Wish You Were Here 50, from Pink Floyd Music and Sony, is a golden anniversary Super Deluxe package of four LPs, two CDs, and a Blu-ray disc. LPs 1–3 and the two CDs contain the same material: the 2016 James Guthrie remix/remaster of the original album and a pile of outtakes and demos that…
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Wish You Were Here isn't my favorite Pink Floyd album, but I can't deny its success or how often it has played within earshot over the course of my life. Released mid-1975 to mixed reviews, time worked in its favor: Today many consider it a peer to the group's masterpiece, The Dark Side of the Moon.
Should you be so lucky to sit behind the wheel of a Bugatti Chiron, you would be commanding a 1500-horsepower supercar that can accelerate from 0 to 62mph in 2.4 seconds. Quintessence Audio put together an audio system equivalent to a Chiron in their Knowledge room at AXPONA 2026—but unlike the Bugatti supercar, I (and all in-the-know attendees) got to experience it firsthand.
The room's analog front end consisted of a Döhmann Helix One Mk3 turntable with vacuum hold-down ($150,000; shown above) sporting a two-arm setup: a Wilson-Benesch Graviton Ti tonearm ($60,000)…
Axiss Audio VP of Sales and Dealer Relations TJ Goldsby talks about all the gear in the company's Imagination room at AXPONA 2026 in an interview with Ken Micallef that's now posted on our YouTube channel.
Though the Gauder Akustik speakers were dark red and the Accuphase amps were goldish chrome, the super large-scale system in Axiss Audio's Imagination room at AXPONA 2026 played vocalist Alma Naidi's plaintive "Just a Word" with the intimacy, tone, and drama it fully deserved. If a massive system like this one can mine musical details, spatial cues, and intensity…
Axiss Audio Owner, CEO, and Chief Audiophile Cliff Duffey talks about all the gear in the company's Aster room at AXPONA 2026 in an interview with Ken Micallef that's now posted on our YouTube channel.
I was unfortunately short on time on the final day of AXPONA 2026, but Axiss Audio's endgame system in the Aster room tweaked all possibilities and parameters—especially its glorious, double-punch analog front end. In the above clip, Cliff Duffey tells us more about it all.
Equipment list: Analog sources: Turntable: Reed Muse 1C ($19,975; shown…
In the above video interview on our YouTube channel, Robert Schryer speaks with Jeff Coates, director of sales for Harmonia Distribution, about the gear shown in the company's room at Montreal Audiofest 2026.
Bonus coverage! As soon as we walked into the Harmonia Distribution room at Montreal Audiofest 2026, this system's sound grabbed both my attention and that of my colleague, Ken Micallef. A horn speaker with a 12" woofer, the Ø Audio Icon 12 projected an energy field that brimmed with room-flooding musical information—not aggressively so; just densely, almost…
Each side of the one-sheet lyrics insert accompanying Squeeze's latest LP, Trixies (Love/BMG), has been divvied up into three equal columns that can be folded over to replicate a 4" × 11½" nightclub menu.
Subtitled "Trixies Concoctions Menu," the insert conjures the theme of the 13-track song cycle that comprises Trixies, whose storyline traces several scenes set in and around a fictional nightclub. The most telling line on the lyrics sheet reads, simply, "Difford & Tilbrook: The Mixologists / Since 1973."
Difford &Tilbrook are, of course, Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook…
Lately, hi-fi's technical emphasis has shifted toward time, away from its longtime main focus on the frequency domain. I'm thinking the trend, which I consider a good thing, started years ago with growing awareness it might be better to accept some aliasing in order to avoid the phase distortion resulting from a "brick-wall" reconstruction filter. More recent examples include the approach to D/A conversion taken by CH Precision (footnote 1) and—dare I mention it?—the theory behind MQA (footnote 2). I also encountered the trend once on the analog side; I'm thinking of Haniwa, which makes phono…
We loved this analog-based setup in one of retailer Filtronique Son-or's rooms at Montreal Audiofest 2026—not too complicated setup-wise but packing a powerful sonic punch that defied analysis because it was so well-blended, coherent, and right-sounding.
The system's source consisted of a polished aluminum Transrotor MAX turntable (shown above, $5450 without tonearm, though it can accommodate two), fitted with a Sorane SA-1.2 tonearm ($2000) and Dynavector DV 20 XL cartridge ($1200). Downstream components included a Moonriver 404 Reference integrated amplifier ($6400) and…
At AXPONA 2026, ATC's Ben Lilly (shown above) and Brad Lundy of ATC importer/distributor Lone Mountain discuss ATC's EL50 Anniversary loudspeakers in an interview with Ken Micallef that's now posted on our YouTube channel.
Leland Leard, Chief Business Development Officer of ATC importer/distributor Lone Mountain, opened the company's demo of ATC's EL50 Anniversary loudspeakers at AXPONA 2026 with a smart selection of soul, funk, and pop. This wide swath of music quickly exposed the ATC EL50 speakers' microdynamic shading, natural scale, and impressively flat frequency…
At AXPONA 2026, Mads Buchardt, founder of Buchardt Audio (above left), discusses the Danish company's E50 speakers in an interview with Miguel Barrio that's now posted on our YouTube channel.
What Buchardt Audio did at Montreal Audiofest 2026 proved it. Their system at AXPONA 2026 proved it again.
What you get here is rare: eclectic components brilliantly matched and conceived with real imagination, all executed without apology. Call it Next-Fi if you want to label it, but this setup delivered everything old-school audiophiles demand: deep, authoritative bass…