Hegel H150 Integrated Amplifier Officially Announced
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
Sponsored: Symphonia Colors

LATEST ADDITIONS

Jim Anderson: The Educated Ear

Tune those young ears, Mr. Anderson! After a 30-year career in audio engineering that's seen his name appear in the credits of over 1700 albums, Jim Anderson, who won the 2013 Grammy for Best Surround Sound Album, for his remastering of Patricia Barber's Modern Cool, thinks education is the key to stemming the tide of degraded sound that threatens to swallow the recorded-music industry. Anderson, who's taught for a decade in New York University's Clive Davis Department of Recorded Music, starts his students early.
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Too Many Audio Shows?

In the wrap-up of his coverage of the 2013 Salon Son & Image show in Montreal, which took place at the end of March, Robert Deutsch asked if there were too many audio shows. The Chicago AXPONA show was held two weeks before SSI, the second New York Audio Show followed less than three weeks later. In May, there was the humongous High End 2013, in Munich, followed two weeks later by the third T.H.E. Show Newport Beach, followed by: the Capital AudioFest, in Washington, DC (July 26–28); the fourth California Audio Show, in the Bay Area (August 8–11); the tenth Rocky Mountain Audio Fest (October 11–13); and TAVES in Toronto (November 1–3).

While this is no more shows than took place in 2011 or 2012, many exhibitors, manufacturers and distributors alike, to whom I talked at the spring events felt that the high-end audio industry is suffering from an overload of audio shows.

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Recording of July 2013: Rumba de la Isla

Pedrito Martinez: Rumba de la Isla
Pedrito Martinez, vocals, congas, chekere, cowbell; Niño Josele, guitar, clapping; Alfredo de la Fé, electric violin; John Benítez, acoustic & electric bass; Pirana, cajón, clapping; Román Díaz, batas, cajón, spoons, vocals; Xiomara "La Voz" Laugart, Abraham Rodríguez, backing vocals
Calle 54/Sony Masterworks 8876 540607 2 (CD). 2013. Nat Chediak, Fernando Trueba, prods.; Jim Anderson, eng. DAD? TT: 50:20
Performance ****½
Sonics *****

Cross-cultural mashups are all the rage. There's the BlueBrass mix of New Orleans brass band and bluegrass, reviewed in this issue. The Border Music project mixes David Hidalgo's Norteño/East L.A. rock with Marc Ribot's downtown New York jazz. Here, conguero Pedrito Martinez, born in Cuba but based in New York City, successfully crosses Afro-Cuban rumba with Andalusian flamenco to celebrate the work of flamenco composer and singer Camarón de la Isla. Born José Monje Cruz, de la Isla is probably best known outside Spain for his collaborations with guitarist Paco de Lucía; together they made nine records, and toured extensively throughout the 1970s. De la Isla died in 1992 at the age of 41.

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Website Maintenance

Our corporate IT department has informed us that they will be performing some server and network upgrades in the production data center today (June 22). Starting at 3:00PM Eastern (12:00PM Pacific) this website will be offline for several hours. Our apologies for any inconvenience.
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Monitor Audio Airstream WS100 Sweepstakes

Register to win a set of Monitor Audio Airstream WS100 speakers (MSRP $399.00) we are giving away.

According to the company:

If you're one of the millions who store and play music from a desktop or laptop, Monitor Audio has designed the WS100 wireless audio system with you in mind. It comprises a pair of stylish cube speakers with amps and wireless receiver on-board. The matching, compact monitors, just 5" in dimension, are precision engineered to deliver clean wideband lossless audio from any computer in seconds. Simply position the speakers, plug-in the USB transmitter and play CD quality sound wire-free.

[This Sweepstakes is now closed.]

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Jade Design Acquires Bob Carver, LLC

The Bob Carver Black Beauty monoblock power amplifier will continue to be made in the US; Jade Design only plans to make it, and other Carver products, more accessible to more people.

When I visited Jade Design in Franklin, TN, last December, Jade’s president, Dan Laufman, hinted that his company was on the verge of making a major acquisition. Today, Jade Design, parent company of Emotiva, Emotiva Pro, and Sherbourn, has completed the acquisition of tube amp manufacturer Bob Carver, LLC.

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The Entry Level #30

A small subset of audiophiles (always men—the especially old and joyless ones, I suspect) are sick of reading about my adventures in domesticity: They've been there, done that, and managed to do it far better than I. Good for them. Really, I'm glad they're so wise, mature, and experienced that they would spend their free time pounding out frenzied letters to the editor, caps firmly locked, disparaging my taste in music, my relationships with women, my choice of loudspeaker.
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