I am not a poker player, but I am an audiophile, and I use a variety of "tells" as my prime tools in critical listening. You know my worn-out line: "You can't hear what you're not listening for."
I use tells extensively during speaker placement. I use them most extensively, though, when installing and aligning phono cartridges. In that process, tells are a necessity because achieving the best possible sound depends on knowing when I have achieved the best possible sound.
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VTA/SRA
Too many people think setting VTA/ SRA is like a tone control: Up is sharper and brighter, down is darker and duller. But how does one know when that sharper/duller…
Two of the best—and most widely varying—of those ventures have just been…
Sonus faber’s American Branch Manager, William Kline, and Product Marketing and Experience Director, McIntosh Group, Joshua Dellinger, discuss how to extract the best bass performance from your loudspeaker system.
William and Joshua will offer tips and advice with Sonus faber’s proven method of loudspeaker placement, with a unique focus on bass performance. Q&A to follow.
UPDATE: This webinar is now available for replay!
Replay Sonus faber Webinar
It's been nearly a…
In a perfect world, critics would hear a band live then write a review of their new album the following morning. It rarely works out that way, but it just did. The Cookers played Jazz Alley in Seattle last night. This review is underway 12 hours later.
In person, The Cookers, like most jazz bands, are looser and rougher and more expansive than on record. At Jazz Alley…
From the Brahms symphony's soft-edged yet clean and transparent opening, this issue sounds special. As the textures fill out, sonorities expand rather than merely getting louder. The woodwinds' fanfares are crisply placed, yet their soft playing still has presence. Two legato brass chorales in James MacMillan's Larghetto register with satisfying depth…
An audio engineer specializing in mastering and analog-to-digital transfers, Fine is best known for his current work on the Mercury Living Presence catalog of 300 mono and stereo LPs, most created by his father, recording engineer C. Robert (Bob) Fine, and his mother, recording producer Wilma Cozart…
How Tom entered the business
In 1964, Wilma Cozart Fine retired to Harrison, New York (footnote 4), to better raise the family that eventually grew to…
Editor's Note: SACD and DVD-A player ratings are based on how they sound with their respective hi-rez media, not CD.
A+
Aurender N10: $7999 with 4TB storage ★
Designed in California and manufactured in South Korea, Aurender's N10 is a computer running a modified version of the open-source Linux operating system, and is dedicated to retrieving audio files from an external NAS drive, or a drive plugged into one of its USB ports, or its internal storage, and sending the data to its Class 2 USB output port…