AC Nexus Advanced Power Distribution & Ground Enhancement System: $20,000 ★
Steve McCormack, once the proprietor of The Mod Squad, is the man who introduced the concept of accessory isolation feet—his Tiptoes were aluminum cones with flat tops and sharply pointed feet. Now he’s brought to market this passive AC-power filter, whose Panzerholz enclosure contains two fist-sized silver-conductor capacitors from Duelund. The IEC AC inlet is a Bocchino Audio Marriner10 and the AC outlets are four Furutech Nano Crystal Formula duplexes. Four Cardas ground posts of…
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Powerline Accessories:
Miscellaneous Accessories:
Acoustic Revive RR-888 Ultra Low Frequency Pulse Generator: $695
This small plastic box with a wall wart power supply is said to artificially generate the electromagnetic 7.83Hz Schumann resonance and alter the sound in your listening room. “Which it most certainly does—alter the sound, that is,” wrote Alex Halberstadt. Listening to “Madness” from Miles Davis’s Nefertiti LP, he realized that the band’s tart, angular sound had become sweeter: “It was as though the dissonant and otherwise disagreeable sounds on the recording were somehow pushed down below the…
Room Acoustics Treatments:
Acoustic Geometry Small Curve: $399.99 ★
Medium Curve: $449.99 ★
Deluxe Curve, Walnut Frame: $549.99 ★
Deluxe Curve, Red Oak, Stained Black Frame: $549.99 ★
Acoustic Geometry’s Curve System comprises Diffusors, Absorbers, and Corner Traps, each 42" high and available in a number of fabric choices. Each model is built on a wooden frame with a wedge-shaped cleat for hanging the product from a matching piece attached to the wall. Diffusors include a Mass-Loaded-Vinyl (MLV) membrane and are intended to control low- and midbass frequencies; Absorbers…
Subwoofers & Crossovers:
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JL Audio Active Home Audio Subwoofer Crossover: $3500
The CR-1 crossover has continuously variable high- and low-pass filters built around two banks of precision Linkwitz-Riley filters that can be set for 12 or 24dB/octave via. Front panel switch. Upon encountering the CR-1, Larry Greenhill “wondered where it had been all [his] life;” he’s been using it ever since. “It’s beautifully made, sonically transparent, performs a critical role in the optimal setup of subwoofrs, and has ergonomic bypass and mute functions that let you immediately hear…
Complete Audio Systems:
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Dynaudio Focus 10: $5500/pair (stands necessary)
Class A rating is as a Complete Audio System only; class B (Restricted LF) as a regular loudspeaker. See Loudspeaker Systems. (Vol.46 Nos.2 & 11 WWW)
FiiO M15S portable music player: $1099
The M15S is about the size of two iPhone 15s laid on top of one another. It uses the ESS 9038PRO DAC chip and can convert all files to DSD before they reach the DAC. Another feature, Second-Order Regulation, adds even-order harmonics to the output. Using Campfire in-ear headphones, Alex Halberstadt…
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-…