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Happy New Year! The January 2012 issue of Stereophile is now on newsstands. In this issue, you’ll find in-depth reviews of loudspeakers from TAD, Sonus Faber, Nola, and Dynaudio; amplification components from Sutherland, Fi, and Anthem; D/A processors from Weiss, Bel Canto, dCS, and Musical Fidelity; power conditioning from Audience, AudioQuest, and Shunyata; and CD players from Emotiva and Sony.

In “As We See It,” Bob Deutsch offers five ways to determine whether a “tweak” is worth our time and money. In “Letters,” readers tell us why they listen, and offer memories of audio…

If you're an audiophile, you've read that Chad Kassem, proprietor of Acoustic Sounds, in Salina, Kansas, has bought the finest vinyl-pressing equipment, hired some of the hottest engineers to modify and operate it, and come up with a new line of LPs called QRP, for Quality Records Pressings.

One of his first QRP products is a 45rpm, 200-gram pressing of Ella & Louis. If you're a jazz-following…

My audio system has evolved somewhat since I described it in "A Matter of Taste" (Vol.12 No.6). The analog front end consists of a Linn LP12, now with Lingo power supply, Ittok, AudioQuest AQ 7000 replacing the Talisman S, and a Bryston TF-1 stepup. Digital source is a Philips CD650 (internally damped and otherwise messed-around-with), now feeding an Aragon D2A via MAS masTER LINK digital interconnect.

My PV5 has been re-tubed; the phono-stage tubes have AudioQuest tube dampers on them; the balance pot and mode switch have been bypassed, and the unused…

Fig.1 shows the PV11's frequency response. The top curve (which becomes the lower curve below about 75Hz) shows the phono RIAA response taken from the tape outputs. Note the expanded scale. The RIAA EQ is accurate to within ±0.2dB from about 28Hz to 42kHz. The rise in the phono response above 1kHz may be audible as a slight brightening of the sound, but at less than 0.2dB it is insignificant when mated with the response of any phono cartridge that I know of. The same may be said of the small rolloff in the bass. Both channels are shown (solid and dotted lines),…

Description: Tube preamplifier: Frequency range: 2Hz to more than 100kHz, RIAA equalization ±0.25dB (20Hz–20kHz). Distortion: THD less than 0.15%, IMD less than 0.15%. Gain: phono stage, 47dB, high-level, 18dB. Phono overload: 200mV at 1kHz. Hum and noise: phono stage, –78dB ref. 10mV input; line stage, –92dB ref. 2.5V output. Maximum output: 20V. Output impedance: less than 500 ohms. Absolute polarity: line stage inverts polarity of all inputs.
Dimensions: 19" W by 3.5" H by 12.5" D. Weight: 13 lbs.
Prices: $1895, $1495 for Model PV11-Line (line-stage…

There are a few white men in American music—Delbert McClinton, Jerry Jeff Walker, John Fogarty, Van Morrison, Joe Ely, and Steve Earle all come to mind—whose music is consistently true, believable, honorable, and unpretentious. Ry Cooder has been one of those names since his solo debut in 1970; with Bring the Family, John Hiatt's must now be added to the list.

Bring the Family is…

They only come out at night. Or when recession, wars, and gridlock rule. On Bad As Me, Tom Waits's first record of new material since 2004's Real Gone, things having gone bad all over gives his uniquely American narratives a fresh resonance: "Well we bailed out all the millionaires / they got the fruit, we got the rind / and everybody's talking at the same time / everybody's…

The first such product to create a controversy among audiophiles was the Tice Clock, an…