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Damn. How does this happen? Every year, I work hard to compile my list of Brutus Award winners for the end of the year; every year I promise myself that I'll complete this award article way ahead of the curve; and every year, this deadline bushwhacks me. Bloody hell. You'd better appreciate it amigos…you'll never... Read More »

Shall I confess something? I've fallen in love. This time with an exceptional chorale and orchestral recording from Morten Lindberg and the good folks at 2L: Magnificat. Recorded by 2L at the Nidaros Cathedral in Trondheim, Norway, in 2013 and 2014, with Morten Lindberg at the controls, this album shows that rare bird: Brilliancies in... Read More »

Introduction Funny how you can get bushwhacked by excellence in the audio arts. In the early spring of 2014, Bill Parish, a long-time audio friend, got in touch with me about a line of products that he thought I would be interested in. It was from a company that I had never heard of: Audionet,... Read More »

Beginning at the end of 2003, PF established its first annual awards for fine audio. The Brutus Award was established for the best that Dave Clark and I had heard in our own listening rooms during that year. You can think of it as our equivalent of an "Editors' Choice" award. The Gizmo Award, on... Read More »

Enjoy the Music.TV's interview with David W. Robinson of Positive Feedback magazine and singer/musician/songwriter David Elias. Hosted by Steven R. Rochlin, we discuss creating and recording music, early Internet mp3.com and other services plus the places to buy modern DSD files today. As always, in the end what really matters is that you.... enjoy the music !

The movement of reference-grade reference tapes to DSD for downloading continues apace. One of the industry leaders in this regard is High Definition Tape Transfers. Bob Witrak at HDTT, who had been working previously in high-resolution PCM, is setting a very high bar for both the quality and quantity of his DSD downloads. If you... Read More »

Harry Pearson, a characteristic pose. RMAF 2009, Denver, CO With the death of Harry Pearson, Michael Mercer and I talked and decided that we would put our thoughts about his passing together in a pair of brief reflections, and publish them together. Others have already done so, and will probably continue to do so, at... Read More »

The registration lines at RMAF 2014…busy! The Intro… Shazam! How does time pass this bloody quickly? It seems like just the other day that I was at RMAF 2013. Lila and I had to host the PFO Hospitality Room without Dave and Carol Clark, who were dealing with Carol's ailments and couldn't make it. We... Read More »

The AURALiC VEGA DSD DAC (top) and TAURUS headphone amp (bottom) in tandem, on one of our reference Stillpoints ESS Grid Racks… lovely, lovely! Once, and not so long ago (A year? Two?), I maintained a list of DSD DACs. After the establishment of the DSD-over-PCM (DoP) open standard, and the polishing of ASIO drivers... Read More »

The 2014 Rocky Mountain Audio Fest is fast approaching. Running from October 10-12, this event has been one of the great regional high-end audio events for years now. For the past few years I have been moderating a series of seminars on DSD audio developments. These have featured many of the leading persons in the... Read More »

Enjoy the Music.TV's interview with David W. Robinson of Positive Feedback magazine and singer/musician/songwriter David Elias. Hosted by Steven R. Rochlin, we discuss creating and recording music, early Internet mp3.com and other services plus the places to buy modern DSD files today. As always, in the end what really matters is that you.... enjoy the music !

Turning; turning back.  2014.  Another year, another THE Show Newport Beach in the books. This has become a favorite audio event on my calendar; the combination of southern California weather at the end of May, a great venue, a solid organization, and a great turnout from audio and music distributors from all over. Richard Beers... Read More »

Some things take a long time to write. Some things come easy.  And not everything is War and Peace.  So this is not going to be a typical review. I'm not going to spend much time with the usual sort of hardware sling, other than a quick summary of the basics. No, this will be more... Read More »

The amazing Astell&Kern AK240… native DSD in the palm of my hand! The DSD revolution continues… Just about everywhere you turn in the world of fine audio, you find DSD in the news and views of a growing number of companies and audiophiles. It's no longer mainly underground, the turf of determined die-hards fighting for... Read More »

Wow! I've been swimming in the new HDTT transfer to Double DSD of Duke Ellington's superb recording, Duke Ellington Indigos. The Duke has a special place in my jazzic heart, and has for a long time now. In fact, one of the early SACDs that I glommed onto was the "old" Mobile Fidelity's Blues in Orbit, now... Read More »

Chad Kassem's Super Hirez site has an excellent and growing collection of DSD downloads from major labels (Sony Music, Universal Music Group), as well as from smaller/indie labels (Analogue Productions, Reference Recordings, David Elias) at http://store.acousticsounds.com. Chad's helpful documentation about all aspects of DSD hardware and software is the best I've seen, and really helps the person who... Read More »

It is with the deepest regret and heaviest heart that we report the sudden and unexpected passing of our dear friend and colleague, Tony Weber. While Tony was part of MIT for just less than a year, he shared with us his love, knowledge, and understanding of music that goes unsurpassed the industry. His depth of... Read More »

It has been a long while since I wrote about a vibration isolation platform. In fact, I would have to go back to the days of the Vibraplane Model 2210 passive platform's arrival here at Clark Johnsen's strong recommendation to find the last time that I did this. And that takes it back to the... Read More »