search

Our review samples of Doshi Audio's Monoblock V3.0 amplifier were well traveled, having been shown at the Rocky Mountain Audio Fest in Denver in 2017, and at AXPONA and Munich High End in 2018, before making their way to Washington and Jason Victor Serinus. Unfortunately, they then didn't survive their transcontinental trip from Jason's place to mine at the hands of UPS. Although the boxes seemed undamaged, they must have been dropped at some point: neither amp worked. Fortunately, Nick Doshi was able to drive up from Virginia to Brooklyn at short notice to repair…

Once you hear the vitality and exuberance of these performances and the recording's exceptionally clear, full, natural, colorful, high-resolution sound, you'll understand why the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin followed up its 1998 digital foray into the Brandenburgs with this rerecording. "Make a…

KEF LS50 Meta loudspeaker
There is no such animal as a "perfect loudspeaker." But within its limitations of limited maximum loudness—the LS50 Meta will work best in small or medium-sized rooms—and limited low-frequency extension (the reflex port is tuned to 51Hz), this immaculately finished minimonitor offers an almost complete absence of midrange coloration, a musically satisfying balance, and what I described in my review as a palpable "reach-out-and-touch" soundstage.

All this for just $1500/pair! Affordable almost perfection.—John Atkinson

Only sensibilities trained on poetry can wholly appreciate it.—T.S. Eliot (writing about Djuna Barnes's Nightwood)

In the 17th century, steam engines began appearing throughout Europe and Asia, ushered into existence by any number of different inventors. More recently, multiple inventors conceived and cooked up the atomic bomb, the jet engine, and the solid-body electric guitar. Virtually every race of Homo sapiens has invented the bow and arrow, and people on at least three different continents invented…

At AXPONA 2023, I saw teenage besties cruising rooms together. I saw fashion-conscious 20-somethings listening in sweet spots, and young parents with younger children. Yeah, there were a few gray boomers like me, but only a couple were wearing Hawaiian shirts. AXPONA 2023 vibed like a tribal conference at a sacred pilgrimage site, and I've never enjoyed an audio show this much before.

I attended…

This is a two-CD distillation of Dion DiMucci's 1960s stint with Columbia Records, a period in which the early rock'n'roll superstar's career was largely sidelined by the tides of musical fashion, as well as the effects of his longstanding heroin addiction. The 35 tracks include a few token early-'60s hits and a pair of worthy if incongruous tracks from the '90s…

There was nothing equivocal in my August 2021 review of the Accuphase DG-68 Digital Voicing Equalizer ($24,000). Calling it "among the most enlightening and consequential" audio products I've spent time with, I affirmed that it "enriched my experience of reproduced music far more than I could have imagined." I found it a transformational product that performed "flawlessly, to oft-astounding effect."

For better or worse, forces cosmic and otherwise left insufficient time to explore all the DG-68's…

I performed a full set of measurements on one of the Accustic Arts Mono IIs, S/N M2-1JB1258, using my Audio Precision SYS2722 system (see the January 2008 "As We See It"). I repeated some of the tests on S/N 1259, the sample that Jason Victor Serinus found had developed a hum toward the end of his auditioning. Before doing any testing, I preconditioned the first sample of the Mono II by running it at one-third power into 8 ohms for an hour. At the end of that time the side-mounted heatsinks were hot, at 120.6°F (49.3°C). The top panel was also hot, at 104.1°F (40.…

XVX rumors,…