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Stereophile's Products of 2015 Joint Accessories of the Year

Joint Accessories of the Year

AudioQuest JitterBug ($49; reviewed by John Atkinson, September 2015, Vol.38 No.9 Review)

Roon music library/file player app ($199/year, $499/lifetime; reviewed by Jon Iverson, October 2015, Vol.38 No.10 Review)

A tie between something you can't see from across the room and something that can't be touched? This gets better and better.

High-end audio accessories comprise the most interesting category, if only because there are such profound differences in price and size and technology among the individual products therein: signal…

Stereophile's Products of 2015 Budget Component of the Year

Budget Component of the Year

Magnepan .7 loudspeaker ($1400/pair; reviewed by Herb Reichert, August 2015, Vol.38 No.8 Review)

Our list of finalists for Budget Product of the Year contains a little of everything—an amp, a cartridge, a computer-audio accessory, a portable music player, two turntables, and some speakers. It was from the last group that Stereophile's reviewers selected the Magnepan .7—the first time a panel speaker has won in this category. Herb Reichert wrote that he could very happily live with the two-way, planar-magnetic .7, whose only concession to thrift had to…

Stereophile's Products of 2015 Overall Component of 2015

Overall Component of 2015

KEF Blade Two loudspeaker

Son of a Blade! This year's Overall Product of the Year is the unabashedly high-tech KEF Blade Two. The rare loudspeaker that employs neither wood nor pulp in its manufacture, the Blade Two's radically shaped enclosure is formed from high-density polyurethane, while the diaphragms of all six of its drive-units are metal. During its time in JA's lab, the Blade Two distinguished itself with "measured performance that is close to the state of the art," and, as KEF's deputy (no jokes!) flagship, this British speaker has impressed…

Stereophile's Products of 2015 Editors' Choices of 2015

Editors' Choices of 2015

Audiodesksysteme Gläss Vinyl Cleaner ($3995; reviewed by Michael Fremer, Fred Kaplan, and Art Dudley in June 2012, September 2013, and March 2015 Review)
Of the products I wrote about in 2015, one enhanced my enjoyment of recorded music every day: the Audiodesksysteme Gläss Vinyl Cleaner from Germany. This ultrasonic record washer is expensive but not overpriced, and is easily the best-thought-out audio accessory I've ever used. Best of all, the Vinyl Cleaner taught me that a lot of what I took to be record-groove damage is actually record-groove…

Live in Brooklyn this Weekend: Darcy James Argue & Secret Society

I'll need a few more listens to grasp the measure of Darcy James Argue's new big-band piece, Real Enemies, but my first impression—gleaned from its premiere at BAM's Next Wave Festival, in Brooklyn, Wednesday night—is that it's a remarkable work, maybe an oddball masterpiece: riveting, head-spinning, at once spooky and witty, abstrusely complex and foot-tappingly propulsive.

It's a nearly two-hour, multimedia spectacle built around the theme of conspiracy theories and their central place in American society and culture, each of 12 chapters or movements devoted to specific phenomena—the…

Thanksgiving in New York

It's Thanksgiving week, which, in New York City, means that two of the best bands in jazz are playing at two of the best jazz clubs in the world: the Maria Schneider Orchestra at Jazz Standard; Jason Moran and the Bandwagon Trio at the Village Vanguard. Every set is usually packed, so make reservations now and get there early.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Footnote: The Maria Schneider Orchestra’s Thompson Fields wasStereophile’s "Recording of September 2015."

Listening #156

Just as John Atkinson has a special telephone on his desk, by means of which the late J. Gordon Holt expresses his displeasure at this magazine's continuing decline into latitudinarianism, my own desk is littered with a dozen or so windup timers, each set to remind me how long it's been since I last wrote about this or that hi-fi eccentricity. Each timer has its own distinctive ring: The one labeled "LOWTHER" is a bit shrill, especially at certain humidity levels, while the one marked "QUAD ESL" can be heard to best advantage only when sitting in a particular spot—and even I have to admit…

Listening #156 Page 2

The Decca cartridge does indeed have a cantilever—if by cantilever one means the thingie that goes between the stylus and the generator—but it imposes no fulcrum between those two elements: A stylus excursion of, say, 1µm causes the moving armature in a Decca's generator to undergo a 1µm excursion. This aspect of their cartridge's performance was referred to by Decca Special Products as positive scanning, and they claimed that it resulted in a transducer that imposes far less dynamic compression than any other.

To test that claim, I asked Brian Tucker to loan me a current-production…

GoldenEar Triton Five loudspeaker

With each review I've written for Stereophile, I've redoubled my efforts to choose my adjectives prudently—to curb my penchant for overstatement. I've been feeling a need to speak more concisely and maturely about what my ears, mind, and heart experience while listening to music through a component that's new to me. So today, at the start of this review, I ask myself: What adjectives must I use to describe the character of GoldenEar Technology's new Triton Five tower loudspeaker ($1999.98/pair)? Which words will best use our shared audiophile lexicon to give you a working vision of what I…

GoldenEar Triton Five loudspeaker Page 2

With the Vinnie Rossi LIO: Vinnie Rossi's 25Wpc LIO integrated ($7750 as reviewed in Stereophile's September, 2015 issue) is one of the most grainless, pure-sounding amplifiers I have heard. Driving the GoldenEar Triton Fives, it created a modestly priced system capable of elite audiophile sound. Crystalline images sat in real acoustic spaces. Vocal and instrumental timbres were exact and attention grabbing. I got lost in Yehudi Menuhin's recording, as violin soloist and conductor of the Robert Masters Chamber Orchestra, of J.S. Bach's Violin Concertos 1 and 2 and the Double Concerto (with…