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If you think about it, every musical instrument has its birth, grows its shape, as it chooses its skin—metal, wood, glass, reeds—and develops its own unique tone / timbre. Though there are various families—woodwinds, brass, strings, keyboard, idiophones, friction instruments, and percussion—that share, within families, similar to overlapping voices. And there are literally hundreds of... Read More »

The Streaming Houses—Spotify, Apple, Amazon, Qobuz, Tidal, etc.—that provide access to, literally, millions of albums at home or On-The-Go (OTG), can be said to have birthed the "Glorious Age of Accessible Music (GAAM)." And the generation that is, arguably, best suited to take advantage of this is Generation Z (<20yrs)—the largest population segment at 25.9%,... Read More »

Tom Caulfield is NativeDSD's mastering engineer and an accomplished DSD multi-channel recording engineer. I've had the pleasure of getting to know Tom over the past several months via a series of email conversations as he's tried to help me understand the ins and outs of some of the digital technology with which he works every... Read More »

"Holistic." "Quiet." "Transparent." Those words are my attempt to summarize the KECES S3 Preamplifier/S300 Combo: A delightful possibility for those who need a simple solution for a powerful, high fidelity system, with excellent headphone performance. As with the KECES E40 integrated amplifier (HERE), the minimalist nature of the Taiwan-born S3, and S300, fits into the... Read More »

"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." Maya Angelou "…how you made them feel." What's true of human relationships is, in its own strange way, also true of certain audiophile designs and our connections to them. There... Read More »

I recently reviewed the entry level Boulder 508 phono stage, and it surprised the boots off me by its price / performance ratio. It's so good, in fact, that it ended up finding a permanent spot in my system. Since then I have been following the roll out of Boulder's latest product, the 866 integrated... Read More »

Bricasti Design is still keeping their promise of offering future-ready solutions to their existing customers. From my experience, the investment in their award-winning M1 DAC has now paid for itself three times over, thanks to these updates, that are all offered for a reasonable price. The latest update is the most sonically significant in the... Read More »

We are now four months into New York State's pandemic lock-down. The days pass, every one feels like a Saturday. There's nothing on my calendar except a couple of repeating Zoom sessions—all our entertainments have been zapped. (I know: if that's the worst of it, I shouldn't complain.) The free time hangs heavy; you adjust... Read More »

In an industry with speakers that cost three times the median house price in the United States, ($280,000, per zillow.com on May 16, 2020) good value is welcome. While the world is the oyster, or pocket change, for some, many of the rest of us need a little Santa Claus action. Unfortunately, Virginia, there isn't... Read More »

Simaudio recently introduced a new streaming digital to analog converter to their Moon product line. The $9000 680D streaming DAC slots in somewhere between the $15000 780D v2, and the $3000 280D. As with many, if not most of the products in the Moon series, the 680D has the same width and depth (18.75 x... Read More »

Ye Olde Editor, a moment. (Portrait by John Robinson) Bill Parish of GTT Audio is a great longtime audiobud of mine. We go back nearly 20 years now. During that time, I've come to develop a real respect for his line card, which is always excellent, and pay a lot of attention to his recommendations... Read More »

Late last year, LampizatOr North America's Fred Ainsley generously offered me an opportunity to review the new Atlantic TRP DAC. Even though the review time frame was shorter than I'd hoped for, I've wanted to hear a LampizatOr DAC at home for a long time, so I jumped at the chance to do it. Introduced... Read More »

A true multi-bit Hi-Res Audio DAC meets Nexus-level amplification. Review By Ron Nagle With this article, Positive Feedback continues its content-sharing relationship with Enjoy the Music. Ron Nagle shares his thoughts on the Schiit Audio Bifrost 2 DAC And Ragnarok 2 Nexus Integrated Amplifier Dr. David W. Robinson, Editor-in-Chief Yes, it's pronounced, SHIT! There is no person with... Read More »

Exploring the possibilities over the last few years on the digital front has been both rewarding and frustrating. I have reviewed or auditioned several cutting edge components, including the Esoteric K-01X SACD Player/DAC ($20,000), PS Audio Direct Stream DAC ($6000), Berkeley Alpha Reference Series 2 DAC ($16,000), the Aurender N-10 Music Server ($8000), and I... Read More »

Digital Streaming is a relatively new sound source for me. Call me old fashioned, curmudgeonly, resistant or even a snob, but I have been seriously engrossed in vinyl and transferring a bunch of it to reel to reel for over a year, so my streaming endeavors have been at a minimum comparatively speaking. I certainly... Read More »

The last 2 years of computer audio (2017 – 2019) for listeners and musicians have been unlike anything I have seen or heard since the earliest exciting and revolutionary days of the introduction of DSD as SACDs into the market which I participated with as an album (SACD The Window released in 2003). After the... Read More »

"Is it live or is it Memorex?" If you're old enough to remember that ad for audio cassettes (hell, if you're old enough to remember audio cassettes) you also remember that nobody had trouble answering the question. I don't care how astounding your Nakamichi Dragon cassette player happened to be, nobody ever walked into your... Read More »

Review By Dave Hanson With this article, Positive Feedback continues its content-sharing relationship with Enjoy the Music. Dave Hanson shares his thoughts about the LampizatOr Amber III Hi-Res DAC. Read, and learn.... Dr. David W. Robinson, Editor-in-Chief World Premiere Review! Fall in love with your music all over again. It's one thing to create a component that listeners can... Read More »

The Unbearable Joy of Thinking Outside the Box Now that GTT Audio & Video head Bill Parish and I are finally back on friendly terms (heck, he even calls me on the phone occasionally to give me a hard time, and to ask when I plan on finishing the reviews I promised to write, if... Read More »