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Kathleen and I were catching up on our favorite "Mystery" detective one evening, Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot, in an episode in which Inspector Japp taps his nose, gives Poirot a look, and says, "Better to let sleeping dogs lie, eh, Poirot?" Poirot twitches one of his immaculately cared-for moustaches and delivers a wonderfully charming malapropism, "Non, non, non, mon ami, between reviewers, there should be no sleepy dogs!" Well, he didn't actually say "reviewers"...

The Sleepy Dogs I refer to are the gorgeous, $…

Over the course of several months I was able to test the Jadises with a variety of loudspeakers, particularly the MartinLogan Quest Z, the Nestorovic Type 5AS Signature, and the Mach 1 Acoustics DM-10 Signature. I change speaker cables as often as most people change socks—though I keep returning to TARA Labs RSC.

The front-end featured the Jadis JP 80MC full-function preamp, the Air Tight ATC-2 line-level preamp, the Theta DS Pre digital processor (with signal obtained from Tape Out), and the Basis Ovation turntable outfitted with the Graham Model…

Description: All-tube power amplifier with a push-pull output stage. Power output: 160Wpc at 1kHz for 0.6% THD into 1, 4, 8, and 16 ohms (22dBW, 19dBW, 16dBW, 13dBW, respectively). Bandwidth at full power: 15Hz–35kHz, –3dB. Bandwidth at 1W: 5Hz–60kHz, –3dB. Input sensitivity: 775mV. Input impedance: 100k ohms. Power dissipation at idle: 480W.
Serial numbers of samples tested: 110576 & 110577.
Price: $18,990/pair (1993). Approximate number of dealers: 20.
Manufacturer: Jadis, Villedubert, France. US distributor: Fanfare International, New York, NY…

The JA 200's main chassis was quite hot following the 60-minute, 1/3-power preconditioning, but the power-supply chassis barely got warm. The Jadis continued to run hot throughout the other bench tests, suggesting high-bias operation and the possibility of frequent tube replacement (though we have no empirical data to suggest that this will be the case). Its input impedance measured above 600k ohms—high enough to be difficult to measure accurately with our Audio Precision test set. This is unusually high, even for a tube amplifier, and unlikely to cause matching…

In frigid New York temperatures I walked the many blocks to reach the Park Lane Hotel on Columbus Park South. Whose ever-cheerful face did I spot? Kal Rubinson. Sipping coffee and trading war stories—or, in our case, waiting-for-the-show-to-open stories—we pondered why…

And for the 27th year in a row, the December Stereophile includes our choices for "Product of the Year," with some surprises, some bargains, and something for every…

Playing what I believe was a hi-rez file of "All Blues" from Miles Davis's Kind of Blue, the Cambridge Audio rig did the best-selling-jazz-album-of-all-time proud, the overall sound one of cleanness, depth, and flow.

Hinting at…

As musical movements go, rock and jazz seem to be running out of new ideas, most of the stylistic pathways in both genres having been explored to their logical conclusions. In rock in particular, every stream of inspiration has been followed past its headwaters, every droplet of inspiration wrung from established forms.

Jazz,…

The question took me off-guard. It didn't come from one of the usual suspects—a hostile anti-audiophile, or a non-audiophile who simply can't fathom why we should care so much about something as nonessential as sound reproduction—but from Louis, a sharp dressed, goateed, middle-aged man who was known, among his audio repair shop's clientele, for not only his virtuosity as a classical solo violinist, but his expertise—some would say his preternatural ability—in setting up turntables to sound their very best.

Which explains why, on the day…

We're particularly excited about this series of videos for two reasons: First, viewers have eagerly been asking us to hear systems—not just see them. We've wanted to share that with viewers, but we wanted to do it right. In our opinion, the absolute best way to remotely convey…