January - February 2017
Audio Discourse
Abraham Lincoln, a True Opera Lover (Really!)
Our audio compadre John Marks herein rightly brings to our attention Abraham Lincoln's deep affection for opera and the stage. He was assassinated,...
The Wild Wacky World of Bruce Walker - Cartoons with an Edge!
"Man, it was easy! Five acres of solar panels, and I killed it!!"
Grace Design m920 and the Steinway and Sons Office Systems -...
John Marks' final installment about his recommended Steinway and Sons office system is below. He focuses on the Grace Design m920 DAC as the digital...
Connections, Connections: Steinway and Sons Office Systems and...
In part three of this series, John Marks introduces cables to his small office audio system recommendations. While John has his own Esperanto Audio...
A Fantastic Little Stereo System - Part 2
Parasound's Zamp v.3 stereo amplifier One of my favorite lines from the original Star Trek TV series (and please, nobody forget that Alexander...
Impressions: The Gryphon Audio Kalliope 8x DSD DAC
The Gryphon Audio Kalliope DSD DAC upon arrival here… (Photograph and image processing by Robinson) The world of DSD DACs has certainly exploded over...
Notes on the Gryphon Audio Kalliope DSD DAC by Flemming
Flemming Rasmussen of Gryphon Audio Gryphon was never the adopter of technology for the sake of technology on its own, we always found it intriguing...
A Fantastic Little Stereo System - Part 1
John Marks gives us a recommendation for a stereo system that offers a great deal of musical satisfaction with a small footprint and at a more...
America's Premier Composer Maria Schneider at Soka University...
Maria Schneider (photograph courtesy of Soka University) Maria Schneider is an unrivaled American composer in the grand tradition of Vivaldi, Bach,...
Before She Became Princess Leia
Finishing graduate study at Stanford, 1970-72, I was Director of Admissions at the The Athenian School, a small and innovative prep school on Mt....
Audio Ramblings - The Luminist Revision Neptune Cables from...
Cables, cables, cables. What are we supposed to do? Yeah, there are those who feel that regardless of what one hears, they can't be hearing what they...
The Acoustic Revive RPC-1 Power Supply Conditioner: Power to the...
Acoustic Revive RPC-1 Power Supply Conditioner The intrigue usually starts with a message from Yoshi-san or Elia-san from the MuSon Project in Osaka,...
Radio Free Chip - Tweaks Are Us
Greetings from the underground, fellow music lovers and seekers after audio nirvana. As I may have conveyed in my last ruminations many, many moons...
Roon Headless on a NAS with the microRendu: An Important...
The NAS element of my Roon/QNAP/microRendu setup is a QNAP TS-251, which has the requisite 64-bit processor and sufficiently upgradeable RAM to run...
Wise Men From the East, Bearing Gifts! Part 2
Part 2 of John Marks' Christmas recommendations: This time, the hardware. Like the wise men's gifts, in a set of three. Simple. Affordable. And each...
Wise Men From the East, Bearing Gifts! Part 1
Very nearly too late, we publish a pair of reviews by God rest ye merry, gentleman, John Marks. He takes us through a set of gift recommendations on...
The Inchoate Vision (Further Reflections on "Heaven with a Gun")
I continue to reflect on the time my father and I drove out to Old Tucson and visited the set of Heaven with a Gun, a western movie starring Glenn...
Why aren't we…?
Roger Skoff writes about the state of our hobby and the industry that supports it. One of the politicians in the recent U.S. Presidential election...
The Neoteric Listener…The Audio-Technica A2000Z Closed-Back...
What's that old saying about the more you learn, the less you know? Boy, does that ever apply to the constantly changing world of audio. Changing...
Really Reel: Greg Beron on Tape, Part 2, Opus3 Records Sampler...
At the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas I was showing my UHA tape Decks with Tom Campanga of Quintessence Loudspeakers and PBN electronics....
Boy Finds Music Again, Part 1 of a Story of Sorts
I began this story to share the "joy of boy finds music again," but quickly realized that it's a story with more hats than that simple narrative could...
Impressions: Robinson's Brutus Awards for 2016, Part The Last
Herewith is Impressions: Robinson's Brutus Awards for 2016, Part The Last. Part The First can be found HERE, Part The Second HERE, Part The...
The Revenge of Analog
The Revenge of Analog: Real Things and Why They Matter, by David Sax The morning of Black Friday, just two weeks and counting past a very bleak...
Impressions: Robinson's Brutus Awards for 2016, Part The Fourth
Herewith is Impressions: Robinson's Brutus Awards for 2016, Part The Fourth. Part The First can be found HERE, Part The Second HERE, and Part...
Impressions: Robinson's Brutus Awards for 2016, Part The Third
Herewith is Impressions: Robinson's Brutus Awards for 2016, Part The Third. Part The First can be found HERE and Part The Second HERE. There will...
Brutus Awards 2016 - A System of Sorts
So here it is the end of 2016 and us with our Brutus Awards. This has been a year with major changes for both Carol and I (we retired from many years...
Hardware Reviews
Duevel Venus Loudspeakers
The Venus is the third Duevel speaker I have reviewed and sits directly in the middle of their lineup. Since I have heard at one time or another all of...
Music Interface Technologies ACC169 Speaker Interface and Oracle...
Music Interface Technologies (MIT) products have had a place in my system on and off over the last twenty years. From the MI-850 Tri-wire designed for...
Wilson Audio Alexx Loudspeakers
Wilson Audio Alexx Loudspeakers Every once in awhile (though frankly, more frequently than I care for), I chuckle, nay, swing my arms and hands in...
Acoustical Systems The Palladian Cartridge
Acoustical Systems' tonearm Aquilar, as well as the top-of-the-range model Axiom, are characterized by the UNI-DIN geometry newly developed by Dietrich...
CH Precision P1 Phono Stage
Empiricism vs. Theory What was my biggest discovery last year? Bass traps. I installed them in the left and right front corners behind the speakers, as...
The First Watt F7 Power Amplifier - Simply Sublime
When I first requested an opportunity to write about the next new First Watt amplifier, I was candid with Nelson Pass that it was possible my Von...
Göbel High-End Lacorde Statement USB, Ethernet, and Digital XLR...
I really couldn't resist the splendid speaker and interconnect cables from Göbel Audio. To be on the safe side I therefore listened only briefly to...
Merrill Audio's Christine Preamplifier
Merrill Wettasinghe with his Merrill Audio Christine Preamplifier at Nack Labs When you think about it, the room is arguably your most important...
Magico S5 Mk. 2 Loudspeakers: A New Classic
Speakers—out of all the components in the audio chain— have seen the biggest advancements in performance over the last couple of years. Cabinet...
Sophia Electric Magik Box
Positive Feedback has reviewed a number of products from Sophia Electric. Way back in Issue 8 of audioMusings hardware reviews, I was fortunate enough...
Esoteric F-05 Integrated Amplifier
The Esoteric K-01X SACD/CD player that I recently reviewed was an amazing performer. It was my first experience with an Esoteric product and I found it...
Raven Audio Silhouette MK2 Reference Preamplifer and Shaman MK2...
I'm no stranger to reviewing Raven Audio gear having previously reviewed a pair of the Raven Audio Silhouette Reference amplifiers and Silhouette...
Ayon Audio CD-35 Super Audio CD Player Review + Krakow Sonic...
The Super Audio CD Player, Ayon Audio CD-35 turned out to be significantly different from typical products of this type, both in terms of technical...
Ascend Acoustics Sierra-2 Loudspeaker
Ascend Acoustics is a high-end loudspeaker manufacturer operating out of Southern California. Founded by David Fabrikant in 1999, Ascend Acoustics'...
Zesto Audio Andros Téssera Phono Stage
Zesto's audio designer and chief engineer, George Counnas, reminds me of the late great William Z. Johnson of ARC fame. Johnson just had to think about...
Journeys in Audio Subjectivism - Part Seven: The Unison...
The Unison Research Unico DM amplifier (image courtesy of Unison Research) "There is no end. There is no beginning. There is only the infinite passion...
Devialet Expert 1000 Pro Integrated Amplifier
This is the third in my series of reviews on the Devialet product line. Please see my commentary on the Devialet Expert 400 and Devialet Expert 800 by...
The Nomos Lenco L 75 Modification
Lenco L 75 or Thorens TD 150 / II - that was the question that I asked myself in 1969 when I had to buy a new turntable. The mechanism of the my...
Music - SuperSonic Recordings
Top 500 SuperSonic List - Part 1
This is an ongoing project by Claude Lemaire of Soundevaluations. Here is the first 10 of his Top 500 SuperSonic List... "This is a journey into...
Music Reviews
Arthur Lipner's Two Hands, One Heart on CD
Back in the '80s, when I was in college, I tried very hard to get into jazz. Many of my music-loving friends had already discovered it, and they...
Vamos on the Music: The National, 'Trouble Will Find Me'
The National's sixth album, Trouble Will Find Me, continues the Brooklyn-based band's streak of melancholy mellow, indie rock. It's reminiscent of the...
A Second Grieg Piano Concerto?
GRIEG: Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 16 (rev. Grieg and Grainger)*; Piano Concerto in B minor (fragments); EVJU: Piano Concerto in B minor (on...
Notes of an Amateur: Prokofiev, Wu Han, and Kat Edmonson
Serge Prokofiev, Piano Sonatas, Vol. 1. Nos 2, 6, and 8. Alexander Melnikov, Harmonia Mundi HMC 902202. For those of us who find early twentieth...
Preoccupations, 'Preoccupations'
Preoccupations, Preoccupations JAGJAGUWAR, Digital, vinyl, and CD In hindsight, naming a band Viet Cong probably wasn't the best idea, but they did...
Notes of an Amateur: A Cornucopia of Modern Music
Ustvolskaya, Silvestrov, and Kancheli. Works for Piano and Orchestra. Elisaveta Blumina, piano. Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra, Thomas Sanderling. Grand...
Acoustic Sounds Goes Ultimate Analog - Reel-to-Reel Tape Comes...
"It's so easy to fall in love." Buddy Holly and Norman Petty might have just as easily been writing about reel-to-reel tape as finding one's soulmate...
New Old Stock - Articles from Our Days in Print
McIntosh MC352 Amplifier
This article, by Victor Chavira, Larry Cox, and Dave Clark, originally ran when audioMUSINGS was in print - Issue 15, 2001 McIntosh Audio Labs is a...
Our Friends at HIFI Statement
Audio Exklusiv Eco Line Preamp/Poweramp
Wofür mehr Geld ausgeben? Lohnt sich die Investition in die Vor-Endstufen-Kombination im Vergleich zum Vollverstärker der noch jungen Eco Line von.... . . Read More »
Mutec MC-3+ Smart Clock USB
USB ist heutzutage – zumindest im Heimbereich - die gängigste Schnittstelle, um digitale Audio-Daten von einem PC oder einem speziellen Audio-Server.... . . Read More »
Audia Flight Strumento n°1 mk2
Viele Audiophile meinen, in diesen digitalen Zeiten ohne Vorstufe auskommen zu können. Diese Ansicht teile ich nicht: Für mich ist ein Vorverstärker.... . . Read More »
Göbel Lacorde Statement Ethernet oder wohin mit dem Router
Oliver Göbels Digitalkabel sind nun in der Serienversion erhältlich – werden aber nicht in Längen oberhalb von drei Metern angeboten. Könnte es.... . . Read More »
Our Friends at High Fidelity
Ayon Audio CD-35 Super Audio CD Player Review + Krakow Sonic...
The Super Audio CD Player, Ayon Audio CD-35 turned out to be significantly different from typical products of this type, both in terms of technical...
Hijiri 聖 SMT Takumi Maestro AC Cable
It was clear from the very beginning that the Harmonix X-DC Studio Master Million Maestro power cable was a highly limited product, so it was intended...
The Nomos Lenco L 75 Modification
Lenco L 75 or Thorens TD 150 / II - that was the question that I asked myself in 1969 when I had to buy a new turntable. The mechanism of the my...
Show Reports
New York Audio Show 2016
If you find yourself in the Big Apple, you are likely to encounter street musicians. Of course, their quality varies: some are quite good, others not...
