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From Reference Recordings, we can count on pellucid sonics, including here. You can "hear through" the textures even in the most violent tuttis, with no trace of congestion. In the finale's "recitatives," the divided low strings are wonderfully enveloping. The Adagio's airy woodwind chorales are almost tangible.

After decades of increasingly weighty…

According to the company:

"The legendary London (Decca) cartridge is known for its extraordinary and unmatched musicality, delivered by its unique transducer design.

With a StylusTimer (2021 Stereophile Recommended Component) you can track cartridge break in-time, total stylus time, and the time you spend enjoying music, while preserving your system’s sound quality and protecting your records from damage from a worn stylus."

Click…

In its sixth year, International Anthem seriously stepped up production. 2020 saw the Chicago label releasing a fast succession of rewarding albums, including a standout disc by Tortoise guitarist Jeff Parker and adventurous jazz by Rob Mazurek and the collective Irreversible Entanglements. Within that flurry of activity, the small operation drew a fine line…

Others, though, may still balk at the suggestion that this skinny…

Description: Class-D stereo/mono power amplifier. Inputs: 1 balanced (XLR), 1 single-ended (RCA), DC trigger. Outputs: 2 pair five-way binding posts. Output power (1kHz, 1% THD): Mono: 625W into 8 ohms (28.0dBW), 420W into 4 ohms (23.2dBW); stereo: 210W into 8 ohms (23.2dBW), 325W into 4 ohms (22.1dBW). Frequency response: 5Hz–20kHz, ±0.2dB. Voltage gain (low/ high): mono, 18dB/24dB; stereo, 24dB/30dB. Input impedance: single-ended, 12k ohms; balanced, 19k ohms. THD: <0.003% (1kHz, 1W, 8 ohms); <0.1% (1kHz, 300W, 4 ohms). Signal/noise: >94dB ref. 1kHz…

Digital sources: dCS Rossini SACD/CD transport, Rossini DAC, and Rossini Clock, and Network Bridge; Synology 5-bay DS1019+ NAS; Roon Nucleus+ music server, Uptone Audio etherRegen, Small Green Computer Sonore opticalModule, TP-Link gigabit Ethernet media converters (2) with multimode duplex fiber optic cables, Linksys routers (2), and Arris modem, all powered by 300W (3) four-component linear power supplies; external hard drives, SSD USB sticks, iPad Pro; 2017 Macbook Pro computer with 2.8 GHz Intel i7, SSD, 16GB RAM.
Preamplifier: Dan D'Agostino…

Although the ELAC Alchemy DPA-2 is a stereo amplifier, Jason Victor Serinus auditioned it as a pair of monoblocks. (In mono mode, the signal is fed to either input and the output taken from the left channel's red binding post and the right channel's black binding post.) I therefore performed a complete set of measurements with a DPA-2 in mono mode then repeated some of the tests in stereo mode. As the DPA-2 has an output stage operating in class-D, I inserted an Audio Precision auxiliary AUX-0025 passive low-pass filter between the test load and my Audio Precision…

For most of their history, audio servers were public things, providing entertainment in bars, diners, and pubs. Fast-forward decades to not long after the CD's introduction when CD servers appeared that could hold three, five, or 100 Compact Discs. They quickly became cheap and…

Founded in the City of Lights, Focal has been around since 1979, the year Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now received the Palme d'Or at Cannes and when the average annual income in America was $17,500. Focal started as a twinkle in the eye of engineer and technology journalist Jacques Mahul, who believed he'd built a…