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…
Steven Mishoe talks about G.I.P. Laboratory 225 speakers and Tamba TS-1 standmounts—the latter being a prototype of his own design—at AXPONA 2026 in an interview with Ken Micallef that's now posted on our YouTube channel.
Though I was unable to put in an extended listening session with the G.I.P. Laboratory setup at AXPONA 2026, I know this system quite well, since I've heard it many times at In Living Stereo in New York. (That's some serious history.) That said, the G.I.P. system delivered one of the best rooms at the show, featuring exceptional speed and atmospheric…
In the above video interview on our YouTube channel, Robert Schryer speaks with Danny Labrecque, proprietor of mono/stéréo, about the gear shown in the Montreal-based company's room at Montreal Audiofest 2026.
Bonus coverage continues onward! Confession time: I'd never heard of brands like Jean Maurer (from Switzerland) or Riviera (from Italy), and I'd barely even been aware of Montreal Audiofest 2026 exhibitor mono/stéréo—but that's because it's a brand-new store in Montreal.
The owner, however, is a longtime acquaintance of mine: Danny Labrecque,…
At hi-fi shows and across social media, Ampsandsound's Justin Weber projects a sense of upbeat. Positive, placid, disarmingly pleasant, he looks less like a high-end audio manufacturer than a big-hearted camp counselor about to gather berries and butterflies. And honestly? That's not far from the truth.
"I'm a supervising social worker by day, helping individuals on parole get their mental health needs met," Weber explained via text message. "Concurrent to that, I have a private practice doing teletherapy, and I moonlight in a hospital emergency room."
Weber's Zen-master…
My first paid job working with turntables was during my final two years at boarding school in England. I joined up with my friend Martin, and we created a little partnership to provide music for the school's dances, or hops as we called them then and there. I owned a small PA system I had used for my punk band, The Ripchords, and Martin had a dual-deck, deejay-style console made by a company called FAL, with two turntables and a mixer. Martin also had a habit of keeping his music selections up to date, buying all the latest hit singles on vinyl. All we needed were a few disco lights and a fog…
If any jazz musician bridged Duke Ellington's grandeur and Thelonious Monk's subversion, it was Carla Bley. That she is not listed among the greatest American composers speaks both to her iconoclasm and to the lack of a sense of humor among too many jazz lovers.
Proof of her prowess with the pen (if any is needed after such magnum opi as Escalator Over the Hill and European Tour 1977) comes via Joyful Noise (Live in Hamburg 1984), a live recording from the famed Norddeutschen Rundfunks Jazz Workshop series, held in Hamburg, Germany, for decades since 1958 and curated for many years by…
John Coltrane's Impulse! Records period is often lionized as the zenith of his artistic legacy. Crescent, A Love Supreme, and Sun Ship are the culmination of his post-bop ascent, while his final Impulse! recordings, including Ascension, Interstellar Space, Expression, and Stellar Regions, pushed further still, assailing the senses with a freedom that sometimes seemed less like galactic expansion than interior immolation. Yet, there was more. Impulse! also documented the soulfully swooning Ballads, the sublime John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman, and the graceful Duke Ellington & John…
At SouthWest Audio Fest 2026, Reference Analog's Jeff Harris (shown at the top of this post) talks about all the gear in the company's room at the show, including Rockport Orion speakers and a Boulder 2108 phono preamplifier and 2160 amplifier—plus, he gives us an early look at DS Audio's new SC-001 sonic cleaning brush—while Musical Surroundings' Garth Leerer chimes in about the Döhmann Helix One Mk3 turntable, in an interview with Ken Micallef that's now posted on our YouTube channel.
Jeff Harris's Analog Reference setup at SouthWest Audio Fest 2026 mixed hi-…
At SouthWest Audio Fest 2026, Dave Slagle (at left in thumbnail) of EM/IA (pronounced "emmy-uh") talks about the company's transformers and tube amplifiers, while John Semrad of Semrad Audio (at right) talks about his eye-catching horn-loaded loudspeakers in an interview with Ken Micallef that's now posted on our YouTube channel.
During my first encounter with the Semrad Audio–EM/IA system at SouthWest Audio Fest, it sounded closed-in, dark, and brooding.
But the next day—after the system had the time it needed to settle in—it was a marvel: a superb oasis of…
At SouthWest Audio Fest 2026, ModWright's Dan Wright talks about the company's latest offerings, including the KWA 300 stereo power amplifier, in an interview with Ken Micallef that's now posted on our YouTube channel.
Upon spinning Air's 1998 classic Moon Safari on the Pure Fidelity turntable that was set up in the ModWright Instruments room at SouthWest Audio Fest, Dan Wright's silver, 90% solid-state rig delivered an undeniably tube-like presentation.
In the ModWright room, I heard soft, rounded bass, warmly toned instrumentation, and a layered…
