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I got comfortable in the center chair. I was visiting British manufacturer Arcam in their new facility, a few miles north of Cambridge, and product manager Andy Moore had set up a modestly priced but potentially good-sounding system in the company's dedicated listening room: KEF R300 speakers driven by the Arcam FMJ A19 integrated amplifier, which had impressed Stephen Mejias in the January issue. The source appeared to be Arcam's FMJ D33 D/A processor, which I reviewed in February 2013, connected by USB to a laptop running JRiver Media Center.

I…

Sam Tellig loved the rBlink when he listened to it: "If you're looking for a gift idea, and Mom and Dad have Bluetooth devices, put an Arcam rBlink under the tree. While you're at it, get another for yourself," he wrote. "Highly recommended," he concluded.

I streamed Bluetooth data to the rBlink from my iPad 2 and MacBook Pro. I did some listening to the rBlink's analog outputs. The sound was good rather than great, so for my primary auditioning sessions, the Arcam's coaxial digital output was connected to the ASUS Xonar Essence One Muses Edition (…

Description: Bluetooth D/A converter. Inputs: Bluetooth only. Outputs: one pair analog, one coaxial S/PDIF. Supported codecs: SBC, AAC, aptX. Frequency response: 10Hz–20kHz, &$177;0.1dB. THD+noise: 0.002%. S/N ratio (A-Weighted): 106dB (24-bit). Line output level: 2.15V. Power requirements: 0.7W max. Supplied accessories: wallwart power supply, antenna.
Dimensions: 2.9" (75mm) W by 1" (26mm) H by 3.9" (100mm) D. Weight: 12oz (350gm).
Serial number of review samples: Not noted (ST); EBL 04114 (JA).
Price: $249.95.
Manufacturer: Arcam, The…

The rBlink is a small, surprisingly heavy, black-finished box made, like all of Arcam's current products, in China. On one end is the jack for the supplied wall-wart power supply, the Bluetooth antenna, and a pushbutton to pair the rBlink with a source; on the other end are two RCA jacks for analog output and a single jack for the S/PDIF digital output.

I tested the rBlink (serial no. EBL 04114) mostly with Stereophile's loan sample of the top-of-the-line Audio Precision SYS2722 system (see the January 2008 "As We See It" and www.ap.com); for some tests, I…

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The four works in Private Music's initial release represent such a consistently high level of creation that it is remarkable to see them released all at once. The label's owner, Peter Bauman, was one of the founders of Tangerine Dream, the…

Jared Sacks: I'm an American who has been in Holland for over 37 years. At Channel Classics, I do most everything alone, and my wife does the booklet designing. With 2 1/2 people in the company, we keep it small.

I work differently than…

Sacks: He goes more into the technical side. To me, DSD's superiority has to do with emotion, depth, and how the sound leaves the speaker. It's not a block anymore in the way it dissipates. When you listen to PCM, you can literally hear it as a block of sound coming out of the speaker. That doesn't happen with DSD. There's air around the sound. At the end of the day, we are talking about the air around the sound.

To me, recording like wine tasting. If you take a…

I write these words mere hours after returning home from Home Entertainment 2005, the Show cosponsored by Stereophile magazine that took place from April 28 through May 1 at the Manhattan Hilton. A full report will appear in the August 2005 issue of the magazine.

HE2005 was an upbeat affair, the majority of…

To get these overgrown bookends to stand up, you slide little black boards into the slots in their bottoms. Each board is held in…