According to Sierra Sound, this distribution agreement marks the arrival of an entirely original design. Connected Fidelity—as stated on its website and in related materials—focuses its engineering on addressing various elements of resonance control and isolation in audio…
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A new UK-manufactured turntable line has appeared and it is set to reach listeners in the United States through Sierra Sound. The product is known as the TT-Hub, developed by Connected Fidelity, a company led by industry figure Michael Osborn, who has experience in acoustic isolation and high-end audio product design.
High-end audio product launches are often modest affairs. The unveiling, on December 5, 2024, of the Oneiros Audio loudspeaker ($650,000/pair) was an exception. A collaborative effort by Fidelis Distribution, Nexus Audio Technologies, and Sohmer Associates, the event, which occurred at the legendary Power Station recording studio in NYC's Hell's Kitchen, apparently spared no expense.
The evening’s spectacle was a live, mostly acoustic recording session by Living Colour, captured by legendary producer Ron Saint Germain (Michael Jackson, Jimi Hendrix, Kraftwerk, McCoy Tyner) on one of the…
While there haven't been any follow-up reviews in recent issues of Stereophile, the January 2025 issue features further coverage of two one-box solutions that were reviewed in 2024—the Hegel 400 streaming integrated amplifier and the T+A R 2500 R multi-source receiver. All the user needs to do to create a complete audio system is to couple one of these products with a pair of passive loudspeakers.
Tom Fine reviewed both the T+A and the Hegel. In his follow-up on the Hegel, he auditions the now Roon-Ready H400 and compares the Roon metadata experience with that of Hegel's own app.
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After John Atkinson joined Hi-Fi News & Record Review magazine in 1976, he appeared on two covers, in January 1977 and January 1981.
As Jim Austin wrote in this space in the December 2024 issue, following a medical procedure that he had in mid-October, he needed to take several weeks' leave to recuperate. He delegated the magazine's production to Managing Editor Mark Henninger, AVTech Editorial Director Paul Miller, and myself. The three of us worked with copy editor Linda Felaco and longtime art director Jeremy Moyler to produce the issue you hold in your hands.
As readers…
Mari Kodama: Bruckner Piano Works
Mari Kodama, piano
Pentatone PTC 5187 224 (reviewed as 24/192 WAV, also CD). 2024. Erdo Groot, prod., eng.; Shunsuke Yokoyama, piano technician.
Performance *****
Sonics ****½
Mari Kodama, piano
Pentatone PTC 5187 224 (reviewed as 24/192 WAV, also CD). 2024. Erdo Groot, prod., eng.; Shunsuke Yokoyama, piano technician.
Performance *****
Sonics ****½
Music history, like all human history, is filled with nooks and crannies—digressions from the main course of events. Take Anton Bruckner for example. The global concert hall calendars are filled with performances of his symphonies and some of his choral works. New recordings of these pieces are frequently released. How many of you have ever heard a performance, or…
Taste is a funny thing. Love cilantro? Millions swear it tastes like soap. Similarly, design cognoscenti will gush over a minimalist Scandinavian sofa that others dismiss as just a pricey plank with delusions of grandeur.
There's no accounting for taste, or so the truism goes. But arguing over preferences is exactly what many audiophiles do. Similarly, Stereophile reviewers are all about parsing and evaluating sound, and how a product looks isn't usually a big part of the equation. But I'll buck that convention and say that the radically shaped Estelon X Diamond Mk IIs aren't just the…
As recommended by Aldo Filippelli, Estelon's amiable VP of sales and business development for the Americas, I had intended to drive the Estelons with the new Vitus SM-025 monoblock amplifiers, at least for a spell. He feels that pairing the Baltic beauties with the Danish power amps results in unusually good synergy. The release of the Vitus product was postponed, however, which frankly made my job a little easier. I used my reference Krell FPB-200c amplifier, a known quantity instead of a wild card. For most of the duration, my hyperclean Benchmark HPA4 line stage served as a preamp.…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: Three-way bass-reflex loudspeaker. Drive units: 11" ceramic-sandwich dome woofer, 7" ceramic-membrane mid/woofer, 1" inverted diamond-dome tweeter. All drivers by Accuton. Crossover frequencies: 75Hz (third-order), 2kHz (second-order). Frequency range: 22Hz–60kHz. Impedance: 6 ohms (minimum 3.8 ohms at 55Hz). Sensitivity 88dB/2.83V/1m. Recommended amplifier power: 50Wpc or more.
Dimensions: 54" (1370mm) H × 17.5" (450mm) W × 25" (640mm) D. Weight 190lb (86kg) each.
Finish: Black Lava Liquid Gloss, White Gloss. Add up to $8000 for nonstandard…
Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment
Digital sources: 15" MacBook Air M2 Max running Roon 2.0, Roon ROCK (Lenovo ThinkCentre), Eversolo DMP-A8, Grimm Audio MU1, Aurender A20.
Preamplifiers: Benchmark HPA4 line stage, Eversolo DMP-A8.
Power amplifier: Krell FPB-200c (recapped).
Integrated amplifiers: Audia Flight FLS10, Pathos InPol Legacy.
Loudspeakers: Focal Utopia Scala EVO, REL No.31 subwoofer ×2.
Cables: Speaker: AudioQuest Thunderbird Zero and Bass. Power cables and interconnects: RSX and Clarus Crimson pure copper OCC power cables. AudioQuest WEL Signature (AES3),…
Back in 2016, I documented the rise of class-D amps using the early TriPath technology. Used in the Bel Canto eVo 200.2, TriPath cracked open the door to the High End but was never admitted due to a dim and opaque treble. The second wave was based on B&O's ICEpower technology, again via a Bel Canto amplifier, the Ref1000M monoblock. ICEpower had more credibility and was accepted by many but, often, only with, ahem, due consideration for size and efficiency. There was an explosion of new class-D amps in 2016 when Stereophile featured glowing reviews of Bel Canto's e.One Ref600M monoblock,…