KEF Debuts New Finishes for Blade One Meta and Blade Two Meta

Sennheiser Drops HDB 630 Wireless Headphones

LATEST ADDITIONS

Sweepstakes

Stereophile Makes Brian Happy

Ariel Bitran Aug 01, 2013

We're always happy to spread the love of gear (and music) here at the good ole' STP. STP's one of our in office abbreviation for Stereophile. Occasionally, it's STRP. Sometimes it's, "We have to do another issue?", but seriously, we do enjoy making audiophiles happy. It's one of the best parts of the job.

Art Dudley Listening Tonearm Reviews

Listening #128

Art Dudley Aug 01, 2013

Writing is easy. See? I just did it. Three whole sentences, written between breakfast and lunch. (I had to pause and think about one of them.) Payday, here I come.

Floor Loudspeaker Reviews

Boston Acoustics M350 loudspeaker

John Atkinson Aug 01, 2013

Boston Acoustics made its name in the early 1980s with the A40, an inexpensive two-way bookshelf design that became one of that decade's best-selling speakers. Stephen Mejias was impressed by the A40's spiritual descendant, the Boston Acoustics A25 bookshelf speaker ($299.98/pair), when he reviewed it in November 2011, and I was similarly impressed when I had the speaker on the test bench for measurement. So when, in the fall of 2012, Boston's soon-to-be-departing PR representative Sara Trujillo let me know that the company was introducing a range of more expensive speakers, I asked to review the top-of-the-line, floorstanding M350.

Budget Component Reviews Integrated Amp Reviews

Creek Evolution 50A integrated amplifier

Robert J. Reina Aug 01, 2013

It seems I'm always reviewing an integrated amplifier from Creek Audio. It started in the late 1980s, when I fell in love with the capabilities of inexpensive, well-designed audio equipment, sparked by the spectacular sound of a pair of Celestion 5 bookshelf speakers at a Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago. I was reading an issue of Hi Fi Heretic (now defunct), for which my friend Art Dudley wrote, and it included a survey of various inexpensive British integrated amplifiers, some of them made by Creek. I was already familiar with the company, but hadn't listened to affordable British electronics since I'd lived in London, in the early '80s. I got a Creek 4140s2 integrated and was amazed at its neutrality, its lack of etched sound, its natural reproduction of instrumental timbres. I ended up buying it, and used it to review bookshelf loudspeakers.

Sweepstakes

Audiofly Headphone Sweepstakes

Jon Iverson Aug 01, 2013

Register to win one of four sets of Audiofly Headphones (MSRP $30 - $200) we are giving away.

According to the company:

Made with high quality materials and precision manufacturing, the AF33 will play its heart out every time and astonish you with its sound quality. It arrives equipped with a custom voiced 9mm dynamic driver for detailed sound reproduction across the entire sonic spectrum . . .

[This Sweepstakes is now closed.]

Fred Kaplan

Bill Frisell’s Big Sur

Fred Kaplan Jul 31, 2013

Bill Frisell’s new CD, Big Sur (Sony Masterworks/OKeh Records), is at once a reprise and a departure. It features the string musicians from his 858 Quartet, last heard two years ago on Sign of LifeFrisell on guitar, Jenny Scheinman on violin, Eyvind Kang on viola, Hank Roberts, cellothis time augmented by the versatile young drummer Rudy Royston. The album also features 19 new Frisell compositions, lithe and lyrical, yet laced with more complex harmoniessubtler, darker, and more sinuousthan anything I’ve heard from him before. . .

Music and Recording Features News

Wilson Audiophile Recordings Return

Jason Victor Serinus Jul 31, 2013

Many of David Wilson's highly acclaimed, long out-of-print recordings are poised to make old and new generations of audiophiles very happy. On August 1, the first two of a selected batch of Wilson Audiophile Recordings will return to circulation as high-resolution (176.4kHz/24-bit), CD-quality, and MP3 downloads. Distributed by Naxos via a host of mass-market and hi-res digital music stores, including Chandos' "The Classical Shoppe," eClassical24bit, HDMusic, HDTracks, HiResAudio, Linn Records, Onkyo, and Qobuz24bit, the first titles in the series are Recital, James B. Welch's disc of four centuries of organ music, and Beethoven and Enescu Sonatas, performed by violinist David Abel and pianist Julie Steinberg, this magazine's "Recording of the Month" for February 1984.

Sweepstakes

John Needs a Desk

Ariel Bitran Jul 31, 2013

John Parks of Hurst, Texas is the winner of Stereophile.com's Monitor Audio Airstream WS100 Sweepstakes. The Monitor Audio Airstream WS100 are desktop speakers that receive a wireless audio signal transmitted on the 2.4GHz band via USB dongle.

John is befuddled. While he has these awesome and convenient desktop speakers, he has no desk! We do not have any desk sweepstakes coming up soon.

Congrats on your win John, and thanks for playing! Hope you find a suitable surface.

Capital AudioFest 2013

Capital Audiofest, Wrap-Up

Art Dudley Jul 30, 2013

On Saturday evening, right after Capital Audiofest closed for the day, everyone seemed to converge upon the hotel bar at the same time: myself, Gary Gill (Capital Audiofest), Mat Weisfeld (VPI Industries), Clarence Wheat (Hifilogic), Dave Cope (Audio Note UK), Robin Wyatt (Robyatt Audio), Myles Astor (Positive Feedback Online), Brian Zolner (Bricasti Designs), Jonathan Horwich (International Phonographic), and numberless others. It was the first time since the Heathrow Airport show of 1996 that I'd witnessed such a convivial mobcompetition be damned.

While I was speaking with Gary Gill, an exhibitor approached and asked if would be too early to sign up for Capital Audiofest 2014; hearing this, another exhibitor expressed the very same thought . . .

Capital AudioFest 2013

Capital Audiofest, Day Three

Art Dudley Jul 30, 2013

There was this guy in the room shared by Joseph Audio, VAS, and VPI (above), and I guess he'd been there for a little while before I came in: big guy, sort of athletic-looking. Jeff Joseph had apparently just played one of his CDs for him, and the guy was stunned. You could tell he wasn't just being polite: "That was . . . really good!" Irrespective of the name over the door, I think we all live for moments like that.