Manufacturer representatives from B&W will be on hand to answer questions, provide demonstrations, and play great music. Refreshments will be served and prizes will be given away.
Private listening sessions will be available. For…
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Friday–Saturday, November 20–21, 10am–8pm: Electronic Concepts (174 Route 17 North, Rochelle Park) will host a special event to celebrate the launch of the new Bowers & Wilkins 800 D3 Series loudspeakers. Also on display will be B&W's legendary Nautilus loudspeakers. Other featured gear will include Classé electronics and AudioQuest cables.
Joanna Newsom: Divers
Drag City DC561 (LP/CD). 2015. Joanna Newsom, prod.; Noah Georgeson, prod., eng.; Steve Albini, eng.; John Golden, mastering. ADA/ADD. TT: 51:56
Performance *****
Sonics ****
Drag City DC561 (LP/CD). 2015. Joanna Newsom, prod.; Noah Georgeson, prod., eng.; Steve Albini, eng.; John Golden, mastering. ADA/ADD. TT: 51:56
Performance *****
Sonics ****
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…
Thursday–Friday, November 19–20, 4–8pm; Saturday, November 21, 10am–3pm: Signature Audio Video (126 Iber Road, Stittsville, ON) will hold their 2015 Technology Expo.
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…
It never fails. Browse Stereophile's Facebook page, scroll through the comments to an article that refers to life as an audiophile, and splat—appearing like bird droppings on your glistening screen are anti-audiophile wisecracks pointing out exactly how far off the "normal" track our hobby has derailed. Occasionally, I catch myself in mid-sentence, already replying to one of these droppings, the gist of my intended message invariably being: "If you're an anti-audiophile, what are you doing using up what life you have left reading a webpage devoted to a hobby you don't get? Shouldn't you be…
Four-channel stereo is here, but for how long? By the time this gets in print, it is extremely unlikely that any of our readers will have escaped being told that 4-channel stereo is here. "Two channels brought us direction," the announcements trumpet. "Now, four channels bring us dimension." Now, for the first time in the history of hi-fi (footnote 1), modern technology can bring us hall acoustics in stereo, to surround us with the sense of spaciousness that we hear in the concert hall.
On first hearing of this, our reaction was "Whoopee'A breakthrough in realism." The more we read about…
Maryland dealer JS Audio (4919 Street, Elmo Avenue, Bethesda) is holding a special event Saturday November 21, starting at 4pm. Featured guests will be John Giolas, director of marketing for Wilson Audio Specialties, and Rich Maez from Boulder Amplifiers. John Giolas will be discussing Wilson's new Alexx loudspeaker and Rich Maez will be introducing Boulder's new 3000 and 2100 series amplification products and the new 2120 DAC.
The demo reference system will comprise:
Boulder 3060 amplifier, Boulder 2110 preamplifier
dCS Reference Vivaldi Digital system (DAC, Upsampler,…
Timing distortions are the lifeblood of magazine publishing—a field of endeavor where cheers cheered in September can sound wistful by raw November, when readers read them. Then again, by the time you see this, an asteroid strike or an itchy finger on a nuclear trigger may have blown us all back to the age of bronze—oxygen-free, one hopes—in which case this edition of Stereophile's Products of the Year celebration will seem all the more nostalgic.
But this is no mere nostalgia: Only once every 12 months do we set aside our complaints, our contentions, our niggling criticisms, and simply…
Joint Loudspeakers of the Year
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…
Amplification Component of the Year
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…
Analog Component of the Year
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…