Despite what big-box stores and lossy streaming services want to sell you, listening to music at your desk does not have to suck. In fact, for not a lot of dough, you can easily build a desktop system that'll feed your head with music's goodness—or, for a few grand, assemble a setup that rivals the big rigs. Add the right app and streaming service, and you'll have access to an ever-expanding library of losslessly…
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It's not the pale moon that excites me / That thrills and delights me / Oh no, it's just the nearness of you.—"The Nearness of You," Ned Washington & Hoagy Carmichael
Thompson's Capitol records, which did suffer from a bright and brittle early digital production style, were produced by Mitchell Froom, the keyboard player and surefooted producer who's produced over 60 albums, including Los Lobos' Kiko and his ex-wife Suzanne Vega's 99.9F°. "Mitchell's great. He's a great musician. Sometimes I think, um, it's hard to spot what's special about what I do, if there is anything a'tall. A lot of it is cultural—the fact that I didn't grow up listening to the blues. I wasn't impregnated with the same music as most Americans, and actually most British people. I…
Neil Young's PonoPlayer ($399) houses digital and analog circuitry designed by Ayre Acoustics, including Ayre's oh-so-musical minimum-phase filter. If you've read John Atkinson's review of the Pono in the April 2015 issue, or my review on AudioStream in January 2015, you already know that it's a superb DAC that comes close to Ayre's QB-9DSD DAC at a fraction of the price, while throwing in a music server and headphone amp gratis. The PonoPlayer attaches to your computer via its micro-USB input, for transferring files to the Pono's internal 64GB of flash memory, or its MicroSD card capable…
Sidebar Contacts
Dynaudio A/S, Sverigesvej 15, 8660 Skanderborg, Denmark. Dynaudio International GmbH 2014, Ohepark 2, 21224 Rosengarten, Germany. Tel: (49) (0)4108-4180-0. Fax: (49) (0)4108-4180-10. US distributor: Dynaudio North America, 1140 Tower Lane, Bensenville, IL 60106. Tel: (630) 238-4200. Web: www.dynaudiousa.com.
iFi Audio. Web: www.ifi-audio.com. IsoAcoustics Inc., 4981 Highway 7 E., Unit 12A, Suite 160, Markham, Ontario L3R 1N1. Canada Tel: (905) 294-4672. Web: www.isoacoustics.com
Mytek Digital, 148 India Street, Brooklyn, NY 11222. Tel: (347) 384-2687. Fax…
On September 8, the international custom-installation trade association CEDIA named J. Robert Stuart, co-founder of Meridian Audio Ltd. and Inventor of MQA, as this year's Lifetime Achievement Award recipient. Stuart will be recognized at the annual CEDIA Awards Celebration at CEDIA EXPO on October 17, 2015.
According to the press release: "The CEDIA Lifetime Achievement Award recognizes an individual who has exhibited outstanding, creative, innovative, and visionary leadership in the growth and advancement of the residential electronic systems industry. Nominations are submitted by…
The Shure Brothers have been making magnetic cartridges since the early 1950s (they had been exclusively microphone manufacturers prior to then), and their continuing R&D program has resulted in new, improved models every few years rather than every 6 months (as seems to be the rule these days). As a result, Shure has the appearance, to most audiophiles, of a stodgy, plodding, rather "establishment" manufacturer that can be trusted to make a solid, reliable product but nothing brilliantly innovative or—for that matter—nothing remarkably good either.
To be sure (Sorry about that!),…
It has been a disrupted spring. Late last year, my wife and I committed ourselves to a long-needed renovation of our main living space: an apartment in Manhattan. Articles, books, and TV shows have illuminated the trials and triumphs of home renovation, but as far as I know, none has included a redo of the listening room of an obsessive audiophile, let alone one who is also an audio writer facing copy deadlines.
I'm more than a little lazy, and I had long-delayed much-needed system updates because of all the dreaded effort and disruption. But slowly I began to realize that this was an…
Sidebar: Specifications
Description: Moving-magnet stereo cartridge with spherical or 0.2 by 0.7 hyperelliptical stylus and viscous-damped dynamic stabilizer. Output level: 5mV out at 1kHz/5cm/s velocity. Frequency range: 10Hz–25kHz. Channel separation: 25dB at 1kHz.
Price: $150 (1979); no longer available (2015).
Manufacturer: Shure Bros, Inc., Evanston, IL 60294 (1979). Shure Incorporated, 5800 West Touhy Avenue Niles, IL 60714-4608 (2015). Tel: (847) 600-2000 & (800) 25-SHURE (US only). Fax: (847) 600-1212. Web: www.shure.com.
Unfortunately, AQ has eliminated the latching feature on these XLRs. This is not a problem with the power amps, which don't move around and to which I have easy access—but things are crowded at the other end, back at the rack, and the cables tend to pull out when I shift the preamp to make other connections. This is a disappointment in such a product, which is otherwise impressively designed and made (and priced), but the inclusion of latches likely would have required the use of base metals stronger than the silver and copper AQ prefers. Because Stephen brought the new cables before I…
Sidebar Contacts
AudioQuest, 2621 White Road, Irvine, CA 92614. Tel: (949) 585-0111. Web: www.audioquest.com
Baetis Audio, 428 Canyon Creek Road, Livingston, MT 59047. Tel: (514) 496-9933. Web: www.baetisaudio.com
exaSound Audio Design, 3219 Yonge Street, Suite 354, Toronto, Ontario M4N 3S1, Canada. Web: www.exasound.com
miniDSP Ltd., Unit 1204, Crown Industrial Building, 106 How Ming Street, Kwun Tong, Hong Kong. Tel: (852) 2358-2066. Web: www.minidsp.com
Salamander Designs Ltd., 811 Blue Hills Avenue, Bloomfield, CT 06002. Tel: (888) 650-5289, (860) 761-…