Description: RCA-terminated interconnect cable.
Serial numbers of units reviewed: NA.
Price: $1190/1m pair; upgrade from Au24e to Au24 SE, $220/1m pair. Approximate number of US dealers: 110.
Manufacturer: Audience, LLC, 120 N. Pacific Street #K9, San Marcos, CA 92069. Tel: (800) 565-4390. Fax: (760) 471-0282. Web: www.audience-av.com.
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Sidebar 1: Specifications
Sidebar 2: Review System
Analog Sources: Spiral Groove SG-2 turntable & Centroid tonearm, Lyra Titan i cartridge; VPI TNT HR-X turntable & tonearm, Grado Statement Reference cartridge.
Digital Source: Primare CD31 CD player.
Preamplification: Sutherland Engineering Phono Blocks & Duo phono stages; Simaudio Moon Evolution 850P line preamplifier
; Sutherland Engineering Line Blocks, Placette Active line stages.
Power Amplifiers: Simaudio Moon Evolution 880M, VTL Ichiban, Mark Levinson No.20.6 (all monoblocks).
Loudspeakers: Wilson Audio Specialties Sophia 2.…
Christmas music, you either love it or despise it. If you're all about the love then it’s all about tracks, or collections of tracks and for me, of all the Christmas tunes, one has always stood high above the rest: the great Donny Hathaway’s 1970 single, “This Christmas.”
That tune is included on Donny Hathaway, Never My Love: The Anthology a new CD collection from Rhino Records. While this collection is not available yet as a high resolution download, HD Tracks does have a 192kHz/24-bit version of Hathaway’s superb Live record (also included in Never My Love) which is arguably the best…
In a marked reversal of brick and mortar decline, Tone of Music Audio became the second high-end audio retailer to open its doors in San Francisco within the last year or so. Ideally situated in the heart of trendy Noe Valley, at the busy intersection of Castro and 24th Streets, the store's combination of major brands and personable service bodes well for the future of "high-performance" audio in Northern California.
When Tim Nguyen (above) decided to take the step up from in-home retailer to storefront proprietorship, he attracted a host of impressive designers and manufacturers. Thus…
Party like a rock star!
Or not.
Damned rock stars! Those useless black voids of overweening ego who spend their days wallowing in unfulfilling, sybaritic cycles of mass adoration, endless wealth, and meaningless sex with hard bodies—what do they add to the greater good, to the advancement of human understanding, to the furtherance of art? In most cases, the answer is: Nothing. Zip, zilch, zot.
Yet on a back street in Nashville, Tennessee, in a former warehouse and auto-repair garage, Jack White, of the White Stripes, has, with his Third Man Records complex, fostered a…
"After washing and drying the discs, then I will select the proper stylus. In most instances it's a 3.5mm, so I can ride above the noise. From that stage it goes into my McIntosh C20 tube preamp, where I will fix the RIAA levels so I get the maximum body and depth, because those things are pretty thin, particularly the acoustic Paramounts—they were very thin, and sort of honky and tinny sounding. So I am trying to get rid of those things, and I try to uncover the natural warmth that was there in the studio. Then it goes to a Manley Massive Passive, where I can add a little bit more warmth…
Various Artists: The Rise & Fall of Paramount Records 1917–1927, Volume One
Third Man/Revenant (6 LPs, USB drive). 1917–27/2013. Alex van der Tuuk, Jack White, Dean Blackwood, prods.; Christopher C. King, David Glasser, Anna Frick, remastering. A–D. TT: 4:12:39 (LPs only)
Performance *****
Sonics Historical
Third Man/Revenant (6 LPs, USB drive). 1917–27/2013. Alex van der Tuuk, Jack White, Dean Blackwood, prods.; Christopher C. King, David Glasser, Anna Frick, remastering. A–D. TT: 4:12:39 (LPs only)
Performance *****
Sonics Historical
Launched in 1917, Paramount Records initially recorded conventional pop music, such as Arthur Fields's "Good Morning, Mr. Zip, Zip, Zip." But with the hiring of J. Mayo Williams as a talent scout and producer in 1924, Paramount became one of the leading suppliers of "…
It's no secret that the high-end audio industry has done a poor job of reestablishing the mainstream respect it enjoyed through the latter half of the 20th century, but its lack of reach has never been as painfully obvious as it is today. Teens are inextricably tied to smartphones, moms and dads are infatuated with Bluetooth streaming, and most people would rather pay too much for an MP3 than anything at all for a DSD download. In a world dominated by fancy gadgets and intriguing technologies, the pursuit of true high-fidelity sound remains an obscure pastime for a relatively small group of…
As I discuss in this issue's "As We See It," a handful of audio companies have recently turned to the crowdfunding website Kickstarter to launch and promote new products. The most notable of these is Light Harmonic. The Sacramento, California–based electronics maker first caused a stir at the 2011 Axpona show with the release of its impressive Da Vinci DAC ($20,000), one of the few home audio converters capable of handling the 384kHz sampling rate.
Light Harmonic again made waves at the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show, when it introduced the even more ambitious Da Vinci Dual DAC ($31,000…
Gavin Fish hopes so. "For every backer who asks, 'How will Geek Out sound with my Audeze LCD-3s?,' there are five who ask, 'Will this make my Beats sound better?'"
Can other high-end audio manufacturers use Kickstarter to successfully promote their products and raise awareness of the industry?
"Yes," said Fish. "It has to be used as it was intended, though. If a bunch of other companies see the success of our campaign and think they can get a quick couple hundred grand by starting a campaign of their own, I think they'll fail. But if those same companies put the same thought,…