Sonus faber Announces Amati Supreme Speaker
FiiO M27 Headphone DAC Amplifier Released
Audio Advice Acquires The Sound Room
Sponsored: Pulsar 121
CH Precision and Audiovector with TechDAS at High End Munich 2025
KLH Model 7 Loudspeaker Debuts at High End Munich 2025
Marantz Grand Horizon Wireless Speaker at Audio Advice Live 2025
Sponsored: Symphonia
Where Measurements and Performance Meet featuring Andrew Jones
High End Munich: Audio Reference "Most Exclusive System Ever" with Wilson and D'Agostino
Sponsored: Symphonia Colors

LATEST ADDITIONS

AXPONA Livestream Friday!

AXPONA, the largest high-end audio event in North America, has rescheduled from April to August for 2020, but you can get a sneak peek at the new products audio manufacturers have in store by watching the show's Facebook Live event this Friday, April 17 starting at 10am Central Time—the day AXPONA 2020 was originally scheduled to open at the Renaissance Schaumburg Hotel and Convention Center in Chicago, IL.
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Going Dutch (& Dutch): a Conversation with Martijn Mensink

In his review of the three-way, active Dutch & Dutch 8c loudspeaker in the August 2019 issue of Stereophile, Kalman Rubinson concluded that "The D&D 8c demonstrates that active, DSP-empowered speakers are the future." I was equally impressed by the 8c's measured performance—a superbly flat on-axis response and an unmatched control of dispersion over the entire audioband—and asked to borrow a pair so I could experience the speakers in my own listening room.
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Revinylization #4: Sundazed Music/Modern Harmonic and Speakers Corner

Singer/actress Nancy Priddy's sole commercial recording, a 1968 album titled You've Come This Way Before—originally issued on Dot Records and now reissued by Sundazed Music/Modern Harmonic (Dot/Modern Harmonic MH-8044)—is a period piece. The arrangements, in which strings, flutes, Herb Alpert–esque trumpets, a harpsichord, a Vox Continental organ, and New Christy Minstrel–style backing singers all appear, are somewhat dated. (Indeed, the opening bars of the title song sound like the sort of cheesy electric pop that the producers of This American Life use as incidental music, apparently to express their limitless stockpiles of irony.) And some of Priddy's lyrics make the listener thankful for her poor enunciation.
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Wilson WATT loudspeaker

Landmarks in speaker design have been few and far between. There are a few certain contenders: in the UK, the original Quad Electrostatic and the ESL-63 qualify, while the Celestion SL600 scored a big point for all small monitors; the Spendor BC1 changed forever the notion that cone speakers were always colored and that big boxes were essential for good sound. In the States, Apogee has taught us much with their surprising mid-treble ribbon-based designs. Other technologies have shown promise but have not achieved real commercial success.
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Gray Forecast or Silver Lining?

Social distancing. Flattening the curve. These expressions are embedded in our collective psyche as we to try to keep COVID-19 and the novel coronavirus that causes it at bay. Few of us who live through this will ever forget them.

But life and work must somehow go on, if at a slower pace than before.

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Being There: Reflections on Ways of Experiencing Jazz

I remember the only time i ever saw Chet Baker. It was at Parnell's, a jazz club in Pioneer Square in Seattle, long since defunct. It was a few years before Baker died under mysterious circumstances, in Amsterdam in 1988, after a life of creativity, notorious dissipation, and addiction.

Emaciated, with a caved-in face, he already looked near death. He played like an angel. I remember something that happened to me toward the end of the night. Sometimes last sets in jazz clubs, when the crowd has thinned, seem to exist outside of time.

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Innuos Statement music server

We carry within us the wonders we seek outside us.—Rumi

There are plenty of difficult obstacles in your path. Don't allow yourself to become one of them.—Ralph Marston, The Daily Motivator

Put these two quotes together, shake vigorously, and you've got the essence of a music server. Unless your container isn't tightly sealed, in which case you've got a mess.

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Gramophone Dreams #35: ZMF & Hagerman headphone amplifiers & ZMF headphones

Almost a year ago, a headphone pal loaned me the Zach Mehrbach–designed ZMF Auteur LTD headphones. He said, "Herb, see if you like these." I took them home and right away thought, Wow, these headphones really disappear!

Nothing about their sound attracted my attention. The only thing I noticed, casually, was how relaxed and unbelievably transparent they were.

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