Reviews: Who Says It’s Good, And How Do They Know?

Roger Skoff: In the last installment (Part 3) of this continuing series on audio reviews and reviewers I named three requirements for good reviewing ― the ability to judge products’ performance; the ability to apply some (consistent) standard for rating them; and the ability to communicate one’s judgments and ratings to other people in a […]

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Should We Care What People Think of High-End Audio?

Paul Wilson’s recent column defending the health of the audio industry reminded me of what people have often said about one of my other almost-lifelong interests: jazz. I’ve been reading audio magazines and jazz magazines since about 1976, and people were questioning the commercial viability of jazz way back then. I remember as a teen […]

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Clear fog

In yesterday’s post I recounted a story of Telarc engineers in the recording studio control room comparing the output of an analog and digital tape recorder to the live feed from their mixer. To their ears the digital recorder was more faithful to the original signal. Which makes perfect sense since this is exactly what we […]

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Is the loudness war over?

The loudness wars, or the war against dynamic range, is still alive and well and that is unfortunate. But, there’s hope and Paul helps us understand the beginnings of the loudness campaigns and why they are so prevalent today. Watch Now

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Is there a high end conspiracy?

This customer’s dealer keeps encouraging him to spend more money to eliminate listener fatigue and he asks Paul if perhaps it’s all a conspiracy to separate him from his money. Paul lets us in on the ways to eliminate listener fatigue. Watch Now

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Fake hi-fi an issue?

Just reading on the Luxman website ….. “It has come to our knowledge that unknown LUXMAN products are being imitated and widely sold in certain areas of the world by unauthorised vendors, bearing the same “LUXMAN’ trademark and all other visual attributes of the authentic LUXMAN product, deceiving the general consumer public into believing thatt […]

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Audiophile Sound on a Budget?

Clay Swartz writes: Many audiophiles, myself included, can’t afford speakers costing $20,000 or more, amplifiers costing $10,000 or more, or CD players and preamplifiers costing $5000 and more, not to mention expensive cables, power cords, and room treatments. In this article, I will discuss how you can get audiophile sound for much less—under $10,000 for […]

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At the height of the vinyl era we were selling perhaps 1,500 turntables a week. Now it’s double that. Why? Nobody really knows.”

From the archives Robert Ryan writes: The glowing valve amps, big boxy speakers, groovy turntables and curvy radiograms of the past produced rich, warm sounds that analogue enthusiasts still crave today – and specialist makers are increasingly feeding their need http://www.telegraph.co.uk/luxury/technology/16348/steam-audio-the-resurgence-of-classic-hi-fi.html

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