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This is too much streaming player and not enough at the same time. It feels like something only a forty-something could love, which I am, and I do. I love that it's a very good DAC, especially since my Rega Apollo will likely be my last CD player; when it dies, I'll just wade into... Read More »

A symbiotic sonic relationship... for your listening pleasures. Review By Tom Lyle With this article, Positive Feedback continues its content-sharing relationship with Enjoy the Music where Tom Lyle shares his thoughts on the Aavik Acoustics I-180 Integrated Amplifier, D-180 DAC, And S-180 Streamer / Network Player. Dr. David W. Robinson, Editor-in-Chief The Danish high-end audio manufacturer Aavik was... Read More »

When it comes to streamers, my point of view is simple: software is king. Good software can make a streamer, and bad software can break a streamer. For example, I have a streamer that sounds wonderful, however, it crashes at least once a listening session. For a time I tolerated these crashes, however, with no... 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 »

I-O DATA was founded in 1976 in the Japanese city of Kanazawa. I-O Data is one of the largest manufacturers of computer peripherals in this country. In 2016, an offspring brand called  Fidata was founded within company, whose audio files transports / music servers are intended for the "premium consumer market." In 2019, they decided... 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 »

      Music lovers come in all stripes and colors. As much as I love the multi box room dominating rack of separates which make up my reference audio system, that kind of space and financial commitment isn't realistic for, or desired by everyone. Often a more modest space saving approach is called for.... Read More »

Over the past four decades I have had the pleasure of taking my readers through, and helping them understand many different music formats. During the 1970s we saw the compact cassette take over from vinyl records as the dominant format for music consumed at the mass-market level. The compact cassette was then eclipsed by the... Read More »

Jump back in time to May 2016; Beth and I are going through probably the most difficult period of transition in our lives together. We'd just sold our house of thirty years, and our closing date was rapidly approaching. And we were in a mad scramble to move all our belongings into multiple storage units.... Read More »

It's not news that streaming has gobbled up 75% of the USA consumer music market, as reported recently by the RIAA, simply how fast it happened. This is the most exciting development in the High-End right now. The urge to jump quickly to the new thing is very tempting. My prudent advice for anyone considering... 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 »

Streaming digital media is the future of music playback; I've been playing about with it now for roughly five years, often with USB sources directly connected to my stereo. But it's become apparent to me over the last few years that Ethernet streaming with my Sonore UltraRendu is vastly superior to a direct USB connection.... 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 »

Since Adrian Lebena reached out to me three years ago with the offer to review Sonore's first product, the microRendu, a Sonore streamer has been in my system ever since. The microRendu was amazing—especially when paired with Sonore's Signature Linear Power Supply. It took my streaming experience—which previously had been restricted to bandwidth-limited and feature-limited... Read More »

We're Gonna Spread Our Wings And Take To The Sky For some time now I've been attempting to implement, to my satisfaction, a home built music server/home theater PC. Being an audiophile, I set the bar higher for sound than picture. But until just recently my attempts have not produced sound quality competitive with my... Read More »

Audio is all about good times. At least, it should be. Yes, I'm like everyone else in this silly hobby, poring over the mysteries of phono cable capacitance or trying to squeeze gear the size of a Mennonite hope chest into a room too small for much hope to fit. Still, at the risk of... Read More »

Digital Marches On Back in Issue 96 (HERE), Managing Editor Dave Clark put the AURALiC ARIES G2 Streaming Transporter ($3999) through its paces, praising that unit for its relative ease-of-use and naturally unforced, but also superbly detailed, sound. More recently, Alex Brinkman, AURALiC North America's Marketing Director, reached out to see if I wanted to... Read More »

Getting music from A to B is still the hot thing with more and more renderer/server/streaming devices coming out from every nook and cranny. While there continues to be offerings from such companies as AURALiC, Aurender, and so on—running their own proprietary software—there are those from the likes of Antipodes, Wolf, Roon, Small Green Computer,... Read More »

The Small Green Computer's sonicTransporter i5 fills a niche for those looking to add a simple and affordable music server to their system—one that runs with, say Roon (you will need a license for Roon), though the sonicTransporter i5 can also run with Samba and other software options. I say affordable as it is $795... Read More »