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Recently, my good friend Bryan invited himself over for a "critical listening session" at my place. This was out of character. Typically our listening sessions are not of the "critical" variety. They take place late at night after several cocktails, neat bourbon in hand. Volume knobs are torqued. The choice of recorded material tends toward early Lynyrd Skynyrd (Pronounced 'Lĕh-'nérd 'Skin-'nérd), that one Hank Williams Jr. album that doesn't suck (The Almeria Club Recordings), and one of two Def Leppard albums (Pyromania or (Hysteria). A certain Jerry Jeff Walker album (Viva Terlingua) was…
The Audio Concepts staff, L–R: Jorge-Anthony Polo, Landon Swindoll, Brandon Bartee, Jeff White.
In these days of industry transformation, acquiring a brick-and-mortar hi-fi store is not for the faint of heart. That's just what 41-year-old Brandon Bartee did in August 2025. Bartee acquired Audio Concepts from Mark Ashworth, who was celebrating the store's 40th anniversary, all 40 years under his ownership. Ashworth has been consulting for the store since the acquisition and will continue to do so for another few more months.
Audio Concepts has been in the same location in North…
John Vanore & Abstract Truth: Easter Island Suite
Vanore, trumpet, flugelhorn, compositions, arrangements; 27 others
Acoustical Concepts AC-160 (CD). 1989, 2012, 2024/2026. Vanore, prod.; Terry Hoffman, Richard King, John Senior, engs.
Performance *****
Sonics ****
Vanore, trumpet, flugelhorn, compositions, arrangements; 27 others
Acoustical Concepts AC-160 (CD). 1989, 2012, 2024/2026. Vanore, prod.; Terry Hoffman, Richard King, John Senior, engs.
Performance *****
Sonics ****
Large-ensemble jazz was once the dominant format in the art form. Today it is a niche. Big jazz bands now survive mostly as labors of love. Current examples of beloved big bands include the Maria Schneider Orchestra, Darcy James Argue's Secret Society, and Ryan Truesdell's Gil Evans Project. There is another…
Photo by Light By Dawn Studios.
Legendary Stax guitarist/producer Steve Cropper hated when deejays talked over song intros. He decided to do something about it for the countless hit singles cut at the label's Memphis studio in the 1960s. As a result of his efforts, Cropper—who passed away on December 3, 2025, at age 84—became known as "The Intro Guy," a sobriquet he was proud to honor. "I got to hang out at a lot of radio stations, but I never really wanted to be a disc jockey,"
Cropper told me from his Nashville home during a phone interview in May 2018. "The work they did…
Photo: Benton Collins.
In vinyl's heyday, Roy Matthews ran EMI's record-pressing plant in Hayes, Middlesex, in the UK. He even had a hand in designing and building new presses for the company. But when EMI, like most other record labels, shut down their plant and scrapped most of their presses, Matthews retired. In 2000, when Matthews was in his 80s, he was lured out of retirement and found himself once again, to his surprise and delight, running a pressing plant using refurbished presses, many of his own design. You can read my interview with him here, and see photos of the facility,…
In the context of a modern hi-fi system, phono cartridges are most akin to loudspeakers in that both are electromechanical transducers. Cartridges convert the mechanical movements of a stylus tracing a record groove to an electrical current. Loudspeakers convert an electrical current to vibrations that cause the air to move out into the room as soundwaves that our ears and brain sense as music. [Stereophile's reviews of phono cartridges can be found here.—Ed.].
Between the record grooves and the sound coming out of the speakers, everything is electrical, but music always ends—and usually…
Sidebar 5: Measurements
In practice, the core design and performance metrics of the 600.2 integrated amplifier show closer parallels with Musical Fidelity's four-box Nu-Vista PRE/PAS pre/power combination, itself inspired by the legacy Titan amplifier, than it does with its larger sibling, the Nu-Vista 800.2 integrated.
The 600.2 may be the lower-powered model, but, with power ratings of 160W into 8 ohms and 300W into 4 ohms and in practice delivering 200Wpc and 325Wpc into those loads, respectively (ref. 1kHz at <1% THD), it could never be described correctly as low-powered…
Sidebar 2: What's a Nuvistor?
In his introduction to this review, Martin Colloms describes nuvistors as "small, metal-clad vacuum tubes introduced in 1959 to compete with bipolar-junction transistors." Martin's description is perfectly accurate, but there is more to be said. The nuvistor was created to overcome the shortcomings inherent in run-of-the-mill vacuum tubes: size, reliability, microphony, and so on. If you've heard of vacuum tubes on fighter jets, they were probably nuvistors. The Russian MiG-25, which was famously flown to Japan by a defecting pilot in 1976, used…
Sidebar 3: Specifications
Description: Integrated amplifier with dimmable color display, remote control, dual-mono inputs and preamp circuits, output stage class-AB biased into class-A to about 10W, laser-trimmed volume control with 0.5dB increments. Line inputs: Four stereo pairs single-ended (RCA) and balanced (XLR). Outputs: Two pair 4mm banana plug/binding posts; stereo pair line-level fixed on RCA, stereo pair line-level fixed on XLR; stereo pair line-level variable on RCA. Input impedance: 100k ohms single-ended and balanced. Power output: 160Wpc into 8 ohms (22dBW), 300Wpc into 4…
Sidebar 1: Heinz Lichtenegger and Nu-Vista
The Musical Fidelity Nu-Vista 600.2 is the latest component in what HeinzLichtenegger, CEO of Audio Tuning Vertriebs GmbH, parent company of Musical Fidelity, Pro-Ject, and other brands, describes as a complete range of Nu-Vista products dubbed "Nu-Vista by Musical Fidelity." His 45 years in the hi-fi industry have shown him, he told Stereophile, the benefits of launching complete series, with options at different price points.
The series started off with the flagship PRE preamp and the partnering PAS stereo amplifier, each with…