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A Visit to the DALI Factory
John Atkinson  |  Aug 22, 2019  |  3 comments
DALI's loudspeaker factory in Nørager, Denmark. (Photo: DALI.)

Seen from the air, Denmark is a vista of farms and wind turbines. But once your plane touches down, it is a land of loudspeakers. Perhaps this is because audio has a long history in Denmark—it was a Dane, Valdemar Poulsen, who developed a magnetic wire recorder in 1898—but there are more loudspeaker manufacturers per person than any other country. According to Wikipedia, Denmark is home to 5.75 million people, compared with New York's five boroughs, which have a population of 8.67 million However, as well as drive-unit manufacturers Audio Technology, Peerless, Vifa (which merged with Peerless to form Danish Sound Technology), and ScanSpeak, there are Bang & Olufsen, DALI, Dynaudio, Gamut, Gryphon, Jamo, Lyngdorf Audio, Peak-Consult, and Raidho all making loudspeakers. Lots of loudpeakers.

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Floor Loudspeaker Reviews
DALI Callisto 6 C wireless loudspeaker
John Atkinson  |  Aug 22, 2019  |  54 comments
PS Audio's Paul McGowan has been sending out a daily newsletter by email since 2011. In his May 29, 2019 epistle he asked, "What would our world of high-end audio look like if there were only active wireless loudspeakers? If even the half-a-million-dollar mega-beasts were internally amplified and connected via wireless and controlled from an iPad? No more boxes. No more wires and cables. Only speakers."
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Stand Loudspeaker Reviews
Dragonfire Acoustics Mini Dragon DFA 2.1 desktop playback system
Jason Victor Serinus  |  Aug 22, 2019  |  20 comments
Ever go on a blind date? If you've been on more than one, you know what it's like to encounter an entirely new product at an audio show: Sometimes it's love at first listen, your only question being, "When can we get together again?" Other times, you can't wait to say goodbye.

My blind date with the Dragonfire Acoustics Mini Dragon DFA 2.1 nearfield monitor system ($10,000), accessorized with its Kimber Kable Axios Goliath cable upgrade ($1500), took place during its coming-out reception at the 2018 Rocky Mountain Audio Fest (RMAF) in Denver. After listening to a 24/96 file of Cassandra Wilson's "Dance to the Drummer Again" on the Dragonfire system, I scribbled in my notebook, "totally absolutely impressive . . . musical flow reigned supreme."

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Turntable Reviews
TechDAS Air Force V turntable
Michael Fremer  |  Aug 20, 2019  |  42 comments
Unless a truly budget-priced Air Force model is in the works, the TechDAS turntable lineup now seems complete: The recently introduced Air Force Zero ($450,000) is at the top, and the "affordable" Air Force V ($19,500) is at the bottom. The Air Force One, Two, and III turntables, all available in both standard and Premium versions, sit in the costly middle.

There's no Air Force IV because in East Asia that number is considered bad luck—which also explains why Japanese golfers shout "Six!" when someone hooks a shot into an adjacent fairway (joke alert).

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Art Dudley ListeningPhono Accessory Reviews
Listening #201: the Buddha Bearing
Art Dudley  |  Aug 20, 2019  |  22 comments
This is a story about a $1375 commercial turntable accessory and a free tweak—the latter discovered while installing the former, although the two things exist quite independently of one another.

Here's how it all went down: Earlier this year, I was sent a review sample of a perfectionist-quality platter bearing called the Buddha Bearing, intended for Garrard 301 and 401 turntables. I was happy to receive such an interesting product but slow in trying it, partly because my record player sounded so good at the time that I didn't want to go tearing it all apart, and partly because there were other review samples in line ahead of the Buddha Bearing.

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News
MoFi, Isotek Event in Falls Church, Virginia
Stereophile Staff  |  Aug 19, 2019  |  0 comments
On Saturday, August 24th, Command Performance AV will be hosting an open house event in collaboration with MoFi Distribution. Also in attendance will be IsoTek's "headmaster," Keith Martin, visiting from the U.K.
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Jason Victor SerinusMusic and Recording Features
Wynton Marsalis’ Yummy Violin Concerto and More
Jason Victor Serinus  |  Aug 18, 2019  |  5 comments
I expect every lover of jazz and classical music will want to check out Decca’s new recording of jazz great Wynton Marsalis’ thoroughly engaging Violin Concerto and Fiddle Dance Suite.
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As We See It
The Day the Music Died
Jim Austin  |  Aug 15, 2019  |  22 comments
If you're a music fan—and if you're reading this, you probably are—you've heard this already: On June 11, the New York Times Magazine published an investigative report about a 2008 fire that destroyed a vault at Universal Studios in Los Angeles.

Workers were repairing a roof on an oft-reused movie set, heating asphalt tiles with a blowtorch. Protocol required the repairmen to stick around for one hour until the asphalt had cooled, to guard against fire. But shortly after they left, a fire broke out. Hundreds of firefighters fought it, pulling water from the lake once inhabited by The Creature from the Black Lagoon.

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Stand Loudspeaker Reviews
Wharfedale Linton Heritage loudspeaker
Herb Reichert  |  Aug 15, 2019  |  30 comments
A dale is a broad valley. The Yorkshire Dales are broad, picturesque valleys in Northern England, mostly named for the rivers or streams that run through them. One of these is Wharfedale, which is the upper valley of the River Wharfe—and which was the original home of British firm Wharfedale Wireless Works, founded in 1932 by Gilbert Briggs.
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EISA AwardsNews
The 2019-2020 EISA Hi-Fi Expert Group Citations
Stereophile Staff  |  Aug 14, 2019  |  0 comments
Every year, the Expert Imaging and Sound Association hands out awards for the best products in each of 19 hi-fi categories, as determined by a panel of judges from the world's leading hi-fi magazines.

Notice the word "world"—for, EISA, one a European organisation, has gone global, with members from Japan, Hong Kong, Australia—and the United States, where Stereophile is the only member of EISA's Hi-Fi Expert group. (Stereophile's partner publications, Shutterbug and Sound & Vision, are also EISA members—in the Photography and A/V categories, respectively.)

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