When is it time to upgrade? Add another component like a Power Plant, a new cable, a better DAC? I get asked this question a lot. Just recently the question put to me was a tough one to answer. If the system is limited by the setup possibilities: speakers shoved up against the wall, a […]
AUDIO: Ask us
A dialogue between audiophile enthusiasts
Found 571 results
Paul McGowan It’s tough being on the cutting edge of new product design. One slip and that edge might just slice you right open. Yet it’s pretty boring just nosing along the fringes and worse trudging through middle ground. I think what floats the boats of most forward-thinking designers is to be somewhere just beyond […]
There a few fora where blind testing has a fervent or even fanatical following. Some people seem to be quite rigorous about this whereas others only seem to ask for it where they don’t believe differences exist. Personally I see it as a hassle and indeed there’s no one else in my household who would […]
Audiophile terminology helps the initiated communicate what they’re hearing: a means of describing with words sounds that we hear. One of my favorites is transparency—see through sound. I love this term because it makes no sense until you’ve actually heard it. Sound is the movement of air at wave frequencies too low for our eyes […]
“I have a issue around my system sounding different on different days. I live near a industrial estate and suspect the issue may arise from the estate. My systems nearly always sounds very good sometimes it sounds freaking awesome but betwen once a week to once every two weeks the sound becomes slightly muffled. Ideally […]
Hi. I need a budget (below £200) cd player to go with a denon pma700ae amp in a work space. Anyone have any ideas? I’ve looked at denon dcd500ae and Nad c525BEE but without access to a soundroom i can only go on advice from others. it is for classical and contemporary indie/rock. With a […]
The thread starts: Is it just me or are there others who find the typical interviews with audio designers in the paper mags to promise more than they deliver? I’m not out to try and learn the intimate details of the people who design truly state-of-the-art gear, but I guess I’d like to know more […]
Many of you are familiar with the Audiophile’s dilemma: well recorded music sounds better on a high-end system and poorly recorded music sounds worse. It’s the problem of extremes: a high-end system extends the extremes – better sounds better, worse sounds worse. The problem with this lack of homogenizing is we tend to restrict […]
You know the ones, very small boxes with RCA input and digital coax and/or optical output? Anyone tried one? For twenty quid it’s tempting as a stop-gap whilst I wait for a better solution to playing vinyl through my MDAC… but if they’re likely to sound awful I might pass… then again, maybe they’ll sound […]
This is an unpopular view on the Wam, but I’m trying valve monoblocks and a valve pre at home (the Icon Audio 845 and the new LA5preamp) and I’m just not getting the results I’d hoped for. I suspect the problem is the speakers, which I think are too difficult for the 845s to drive […]
What’s the cheapest proper Hi-Fi system you can put together, preferably using used equipment. Where would you start? What would you buy? I’d be looking at a Dual CS505 with a cheap Goldring cartridge, a NAD 524 CD player, Denon PMA-250SE amp and a pair of Celestion Ditton 15 (first series) or Mission 780SE (first […]
There has been a few threads recently on pre amps and what they do and what they bring to the party. With so many members and so many systems here i wondered what the very best sounding Valve pre amp you have heard? i do realise that other components in the chain make a […]
By A/B conventionally applied I mean the same musical phrase, bar or track used to demonstrate the differences between (say) any two pairs of speakers (or DACs or whatever) where the total number of similar components on demonstration is 2 + n, where n = any number and where the process is carried out too […]
“I have been told by a couple of Audiophiles that the FM Acoustics amplifiers were incredibly good and very expensive. Has anyone had hand-on experiences with these amplifiers? The amp I have heard of most is the Resolution 811. Would this venerable amp still approach the state of the art for solid state?” Read […]
Paul McGowan writes: I had mentioned on our forums that there were several companies I did not believe aspired to produce high end audio products: McIntosh and B&O among them. Ok, ok, I can see the fur flying already. Take a deep breath. This is not a put down. For the record, I admire both of […]
As part of my promised occasional setup tips, I thought it might be good to go to step two in system setup, where we focus on the phantom center image. Remembering that the goal for proper stereo imaging is two fold: the loudspeakers should disappear and the phantom stage is always behind the loudspeakers, we should then get started […]
One of our readers made an interesting observation. He writes: “selecting a record, cleaning that record, clamping the record, starting the motor, cleaning the stylus, cueing up the cartridge and sitting down to listen prepared me to listen in a way that a few mouse clicks or screen taps doesn’t. I’d made a commitment to […]
Paul McGowan writes ….. When it comes to the space we allocate for our listening area, we rarely have the luxury of choosing our room size, dimensions, ceiling height, or the floor type. For most of us, we take what we can get and hope for the best. Sometimes, for the luckiest among us, we […]
“Dear friends: who really needs an MM type phono cartridge?, well I will try to share/explain with you what are my experiences about and I hope too that many of you could enrich the topic/subject with your own experiences. For some years ( in this forum ) and time to time I posted that the […]
The simple fact you are staring at the monitor and reading this article means that either you are an audiophile or that you are strongly willing to become an audiophile (kudos then!). Or, perhaps, you just pretend to be an audiophile. In some sense, I’m an audiophile too. This all sounds like a meeting of […]
This issue about copyrights and protection has so many layers My absolute first ever system was a philips mono record player with a ceramic cartridge and a speaker in the lid. It switched on by pulling the arm to the right. That would be about 1970. Then one christmas I got a proper Philips stereo […]
I was watching some modern concert footage of Peter Gabriel with a full orchestra last night on Sky Arts. Everywhere around the edges of the stage were rats nests of cabling and boxes linked to other boxes and more cables and more boxes in flight cases etc. Despite this, the sound was brilliant. I […]
NB: A thread – from a while back – that some members here might find contains interesting observations, advice and, perhaps, more. In my view, certainly worth dipping in and out of if even if you have only a few minutes to spare. In a discussion with Mike (Shian7) recently on the SL-1210 thread he […]