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Dan Wright of ModWright Instruments Inc., partnered with Cardas Audio, Acora Acoustics, and Woodsong Audio to bring his new compact, affordable 9-series products, which are "based on our Reference Designs," Wright told me in a preshow email.

The ModWright room featured a SOTA Cosmos Eclipse turntable ($10,500) with an SME V tonearm ($5500) and an Ortofon Winfeld Ti MC cartridge ($5999) as well as a prototype ModWright step-up transformer ($2000), ModWright Analog Bridge ($3900), ModWright PH 9.0XT phono stage (featuring two 6C45 and two 6922 tubes: $5250), and a Weiss DAC ($3495…

Japan’s Technical Audio Devices Laboratories, Inc. (TAD) brought several products to CAF, including the US debut of the TAD Grand Evolution One (GE1) floor-standing speakers ($65,000/pair) and new TAD C1000 preamplifier ($24,950). Also in Room 651—hosted by Professional Audio Design (PAD)—were the TAD TAD-D1000MK2 disc player ($21,000), TAD-DA1000TX DAC ($15,900), and, driving the GE-1s, a pair of TAD TAD-M700 monoblocks. Synergistic Research supplied cables, including SR30 Speaker Cables $499/pair); other Synergistic products included the aPowercell SX ($8995), Synergistic Research Black…

Back in 2011 Art Dudley named the original Ampeggio a Stereophile Product of the Year, so this room held special meaning for industry folk and civilians who cherished Art's unique writing, big ears, and generous humanity of spirit.

The original Ampeggio awarded by Art was three times as expensive; the cost has been greatly reduced due to Voxativ's…

We all have at least one cherished album that takes us back to the exact time and place we first heard it. Whenever we hear any of the music from that special album—regardless of whether it occurs months, years, or even decades later, of whether we hear it in the grocery store, on a car radio, or on a friend's playlist—we instantly reconnect with the feelings the music originally evoked within us.

We audiophiles may even get nostalgic about the format we first spun that album on and the equipment we played it through most often. And then we might wonder, "Do I…

I never thought I'd see these two interests—women's undergarments and hi-fi—converge, until I started researching this review of the $4500 Audeze LCD-5 headphones, the company's current flagship.

Sometime in the middle of the previous decade, Audeze was seeking a better way to make…

M.I.A.'s mashup of global influences, styles, and rhythms came together on her debut Arular (CD, Interscope/XL Recordings B0004844-02), which sprung to life in 2005 full of flavor and color. I cued up "Sunshowers," a single released ahead of this studio album, which was derived from "Sunshower" by Dr. Buzzard's Original Savannah Band, cofounded by Kid Creole. A distant, high-pitched hand drum precedes the vocals. Driven by the LTA, the LCD-5 provided a tactile rendering of that drum's skin, its sense of boingy bounce and its timbral variations. As the catchy, punchy tune bubbles over…

Description: over-ear, open-back, planar-magnetic headphones. Transducer size: 90mm. Impedance: 14 ohms. Sensitivity: 90dB/mW, measured at Drum Reference Point. Frequency range: 5Hz–50kHz. THD: <0.1% @ 100dB. Maximum power handling: 5W. Minimum power: 100mW. Recommended power: 250mW. Maximum SPL: >130dB.
Weight: 0.926lb (420gm).
Serial number of unit reviewed: 5-2029. Designed and manufactured in California.
Price: $4500. Approximate number of US dealers: 156, also sold online. Warranty: three years for drivers, one year for everything else.…

Analog sources: Clearaudio Performance DC Wood turntable with Tracer tonearm and Talismann v2 MC cartridge; MoFi Electronics UltraDeck turntable with tonearm and UltraTracker MM cartridge and weight. MoFi Electronics StudioPhono phono pre.
Digital sources: MBL N31 DAC/CD player, MacBook Air (M1, 2020) as Roon Server, Mytek HPA AAA Liberty DAC.
Amplification: Original Mytek Brooklyn Bridge, Linear Tube Audio (LTA) Z10E. PS Audio Sprout100.
Cables: Analog interconnects: Ansuz Acoustics Signalz D2; Morrow Audio MA-3 and MA-6. Digital interconnect (…

Dominating the front panel are an LED bargraph, which displays output power calculated from voltage, and a digital power meter that shows actual output power. I did as Inokuma suggested and watched the output power at my normal listening levels. It rarely exceeded 62.5W, the power at which the amplifier switches from class-A to class-AB with a nominal 4 ohm load like the Wilson Alexia V.

Beneath the meters is a Standby/On button. When you turn the amplifier on, the outputs mute for about five seconds to allow the circuit time to stabilize. The power button is framed by a panel-…