Month: March 2018

“I have a Mac tube amp and grado phones. Would I benefit from a headphone amp? How are they hooked up? Thanks for any thoughts.” 21 enthusiasts express their opinions MORE

We are told: “I always find it odd that people call us post-punk. I know that punk and New Wave started at the same time because I was there.” (Ganesh Seshadri aka Bid, singer, guitarist and main songwriter)Emerging at the end of punk era, The Monochrome Set’s estrangement from society came from a more arty […]

Originally published in 2010 in The Daily Telegraph Ever since the first MP3 player emerged – sometime around 1996 – the enticing prospect of putting all your music, audio and video on one small system has been dangled in front of consumers Continues HERE

What Hi-Fi? tell us: We take a short-ish stroll down memory lane and revisit the best pound-for-pound stereo amplifiers we’ve tested since the turn of the century. Continues HERE

What Hi-Fi? write: If you’ve ripped your CD collection to a hard drive or prefer accessing your music from a service like Spotify or beaming over Bluetooth, then a music streamer seems the most logical piece of kit to have in your system. We’ve tracked down a handful of deals on some of our favourite machines. […]

.PDF download > Custom Retailer Interview

Chris Sommovigo writes: This is a story about the legendary Susumu Sakuma, who builds some of the most desired tube electronics in the world from within his little restaurant in Tateyama-shi, Chiba in Japan. It’s all in Japanese. If you’re not able to understand Japanese, you can still enjoy watching the vide and seeing the […]

John Mayberry ( lecson-audio@googlegroups.com) writes: All the effort is worth it at times. I told some of you a friend came over a few months ago with his iPhone and outboard DAC. He’s a great guy, PhD in Optics, etc. After a listen to some of kit (hooked through our Hill Plasmatronics system), he asked […]

Originally published here in 2015 As a diehard card-carrying audiophile I am interested in all things related to this wonderful hobby. I’ve published articles based solely on my subjective listening experience and I’ve published articles detailing only objective measurements and facts about products. I enjoy publishing and reading articles that cover the gamut. I also […]

Dave Lalin writes: What is High End Audio, and what it means to me, and not you. I was talking to my friend Dave Rudbarg and in a blazing bit of introspection I came to the realization of why we are not enticing more people to seek out better audio. The reason is simple; most […]

We are told: On her new studio album ‘Not Too Far Away’, she presents 10 new tracks that take the deeply personal and make it universal. It is Joan at her very best. A love album of intensity that gets better on every listen.

Orginally published in 2015 Arved Deecke writes: I remember well, a younger man, when I first ventured into the wonderful world of high-end audiophile audio. I spent quite some time in a significantly obsessive state of mind pondering one purchase over the other, being tempted to spend more money than I could afford and significantly […]

Originally published in 2015 Grant Clauser writes: Enjoying great sounding music is not a pleasure restricted to high income brackets, but lots of people believe that the best stereo speakers—loudspeakers that can be appreciated by people who identify as audiophiles—cost an arm and a leg. Many do, but a great audio system is not dictated […]

Jason Victor Serenis (Stereophile magazine) writes: Ever since 2013, when Alon Wolf’s California-based Magico loudspeaker company consolidated its original 5000 sq. ft. Berkeley headquarters and 5000 sq. ft. San Jose warehouse into a single 20,000 ft. facility in Hayward, people have been telling me that I had to experience the company’s “incredible” listening room. Ironically, […]

The Institute of Acoustics (IOA) is a British professional engineering institution founded in 1974. It is licensed by the Engineering Council UK to assess candidates for inclusion on ECUK’s Register of professional Engineers. The Institute’s address is St Peter’s House, 45-49 Victoria Street, St Albans, Herts, AL1 3WZ, United Kingdom. The current president of the […]

Bob Rapoport writes:  My wife watches a TV show called “So You Think You Can Dance?” that gave me this idea to publish a quiz for those who think of themselves as audiophiles. It’s a fun way to teach you some of the basics about how to be an audiophile and know what to listen for. Judging from […]

They say: The XSP-1 Differential Reference™ Preamp is the result of a two-year development effort aimed at creating a modern, reference-caliber, fully balanced analog stereo preamplifier with the flexibility and features demanded by the discriminating audiophile. The XSP-1 integrates a classically designed audiophile topology with an advanced, digital control system. Extreme care has gone into […]

Y.C writes: “Audiophilia Nervosa” is a terminology used on audiophiles who constantly upgrade their gears and it would indeed be a sin if our relentless pursuit is in hifi gears rather than music! I set up my first serious hifi system in 1992 that has seen countless upgrades since (prior to that, I only had stereo […]

From the archives: James Covert writes:  If you’re skeptical about Neil Young’s pricey new music-download service, you’ve got company — inside Young’s company, even. Product engineers for the shaggy rock icon’s newly released Pono digital music player have privately admitted they aren’t convinced that the high-resolution audio files it plays have any significant technical advantage […]

  They say ….. Shure’s exclusive innovation is the premium KSE1500 Electrostatic Earphone System–the world’s first Sound Isolating electrostatic earphone and amplifier system, for use with portable and traditional media players. Defining a new standard of portable listening, the KSE1500 system features single-driver electrostatic Sound Isolating earphones matched to a USB digital-to-analog-converter (DAC/ADC) that processes […]