There are few genres more polarizing than minimal electronic music. This is totally subjective; but I believe you have to experience this music in a live setting in order to fully appreciate it outside the club: with perhaps a little chemical booster on-board in order to enhance the senses (or maybe not—Dr. David Robinson and... Read More »
Thank goodness for Michael Mercer. While other Positive Feedback writers cover headphones, DACs, and amps (Warren Chi, Bob Levi, and our editors spring to mind), nobody proselytizes from the headphone pulpit with as much relentless enthusiasm as monsieur Mercer does for this publication and on his website, Audio360.org. And there's a need to keep the momentum going, judging... Read More »
When I saw the promotional material announcing this book project from The Absolute Sound and learned that it was first going to be available in limited, numbered copies at CES 2014, I was distraught. For the first time in 15 years, circumstances prevented me from attending the 2014 annual industry event. That meant that not only was... 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 »
Lukasz Fikus of Lampizator One of the newer companies making Digital to Analog Converters (DACs) in the audio world is Lampizator. The name comes from a nickname given to company founder Lukasz Fikus, who designs and manufactures his DACs in Poland. "Lampa" is the polish word for vacuum tube, and "The Terminator," well, everyone knows... Read More »
The Duelund Coherent Audio/Tannoy Westminster Royal Special Edition Project article I wrote for Issue 70 of Positive Feedback was the most fun I've had writing about audio ever! In that amazing project we took a 'no holds barred' approach to building ultra-high performance external crossovers for my Westminster Royal SE loudspeakers using the exotic, hand-crafted-in-Denmark, Duelund CAST capacitors, inductors,... Read More »
Admittedly I wasn't interested in high resolution files until I could bring that music with me. Having amazing-sounding music stuck on my hard-drive would've been the worst possible tease! As a confessed music addict, I need the ability to grab whatever music I choose from my digital library and take it with me. If I... 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 »
Rumen Artarski is a hunk of a man. Tall, handsome and ramrod-straight. He could serve in Special Forces or join the Honor Guard. He could be a grenadier or serve in the praetorian guard of the Caesars. There is some inner strength in Rumen—he is big, but not bulky or sluggish. When he first wrote... 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 »
It started with a dare. A good friend of mine has always been very respectful and complimentary of my current system. I have to give him much of the credit for getting the sound to reach the level of excellence that now exists. All our late night listening sessions and passionate if not heated discussions... Read More »
Phonat has created a collection of tracks for the sonic adventurist, and it turns out to be a splendid audible journey. From the first track to the last; the sounds ebb and flow, collide, mesh, slide and glide
In a large, superbly designed and printed book titled The Absolute Sound's Illustrated History of High-End Audio dedicated to loudspeakers, we will not find a single word on the company Albedo (Robert Harley and others, The Absolute Sound's Illustrated History of High-End Audio, Austin 2013). And it's no wonder—among the distinguished pioneers and veterans of the loudspeaker industry... Read More »
The e-Onkyo Music web site (see link below) continues its support of newly Direct Stream Digital (DSD) music in download form with today’s release of Listen by the DSD Trio. This is a Stereo, Double Rate DSD (DSD128) download on the Shiosai Zizo label. (A separate Stereo CD edition of the album will be released in Japan... Read More »
How the Kiss Gained its Polish The 93rd meeting of the Krakow Sonic Society has been arranged at the request of wykop.pl and related web portals. This report from the meeting is intended for people who like to think and act. I would like to apologize to all those who only like to think and... Read More »
Taken from the closing remarks of a Myspace blog post that Kevin thumbed out sometime in 2006, that serves as a reminder of how important portable audio is for so many people. Music fuels the soul. It is not something to be left behind when we leave the house. It's not furniture.
Tonsil, a former giant and the largest manufacturer of drivers and loudspeakers in this part of Europe, located in the Polish town of Wrzesnia, has recently published information about a photo contest featuring speakers from this company. The winning photos showed older but no less interesting designs, meticulously restored, kept alive and—most importantly—still being used.... Read More »
The Air Force One turntable from the Japanese manufacturer TechDAS that I reviewed in March was a true revelation to me and its presence in my system (see HERE) made for an exceptional experience. It embodies all the design concepts of Mr. Hideaki Nishikawa, his whole experience and heaps of money from the Japanese company Stella, which... Read More »
TVLogic is a Korean manufacturer of audio components and UHD (Ultra High Definition) TV monitors. It just so happens that its research department is behind creating one of the most interesting audio file transports, the W20. Milled from an aluminum billet and equipped with a SSD drive, ultraprecise Oven-Controlled Crystal Oscillator (OCXO), jitter reduction circuit... Read More »
By calling his turntable Little Super Deck (LSD), Arthur Khoubessarian (you can see him on the head picture made during the High End 2014 show in Munich) displayed a sense of humor. You can't deny him that, nor his talent and intuition. Looking at his first designs he presented under the Pink Triangle brand or... Read More »
When I returned to Warsaw, I got a phone call from Franciszek Walicki asking for some photographs of Czesław, because he had just hired him for the band Niebiesko-Czarni. I thought that they had all lost their minds and said that I didn't take pictures of bad singers. Walicki got seriously angry. He retorted: You'll see,... Read More »
AK240 Astell&Kern is a company that is advancing high fidelity playback and while introducing new and exciting—innovative products—for portable audio. Astell&Kern is the high-end division of Iriver. Iriver was founded in 1999 when seven former executives left Samsung with a vision. Located in Seoul, Korea, the company's first products were MP3 players that were sold... Read More »
QUESTION: "What cans do you like to listen to? What do you hear as differences between speakers and headphones in terms of how they present sound?" ANSWER: "Good question. For myself, I use an ALO modded Grado 225 and Senn 600 for some recording work but I find the midrange on the Senn is not... Read More »
"And you may ask yourself How do I work this? And you may ask yourself Where is that large automobile?" —"Once in Lifetime" by David Byrne, Brian Eno, Chris Frantz, Jerry Harrison, and Tina Weymouth It took a really long time to get to review the Ayre QB-9DSD and even then they had to send... Read More »
Roger Skoff, for the first time ever, actually advocates blind testing! Any of you, who have followed my writings, either here or in other publications, should already have a pretty good idea of where I stand on the issues of measurement and double blind testing as related to High End audio. Even those of you... Read More »
Six months ago, we caught our first sight of Woo Audio's WA7tp prototype at CanJam 2013. It was unassumingly dressed in a faux WA7 enclosure, and plainly labeled as a "Prototype Tube Power Supply for WA7 Fireflies."
Crunch! That was the most prominent sound in my mind on my trip to The Home Entertainment Show in Newport Beach, California. The reverberating crunch of being solidly rear-ended at a stop light, late Thursday night, echoes throughout my sore muscles. The accident also punctuated what was to be a much-needed change of pace: less stress, more relaxation.
For several years now, Astrotec has been a name familiar to enthusiasts as a manufacturer of value-conscious, yet quality-engineered, balanced armature IEMs. This past year, they began shifting over to hybrid IEMs en masse.
Los Angeles: A seething darkness, grimey with discarded dreams of souls hiding behind its glittering, welcoming facade. The consummate actress, as much a chameleon as the talent it spins into the world on the silver screen.
Everyone has at one time or another fallen prey to a never say never moment. My most recent gaff? Never, even in my wildest dreams, did I ever expect to write a follow-up to "Paper or Plastic? Vinyl's Final Resting Place: The Next Installment" (http://pollux.positive-feedback.com/Issue38/lp_sleaves.htm). In fact, I would have bet the house that the... Read More »
For years, I've ripped CD's, or downloaded music from the Internet (legally, of course) and have always found it difficult that most people simply don't understand how to properly tag the metadata! Little things that matter; Disc numbering, album art, proper "various artists" tagging (don't even get me started on this one!) These things really... Read More »
The loudspeaker survey that I started a year ago culminates with the Gauder Akustik Berlina RC7. (Gauder Akustik formerly known as Isophon). These are rather interesting—and clearly different than the other loudspeakers I have written about in the survey—in that their 'tear-dropped' (or perhaps winged) shaped cabinet is composed of stacked 'layers' of ribs made... Read More »
This is unequivocally NOT a review; it is also the most difficult non-review I've ever written. This is an experience of the audio-kind; a transitory recounting of a few months with one of the unique products in audio; the Unison Research Unico Upower Booster Amplifier. I became interested in the Upower after reading about it... Read More »
We love our music at Audio360. Over the last two decades the mobile audio market heated up at an exponential rate thanks to companies such as Sony and Apple. Companies like these pioneered the industry.
"Listen as the wind blows from across the great divide voices trapped in yearning, memories trapped in time the night is my companion, and solitude my guide would I spend forever here and not be satisfied?" —"Possession", Sarah McLachlan This does look back a long time. After a conversation with Josh Heiner of Sonicweld about... Read More »
Read the complete review HERE "In the absence of visual cues, auditory cues have to be that much better." J. Gordon Holt After 10 weeks of consistent use of the Zesto Audio BIA 120 Class A Amplifier, I find its performance continues to be unmatched by most amplifiers, as I did in my original review. In one parameter,... Read More »
I first became aware of the audiophile forums about ten years ago; at the time, I was working on site at Delta Air Lines in their Corporate Communications department. As a contractor representing R.R. Donnelley, I was required to spend long days there, essentially at their total beck and call. Because of the seriously complicated... Read More »
