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Lately, I've been thinking again about a concept I've thought about off and on for years: first impressions of a component versus lingering, meaningful differences.

We've all had the experience: Replace a familiar component with a new one, let it warm up, then listen. You hear differences, often dramatic ones. (Not always, though: A couple of years ago, I compared two DACs of similar price and design, switching back and forth between them, and could hear no difference at all.)

What's interesting is…

I might have ignored it completely if not for Keith Pray, Stereophile's general manager. Keith lives in Westchester County, not far from the school in question, and has kids in a…

Howard Jones has always come across as an endearing blend of mad scientist and hopeless romantic. Since his 1983 debut single, "New Song," he has blended obsessive technical detail with extreme emotionality. His newest album, Dialogue, is the latest example of this approach, in which intricate structures of synthesized sound grow into musical mountains supporting impassioned lyrics.

Dialogue is the…

For his FollowUp, Jim Austin compared the tubed Audio Research Reference 6SE ($18,000) with the solid state Pass Labs XP-32 ($18,375). "I wanted to experience the differences in the short term and then take note of how those differences panned out over time," he wrote. His conclusion? "These two preamps are zeroing in on the same sound from opposite directions. I…

Within each category, products are listed by class; within each class, they're in alphabetical order, followed by their price, a review synopsis, and a note indicating the issues in which the review, and any subsequent follow-up reports, appeared. "Vol.45 No.6" indicates our June 2022 issue, for example. "WWW" means the review is also posted online.

Stereophile's Recommended Components list is concerned mainly with products available in the US…

CLASS A
Best attainable sound for a…

A+

J.Sikora Reference: $47,000 w/o tonearm
This Polish company's top-of-the-line turntable is a nonsuspended, high-mass design, weighing 253lb. The dynamically and statically balanced platter alone weighs 40lb! Drive is with four square belts spun by four Papst DC motors. MF found that the plinth was immune to knuckle raps and motor start-up noises and wrote that the Reference was very quiet. He decided that this J.Sikora 'table had been superbly tuned to extract deep, well-controlled bass free of overhang or excess. The measured speed accuracy was impressive, as…

A+

SAT CF1-09: €55,000 ★
SAT CF1-12: €58,000 ★
In 2018, after selling 70 of his original Swedish Analog Technologies Tonearms, designer Marc Gomez discontinued it and replaced it with two new tonearms. The more expensive, the CF1-09, is now the company's flagship. The CF1-09's tapered, hand-lapped, "naked"-carbon-fiber armtube has an effective length of 9" and incorporates a number of parts machined from solid stainless steel—including a new vertical bearing yoke that's far more massive than that of the original SAT arm and makes the CF1-09 too heavy for…

A

Air Tight PC-1 Coda: $10,000
Manufactured for Air Tight by Yoshio Matsudaira of My Sonic Lab, the PC-1 Coda MC cartridge has a very low impedance of 1.7 ohms and an output of 0.5mV, the latter higher than the moving coil norm. Its body is made from an alloy of aluminum, magnesium, and silicon, plated first in nickel and then in chrome. Compliance specs aren't supplied for the 12.7gm PC-1 Coda, but the tracking-force range is given as 2–2.2gm; MF found the lower number insufficient and declared the cartridge's tracking capabilities only "moderately good" at…

A+

Boulder Amplifiers 2108: $56,000
When he reviewed Boulder's flagship 2008 phono preamplifier in 2002, MF concluded that "it's hard to believe that, for some time to come, any [phono preamp] will equal or surpass the monumental performance of Boulder's 2008." Almost two decades later, the new two-box flagship replaces the 2008's three power supplies with four: left, right, logic, and an independent standby supply. The through-hole components and boards have been replaced by surface-mount equivalents, and the circuitry features proprietary, house-made, "…