, the PC-60 bookshelf loudspeaker, now updated with new drivers and crossovers.
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