Needle Doctor AudioEngine 5+ Speakers Sweepstakes

Needle Doctor AudioEngine 5+ Speakers Sweepstakes

Register to win a pair of AudioEngine 5+ Speakers (MSRP $399.00) from Needle Doctor we are giving away.

According to the company:

"Audioengine continues to manufacture powered speakers that are among the best you’ll find for the money. They’re a very focused company, and for that, we’re lucky. With resources pouring into a relatively centralized field, Audioengine is able to dream of and produce poignant products that entirely meet the needs of many listeners."

[This Sweepstakes is now closed.]

Boulder Amplifiers Debut at Denver's Soundings, Thursday

Boulder Amplifiers Debut at Denver's Soundings, Thursday

Soundings Fine Audio Video are having an open house Thursday, December 4, from 6 to 9pm, celebrating the Colorado debut of Boulder's 3060 and 2160 stereo amplifiers and the 2110 preamplifier. Representatives from Soundings and Boulder Amplifiers will be on hand to demonstrate and talk about these new products and to answer questions you may have about them. Adult beverages will be served alongside fine food provided by Great Northern Tavern. Click here for more details.

Frank Kimbrough, Quartet

Frank Kimbrough, Quartet

Frank Kimbrough is a protean artist; his voices are myriad, adaptable to the occasion, as a musician, bandleader, sideman, and composer. His new CD, Quartet (on the Palmetto label), is his first album as the leader of a foursome. (The other albums under his name have been solos, duets, or trios), and it's among his most inventive.

Musical Surroundings Goes Nuts in the Northwest

Musical Surroundings Goes Nuts in the Northwest

Musical Surroundings' Jesse Luna (left) and Garth Leerer (right) flank Nuts About HiFi's Jim Lee.

If that title hasn't gotten your attention, nothing will . . . except, perhaps, the Northwest preview of: 1) the forthcoming Aesthetix Metis linestage preamplifier (est. price $20,000–$25,000), which is expected by the second quarter of 2015; 2) Clearaudio Concept Wood turntable with tonearm ($2200); and 3) DS Audio DS-W1 "Nightrider" Optical phono cartridge with dedicated phono equalizer ($8500). This tempting trio of coming outs, arranged by Garth Leerer and Jesse Luna of Oakland, CA-based distributor Musical Surroundings, took place at Nuts About HiFi, a Seattle-area high-end emporium that celebrated its Silver Anniversary in Silverdale, WA on November 30, 2014.

Ayre Acoustics KX-R Twenty line preamplifier

Ayre Acoustics KX-R Twenty line preamplifier

The experience left me doubting my ears. After I'd performed all the measurements of Ayre Acoustics' KX-R preamplifier ($18,500) to accompany Wes Phillips's review in our November 2008 issue, I spent a weekend listening to it. To my astonishment, the sound of my system with a Transporter D/A processor feeding the preamplifier was better than when the DAC fed the power amplifier directly. Through the KX-R, images sounded more tangible, and the sound was better focused, despite the signal's having been passed through not just another set of interconnects but also through the preamp's input and output socketry, switches, a volume control, printed circuit-board traces, and active and passive parts. Logically, you'd think that having nothing in the signal path would have less of a degrading effect than so many somethings. But no, that was not what I heard, much as I would have preferred otherwise.
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