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It's hard to imagine a more auspicious debut than Joanna Newsom's The Milk-Eyed Mender (Drag City DC263): Her songs on that 2004 release were imaginative, memorable, and almost uniquely literate, and her performances of them—she sang as distinctively as she wrote, and on most of them, her full-size Lyon & Healy concert harp was the sole accompanying instrument—were effective and…

Manufacturer representatives from Bluesound, Control4, Definitive Technology, Devialet, Naim, Samsung, Sonos, Yamaha, AudioQuest, and more will be on hand to answer questions, discuss new products and technologies, and play great music and movies.

On Friday, AudioQuest's Kathleen Thomas and Frédéric Pinsonneault will conduct a Computer Audio Seminar, providing valuable and entertaining information on how best to…

On first hearing of this, our reaction was "Whoopee'A breakthrough in realism." The more we read about…

The demo reference system will comprise:
• Boulder 3060 amplifier, Boulder 2110 preamplifier
• dCS Reference Vivaldi Digital system (DAC, Upsampler,…

But this is no mere nostalgia: Only once every 12 months do we set aside our complaints, our contentions, our niggling criticisms, and simply…

GoldenEar Triton One ($4999.98/pair; reviewed by Robert Deutsch, February 2015, Vol.38 No.2 Review)

KEF Blade Two ($25,000/pair; reviewed by John Atkinson, June 2015, Vol.38 No.6 Review)

History repeats: As happened in 2014 and 2013, the 2015 Loudspeaker of the Year contest resulted in a tie between two floorstanders. Yet this year marks the first time we've seen so wide a gap—a fivefold disparity—between the winners' prices.

The distinctly styled KEF Blade Two, which we featured on the cover of our June issue, is the rare…

Bel Canto Design Black amplification system ($50,000/system; reviewed by Michael Fremer & John Atkinson, July & October 2015, Vol.38 Nos. 7 & 10 Review)

Described by Bel Canto Design as an amplification system, the Black is a three-box integrated amplifier in which one box (the ASC1) serves as a digital preamplifier and system clock, and the other two boxes (the MPS1Ps) are monoblock amplifiers with a digital input and a class-D output stage, each capable of passing 1200W across a 2 ohm load. The ASC1, most of whose inputs are…

Swedish Analog Technologies tonearm ($28,000; reviewed by Michael Fremer, July 2015, Vol.38 No.7 Review)

This year's analog winner is nothing less than an all-out, engineering-driven assault on the state of the art of the 9" pivoting tonearm. Made from stainless steel, brass, and carbon-fiber laminates, the dynamically balanced Swedish Analog Technologies arm features a removable headshell with integral azimuth adjustment, and point-and-cup bearings with user-adjustable loading. The arm comes with two differently sized counterweights, to suit a…

Pono PonoPlayer ($399; reviewed by John Atkinson & Michael Lavorgna, April, June & September 2015, Vol.38 Nos. 4, 6 & 9 Review)

For an audio reviewer to rail against the MP3 format is one thing; for Neil Young to do so is quite another. And as this well-loved musician proved in 1985, when his support was instrumental in launching the Farm Aid benefits, and again in 1986, when he and his then wife, Pegi Young, founded the Bridge School, a motivated Neil Young is a force to be reckoned with. Young's quest led him to Ayre Acoustics, the…