LATEST ADDITIONS

In high-end audio, Italian designs play by different rules. They tend to favor beauty over austerity, boldness over caution, and emotion over restraint. Rather than just hearing the music, you're meant to be swept away by it. That spirit animates gear from Unison Research, a tube-focused company located just north of Venice.

As a music teacher, I can think of no better learning experience than what trumpeter Donald Byrd did in the early 1970s for a group of his music students. To quote the band's current website, "Byrd envisioned taking active students at Howard University in Washington, DC, on a real-world field trip which would expose them to ins and outs of the music business."

"Panel speakers that do bass? Sign me up!" That was my reaction when I first heard a pair of Diptyque Reference loudspeakers, at AXPONA 2023. The Reference is a 6'-tall, French planar magnetic speaker whose designers, Gilles Douziech and Eric Poix, make no secret of their love for Magnepan, the Minnesota company famed for its dipole panels. The French duo has improved on Magnepan's pioneering technology by addressing the number-one shortcoming of such designs: a lack of low-frequency extension.