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Stereophile's enduringly healthy circulation suggests widespread support for the multiplicity of voices in our pages, and virtually every month that notion is confirmed by letters from our readers. Most of our reviewers have their fans and their detractors, and although it's been a long time since I've seen a letter demanding the head of this or that reviewer, we still occasionally hear from readers who want us to know they trust Herb or John or me or Mikey or Kal or someone else above all others.
A conversation with Magico founder Alon Wolf can feel like stepping onto a moving walkway; it's best to find your balance early. Over the course of a spirited five-hour conversation at the company's impressive production facility in Hayward, California (footnote 1), Wolf questioned my choice of gear. Twice. "You should pick what you like of course," he said of a pair of speakers I'd been using as references. "But why?" I laughed, entertained by his cheek.
Hours later, as he piloted his Porsche across the San Mateo Bridge toward a sushi restaurant in downtown San Francisco, I mentioned a…
John Atkinson wrote about the Audio Research Reference 6SE in August 2021 (Vol.44 No.8):
Jason Victor Serinus's first impressions of this $17,000 tubed preamplifier (footnote 1) in Stereophile's November 2020 issue were very positive: "Am I really getting paid to do this?," he wrote, calling it "some of the most polished, transparent, and arresting sound I'd heard from my system." But as his auditioning resumed after a break of a few days, he discovered that the REF 6SE sounded very different than it had a few days earlier. "Much of the tonal beauty that had momentarily caused me to hold…
Photo: Jason Victor Serinus
Exactly what did Bob Stuart (above) say at that press event earlier this month at the Rocky Mountain Audio Fest (RMAF)? Stuart—CEO of the company MQA, short for Master Quality Authenticated—made an announcement about the Warner Music Group's (WMG's) transcoding of their catalog into MQA format, a project announced last May.
But what exactly did he say? I didn't attend RMAF and accounts I found in the audiophile press were incomplete and contradictory. Is WMG finished with the project? Has the catalog been converted? All of it or just some? What exactly…
Sidebar 3: Measurements
With Jason Victor Serinus's listening room 2900 miles from my home, measuring the Wilson Alexia V presented potential logistical problems. Fortunately, Elliot Fishkin of Manhattan audio retailer Innovative Audio was amenable to my measuring the Alexia Vs that had just been installed in one of their listening rooms. (Thanks, Elliot.)
As I was traveling from Brooklyn to Innovative on the New York subway, I used the Fuzzmeasure app installed on my Mac mini for the acoustic measurements rather than the bulky 1997-vintage PC that I use with DRA Labs' MLSSA…
Editors' Choice Awards
Parasound JCA100 Tribute monoblock power amplifier
I reviewed some impressive-sounding products in this year's qualifying issues—the Weiss Helios D/A processor, the Bowers & Wilkins 805 D4 Signature, and GoldenEar T66 loudspeakers come to mind—but when it came down to the deadline, I had no hesitation in naming Parasound's JCA100 Tribute monoblock amplifier as my Editor's Choice. Intended to honor legendary engineer John Curl, who has been Parasound's amplifier designer for decades, each JCA100 starts life as a Parasound Halo JC 1+, which is then…
Oh, the sound!
When the time finally came to write this section—the part of the review that, if you're like me, you may have eagerly jumped to after the introduction—I looked at my notes and was a bit aghast. How was it possible that after weeks of listening in both the UK and at home, I only had two pages of notes?
Only once before had I experienced something like this. In 2024, shortly before the start of High End Munich, I sat in row 6 of Vienna's acoustically fabled Musikverein as Riccardo Muti conducted the Vienna Philharmonic in the 200th anniversary performance of…
Having fun at Music Matters 13: Peter McGrath (Wilson), Josh Clark (Transparent Cable), and Stereophile's Jason Victor Serinus (photo, Peter McGrath).
Hailed as the finest public audio retailer event in the United States, Definitive Audio's 13th annual Music Matters event on March 8 drew a huge crowd to the store's Seattle location. Having now covered four Music Matters, I can state with certainty that the sound at MM13 surpassed that heard on previous occasions, and showcased equipment in the best possible light.
Everything looked ready as music lovers entered the 4-hour event as…
John Atkinson reviewed the Aqua Formula xHD in December 2018 (Vol.41 No.12):
Jason Victor Serinus reviewed this non-oversampling (NOS) digital-to-analog converter from AQ Technologies, aka Aqua Acoustic Quality, in June 2018. The Formula xHD, which costs $17,000, has no chips or digital filters, instead using a 24-bit, four-branch, resistor-to-resistor (R2R) ladder based on field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). When JVS listened to a recording of Vadim Gluzman performing the Brahms Violin Concerto, with the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra under James Gaffigan (SACD/CD, BIS 2172), he found…
Select some music and, while it is playing, download and install Dirac Live. Start the Dirac Live program, and it opens with a big Dirac Live 3 logo (yeah, I know). The software then verifies your Dirac account (with account information you provided at purchase) and scans the system for your Dirac Processor. Click on it—most users will have only one—and proceed to the subsequent menu options.
Select Recording Device: Select a microphone and load its correction file. Any USB measurement mike will do as long as it comes with a correction curve file, preferably for a vertical (90°)…