Where Measurements and Performance Meet featuring Andrew Jones

Electrocompaniet + Ø Audio at High End Munich 2025

High End Munich: Audio Reference "Most Exclusive System Ever" with Wilson and D'Agostino

Silbatone's Western Electric System at High End Munich 2025

CH Precision and Audiovector with TechDAS at High End Munich 2025

Innuos Unveils Stream3 & Stream1—Modular Server/Streamer Lineup Explained | AXPONA 2025

KLH Model 7 Loudspeaker Debuts at High End Munich 2025

LATEST ADDITIONS

Tube Power Amp Reviews

BorderPatrol P21 EXD power amplifier

Ken Micallef Jun 21, 2018

Back at the beginning of 2017, Greg Roberts, of Volti Audio, devised a clever way to bring his Rival floorstanders up to my penthouse pad, for what resulted in a rave review of those horn-loaded wunderspeakers.

I live on the top floor of a seven-story, elevatorless building on a busy street in Greenwich Village. A vertical challenge? No problem! Roberts is resourceful in many things, from speaker design to his former profession, the building of custom homes. Affixing a pair of unguent-saturated straps to the screws on each side of a Rival, we lifted and transported the 106-lb speaker high in the gritty Manhattan sky as if it were child's play.

Solid State Power Amp Reviews

Bricasti Design M15 power amplifier

Jason Victor Serinus Jun 21, 2018

On the second morning of a recent audio show, I walked into the exhibit room of Bricasti Design.

"How about some Mahler?" asked cofounder and designer Brian Zolner.

"Oh God. Not at 10am!"

Jason Victor Serinus

Adams Takes the Violin Up, Down, Around, and Through

Jason Victor Serinus Jun 20, 2018

Twenty-five years after the premiere of John Adams' Violin Concerto, the music remains as vital, exhilarating, and strangely moving as the day it was birthed. An extremely demanding work, its three contrasting movements present a triathlon challenge of sorts to anyone who dares try to play them.

Here, she who rises to the challenge is violinist Leila Josefowicz. Provocatively pictured on the CD cover as a curious cross between an athlete in repose and Rodin's reflective thinker...

Art Dudley Listening Powerline Accessory Reviews

Listening #187: Shindo Mr. T

Art Dudley Jun 19, 2018

In the rural home in Cherry Valley, NY that my family and I inhabited from 2003 to 2017, we had dirty water but clean electricity. Evidence of the latter was seen in the results of tests performed by a technician from the local utility, National GridI told him I intended to do commercial sound recording on site, which was close enough to the truth that I considered my sin venal rather than mortaland heard in the sound of my playback system, which rejected as superfluous or worse all of the AC-conditioning products I tried there.

Music and Recording Features

Highway 61 Revisited

Jim Austin Jun 19, 2018

Photos: Jim Austin

I'm sitting in a rented Nissan just off Highway 61yes, that Highway 61looking out at a Shell station through the bug-stained windshield and across a litter-strewn, not-yet-planted cotton field. It's late March, and I've just left Clarksdale, Mississippi, on my way to Memphis. Leaving Clarksdale made me thoughtful, so I've pulled over to jot down a few notes.

Jason Victor Serinus

Kjell Tore Innervik: Utopias

Jason Victor Serinus Jun 18, 2018

If the two works on this recording, Xenakis's Psappha (1975) and Feldman's The King of Denmark (1964), aren't exactly new, their construction and sound are radical in the extreme.

Floor Loudspeaker Reviews

Wilson Audio Specialties Alexia Series 2 loudspeaker

John Atkinson Jun 14, 2018

One of the benefits of being a reviewer is that, of the large number of products that pass through my listening room, occasionally there are those that I really would like to see take up more permanent residence. One of these was Wilson Audio Specialties' Alexia loudspeaker, which I reviewed in December 2013. "Its clarity, its uncolored, full-range balance, its flexibility in setup and optimization, and most of all its sheer musicality, are, if not unrivaled, rare," I wrote, and concluded: "If I were to retire tomorrow, the Wilson Alexia would be the speaker I would buy to provide the musical accompaniment to that retirement." Nothing I subsequently heard disabused me of that dream, though a couple of other speakers, in particular Vivid Audio's Giya G3 and KEF's Blade Two, joined the Alexia on my bucket list.

Solid State Power Amp Reviews

AkitikA GT-102 power amplifier

Herb Reichert Jun 14, 2018

An e-mail from an old audiophile pal: "Herb, my buddy owns a recording studio, and he told me one of his $10k reference amplifiers stopped working and the manufacturer said it would take months to be repaired. So he went online and bought this 60W AkitikA solid-state amplifier to use while his big amp was being repaired. The trouble is, the kit cost only $314. (The studio guy bought his assembled and tested for $488.) Now, he likes the AkitikA more than his broke-down reference amp."

As We See It

The Sound and the Image

Jim Austin Jun 12, 2018

It's not surprising that many people, like me, love nice cameras and good stereo gear. In my worse moments, I attribute this to mere consumerism: We love expensive stuff and the thrill of buying something new, whether for reproducing music or creating visual images. In my better moments, it's clear to me that there's more than that to this common taste for audio and photography, and more to the hobby of so-called perfectionist audio.

Recording of the Month

Recording of July 2018: Life Of

Jon Iverson Jun 12, 2018

Steve Tibbetts: Life Of
Steve Tibbetts, 12-string guitar, piano; Michelle Kinney, cello, drones; Marc Anderson, percussion, handpan
ECM 2599 (CD). 2018. An ECM production; Steve Tibbetts, eng.; Greg Reierson, eng., mastering. DDD. TT: 50:40
Performance *****
Sonics *****

The sound of Steve Tibbetts's guitar music is uniqueone need hear only a measure or two of his new album to identify the distinct tang of his playing. Common wisdom is that a guitarist's sound is in the hands and fingers, but Tibbetts has another trick: his weathered, 50-year-old Martin D12-20 12-string acoustic guitar.