Apple AirPods Pro 3: First Impressions

Hegel H150 Integrated Amplifier Officially Announced

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FiiO M27 Headphone DAC Amplifier Released

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Katz's Corner InnerFidelity

Katz's Corner Episode 10: Mid-Priced Sealed Headphone Survey

Bob Katz Feb 16, 2016

This story originally appeared at InnerFidelity.com

Hooo boy! Bob pulls out all the stops in his latest episode.

This is a little treasure trove of incisive opinion on a bunch of pretty darn good $150-$500 full-size sealed headphones.

News

March Madness

Stereophile Staff Feb 13, 2016

Metronome’s CD8 S, which adds digital inputs to the French company’s well-regarded CD player, graces our March issue’s cover. As is often the case these days, we loved the sound but hated the measured performancemadness indeed! Melco’s affordable server and Merging’s expensive network-connected NADAC multichannel D/A processor get our nod of approval, as do class-D amplifiers from Theta, NAD, and Spec, while Herb Reichert finds much to enjoy with Simaudio’s Moon Neo 340i integrated amp. And on the music side of things, Robert Baird praises Acoustic Sounds’ new stereo releases of classic Beach Boys albums and John Atkinson reacts to a recent report that classical music recordings will soon disappear. That would be madness!

Art Dudley Listening Headphone Reviews

Listening #158

Art Dudley Feb 10, 2016

In my sophomore year of high school, one of the greatest challenges my friends and I faced was the search for the perfect after-school hangout, perfect being defined as "having the least amount of adult supervision." Some of us lived in single-parent homes, but only one had a single parent for whom weekday surprise inspections were impossible, and that was Scott. So Scott's placea downstairs apartment in a nice older house not far from schoolgot the nod.

Gramophone Dreams Turntable Reviews

Gramophone Dreams #8

Herb Reichert Feb 10, 2016

Everyone in the room can hear the difference when I swap one phono cartridge for another. Same thing happens with loudspeakers. This is because both of these magnet-based transducer technologies are electromechanical devices, traditionally made of paper, wood, iron, and copper. (Nowadays, polymers, aluminum, and carbon composites are more typical.) Both are motor-generator mechanisms that either convert mechanical energy into electrical energy (cartridges) or vice versa (speakers). As audio devices, they are spool-and-wire simple, but even tiny changes in the materials and/or how those materials are configured can cause easily audible differences in how they transmit or present recordings of music. Why? Because every gross fragment and subatomic particle of these electromechanical contraptions is moving and shakingshaking everything from the tiny jumping electrons to the wood, metal, and/or plastic containers that fix and locate these motor generators in space.

Phono Cartridge Reviews Turntable Reviews

Robert Deutsch Upgrades His Record Player

Robert Deutsch Feb 09, 2016

For some time now, I've been thinking that my record player was due for an upgrade. My Linn LP12 turntable and Ittok LVII tonearm are about 25 years old, and my AudioQuest AQ7000nsx cartridge is going on 15. During that time, my listening has become increasingly dominated by CDs, but I am not yet ready to give up on LPs. Updating my LP12for which I have Linn's Lingo power supply but no other upgradeswould involve installing the Keel subchassis, for $3250for which price I could get another maker's new, current-design turntable and still have the LP12 to sell. The Linn Ittok can't be upgraded, and its replacement, the Ekos SE, costs $4950out of my range. AudioQuest no longer makes cartridges. Examining my AQ7000nsx's stylus under a microscope showed no visible wear, and there was no obvious audible problem that could be traced to the cartridge's suspension, but age must be having some sort of effect. Taking all these factors into account, I decided to replace my entire phono front end.

Analog Corner Audacious Audio Powerline Accessory Reviews

Analog #246: AudioQuest Niagara 7000 Low-Z Power Noise-Dissipation System

Michael Fremer Feb 09, 2016

Are you old enough to remember when the wires connecting speakers to even the most expensive and sophisticated electronics were 16-gauge, multistrand lamp cord, and the terminals on speakers and amplifiers were just little screws? Sometimes those screws wouldn't even secure all of the wires' strands, but as long as loose strands from one screw didn't touch loose strands from the other, it was good enough . . . and back against the wall went your bookshelf speakers.

Fred Kaplan

Paul Bley, Memorialized in NY Concert Thursday

Fred Kaplan Feb 08, 2016

Paul Bley is featured on The Montreal Tapes, with Charlie Haden and Paul Motian.

I missed the chance to send off an R.I.P. to the jazz pianist Paul Bley, who died on January 3, at the age of 83, so I'm catching up with this advance notice of a free memorial concert to be held this Thursday night, February 11, featuring piano solos by seven of his acolytesmost notably Ethan Iverson and Frank Kimbrough, whom I've lauded on this page many times.

Robert Baird

Man of the World

Robert Baird Feb 05, 2016

This is not a soundtrack record.

News

Dealer Events in Chicago and Maryland Saturday

Stereophile Staff Feb 05, 2016

Chicagoland dealer Musical Artisans (8335 N. Keeler Avenuem Skokie,) and Maryland dealer JS Audio (4919 St. Elmo Avenue, Bethesda) are both having open houses this weekend: JS Audio presenting Wilson Audio's Peter McGrath playing his 4-channel recordings on a system featuring new components from Wilson, D'Agostino, dCS, and Nordost starting at 5pm, and Musical Artisans presenting the Midwest debut of DeVore Fidelity's new Gibbon X loudspeaker from 6:309:30pm.

Stand Loudspeaker Reviews

Morel Octave 6 Limited Edition Bookshelf loudspeaker

Herb Reichert Feb 04, 2016

My first girlfriend was a hopeless kleptomaniac. Once, just before sunrise, as I helped her bury a few hot items in the woods, she asked from which direction the sun would rise. Always the smart-aleck, I told her: "It rarely fails to rise in the east."

She frowned and stared quizzically into the darkness. After a long moment, she said, in a low, sad voice, "Really . . . ?"

September 23, 2015: In his response to and defense of Elizabeth Newton's wildly insightful essay "The Lossless Self" (footnote 1), Michael Lavorgna wrote, on Stereophile's sibling website AudioStream.com: "My idea of hi-fi is to make the possibility of losing oneself in the music happen as often as I choose with the least amount of brain processing as possible." He continued: "Here's my preachy dogma in a nutshell (something I've been saying for years): the best hi-fi is the one that's used to discover and enjoy music most often." (footnote 2) When I read this, I thought, Right on, brother Mike!