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Stereophile's Products of 2014 Budget Component of the Year

Budget Component of the Year

NAD D 3020 integrated amplifier ($499; reviewed by Stephen Mejias, November & December 2013, Vol.36 Nos.11 & 12 Review)

Here's the least surprising surprise of this year's balloting: NAD's D 3020 integrated amplifier coasted to an easy win for Budget Component of 2014. Hell, even I saw that coming.

The D 3020, designed to commemorate NAD's 40th anniversary, was named in honor of the company's classic 3020 integrated amp of the 1970s and onward. Both products were designed by the estimable Bjørn Erik Edvardsen, but this time he…

Stereophile's Products of 2014 Overall Component of 2014

Overall Component of 2014

Vivid Audio Giya G3 loudspeaker

Some years, we see a number of products that take first place in more than one category. This year, there's only one, and it's also our joint Loudspeaker of the Year: the Vivid Audio Giya G3. The G3 did more than merely earn JA's respect: it gave him immense enjoyment, and effectively doubled the field of contenders for the coveted title of John Atkinson's Retirement Loudspeaker (the other being the jointly anointed Wilson Alexia).

Notes on the vote: The results of this contest are especially interesting…

Stereophile's Products of 2014 Editors' Choices of 2014

Editors' Choices of 2014

ATC Loudspeaker Technology SCM19 loudspeaker ($4299/pair)
"In addition to the musical and technical virtues of a competently executed sealed-box design, ATC's SCM19 two-way monitor (reviewed in June 2014, Vol.37 No.6) is big enough to make a major sonic impact in most listening rooms of reasonable size, and small enough not to trip over its own feet. Low distortion, zero fatigue, great looks, fair price. WNTL?"—John Marks

Audeze LCD-X headphones ($1699), VPI Industries Classic Direct turntable ($30,000), DeVore Fidelity Orangutan O/93…

The January 2015 issue is here!

We kick off the New Year with the "Loudspeaker issue"— there are seven models reviewed at all price levels, from Vienna Acoustics, Sjöfn, Monitor Audio, Wharfedale, DeVore Fidelity, Revel, and KEF, a review of an affordable subwoofer from SVS, and an interview with veteran speaker designer Michael Kelly of Aerial Acoustics.

Steve Guttenberg kicks off the issue by explaining why he prefers recorded music to live concerts, while A-list mastering engineer Bob Katz explains why Steve 's analysis of the sound of modern recordings in his November 2014 "As We See It" was misguided, if not…

Smoke Sessions on Vinyl

With so few "major record labels" left standing, the music-loving audiophile stands alert for new venture—indies by the measure of indies—that offer very good music, excellent sound, and (is it too much to ask?) the occasional slab of vinyl. As first reported by Robert Baird in Stereophile's August 2014 issue, there is another worthy prospect worth celebrating: Smoke Sessions Records, the creation of Paul Stache, proprietor of Smoke Jazz Club on upper Broadway in NYC, where most of his discs are recorded live, with Stache himself at the controls.

Smoke Sessions released nine CDs and one…

Recorded Live

His last record came out in 1974 so when a musical recluse like Shuggie Otis releases a new record, it’s an event. And while Live in Williamsburg, released on cheapie, left-of-center Los Angeles reissue label Cleopatra Records isn’t particularly well-recorded or intelligently packaged—there’s no recording date, engineer or producer listed— it’s still Shuggie, on the road in 2013, with a new band, The Rite, that includes his son Eric on guitar and his brother Nick on drums.

Shuggie, born Johnny Veliotes, is of course, the guitar virtuoso son of the great R&B bandleader Johnny Otis,…

I've Heard the Future of Streaming: Meridian's MQA

Meridian's Bob Stuart at the Manhattan launch, showing the law of diminishing returns regarding increasing the sample rate of PCM encoding.

In almost 40 years of attending audio press events, only rarely have I come away feeling that I was present at the birth of a new world. In March 1979, I visited the Philips Research Center in Eindhoven, Holland and heard a prototype of what was to be later called the Compact Disc. In the summer of 1982, I visited Ron Genereux and Bob Berkovitz at Acoustic Research's lab near Boston and heard a very early example of the application of DSP to the…

Meridian's MQA: One Listener's Impression

John Atkinson has asked me to share my impressions of MQA. Currently, the only retail outlet in the United States able to demonstrate Meridian's MQA (Master Quality Authenticated) encoding/decoding system is Audio High in Mountain View, CA. Auditioned, during a return visit to the Bay Area, on the very same pair of Meridian DSP8000SE loudspeakers that I reported on last April, MQA impressed anew with each track.

Since Audio High had sent Meridian specific recordings of varying resolutions that it wished encoded, I mostly confined my auditioning to those tracks. Yevgeny (Eugene) Konnikov…

Home Alone

We all have secrets, and it's about time I came clean with one of mine: I enjoy recorded music more than concerts.

I know, that's a sacrilege—as a lifelong music lover, I'm supposed to relish the live event, with all of the energy and connection between musicians and audience that can happen only when they're all breathing the same air. That may be true for you, but not for me. I've harbored the guilt for years: When I take the plunge and attend a concert, I rarely enjoy the experience enough to justify the effort and expense.

My sense of guilt is magnified when the music is great…

Let Freedom Ring

In the 2014 November issue, my good friend Steve Guttenberg ("Communication Breakdown") got his facts mostly right: It's true that most listeners (including myself) accept far more distortion today than we did years ago. Many people have never heard a great stereo system—all they've heard are overdriven boom boxes, cheap stereos, and portable systems, and that's what they expect systems and music to sound like. And distortion is part of the sonic language of such musical genres as hip-hop, rap, and alternative rock.

Technically speaking, distortion is compression is distortion is…