March - April 2016
Audio Discourse
My Life in Music, by Joe Cohen
[Joe Cohen is a long-time friend of Positive Feedback, and owner of The Lotus Group, a high-end audio company in California. Joe is married to the Jazz...
From The Kipnis Studios (KSS™) – The ART of...
Music & Film, Audio & Video, Learning & Understanding, Art & Life: "The Soundtrack" – A musical accompaniment created by the Gods!...
Adventures in Cabling
Want to start an argument with your audiophile friends? Tell them cables don't make a difference in sound. Or conversely, tell them cables do make a...
Journeys in Audio Subjectivism - Part Four
Zu Audio: divine, evil, beautiful, disgusting; Or, "Careful with that tone, mister." So what kind of sound are you after? Accurate? Musical? Okay. But...
Star Wars Comes to DSD and Analog Tape
Star Wars Original Soundtracks in Stereo DSD and Analog Tape Horch House has released the first three original soundtracks from the Star Wars Series:...
The Aurender N100H and The Well-Rumored Death of the Mac mini
"Help!" —The Beatles In memory of Lee Weiland, the man who introduced me to the concept of a digital music server and whose Locus Design cables I...
Sony Adds Car Digital Media Player, Turntable and Disc Player to...
Sony Electronics is expanding the company’s High Resolution Audio line with a new Car Audio System, Turntable and Universal Disc Player which all...
Audio Ramblings - JCAT, Acoustic Imagery, and Synergistic...
Not sure how this came about, but man do I have a lot of stuff here to review… the PS Audio BHK250 amplifier and their AC12 and AC5 power cables, the...
The Hard and Straight
When I first encountered the vertical walls of houses and the hard, straight lines of streets I was still suffused with a memory of something...
Roger Sheker, Chief Engineer, Audience LLC, dies at 74
Roger Sheker, left, Chief Engineer for Audience LLC, with President John McDonald. Born in Ft. Dodge, Iowa, on Christmas Day, 1942, Roger was a...
Sonic Satori Impressions: Audeze Titanium EL-8 + Cipher...
Audeze Nails It Yet Again As I sit on the back porch bobbin' my head to A Tribe Called Quest's "Lyrics To Go" off Midnight Marauders via TIDAL through...
Why USB Cables Can Make a Difference
So there is this controversy of sorts… well not really for many of us, but certainly for some of us. See, the argument is that USB cables cannot and...
Hardware Reviews
JPLAY for Windows: The Final Piece of the Puzzle?
Earlier this year I reviewed Fidelizer, an optimization software package designed to reduce the number of active background processes in Windows...
Wells Audio Majestic Amplifier
I'm not going to tell you what I did on my summer vacation. (Maui) I'm not going to tell you what I got for Christmas. (Schiit Audio Vali 2). I am...
Aurender N10 Music Server
My recent reviews for the Devialet 400 and 800 Integrated Amplifiers generated plenty of emails and comments. Thanks to all the readers who took notice...
Audio Tekne TFA 9501 Linestage, TEA 9501 Phonostage, and TM 9502...
It so happened that together with some friends we delivered the Audio Tekne system I reviewed before directly to the Audio Video Show 2015. As soon...
The Atma-Sphere Ultraviolet UV-1 Preamplifier
Dateline St. Paul, Minnesota: Today, audio engineers observed an invisible sonic wave emanating from Atma-Sphere in St. Paul. The engineer who first...
David Power Cables from Enklein
HEADLINE: Rubinstein Bested by 24-Year-Old Russian Prodigy "Where are the great artists of contemporary classical music?" The question is not...
Melco HA-N1A, Part 2, by Roland Dietl
[Amended byline: Roland Dietl, by courtesy of Dirk Sommer] If you are into music streaming and especially into hires music there is one question you...
Melco HA-N1A, Part 1
When you are looking for a way to comfortably manage your collection of digital music, enjoy it with the best sound quality possible and without the...
Audio Research Ref 6 Line Stage - Preliminary Thoughts
Transformative Evolution I first heard about the Ref 6 line stage coming to market in late October 2015. Without any hesitation, I contacted ARC and...
Audio Vault USA Rack
Audio Vault USA is a relative newcomer to the world of audio equipment racks designed for use in high end systems. Audio Vault USA was founded a year...
Furutech AC Bundle
Usually, I come to a review with foreknowledge about a product and a set of basic expectations. In this case, I had no first hand prior exposure to...
Devialet 800 Integrated Amplifier and Synergistic Research...
My recent review of the Devialet 400 Integrated Amplifier was quite an eye opener for me and apparently many of our readers. Please see the review...
Fiio M3 Digital Audio Player: Incredibly Good Sound in a...
Fiio is beginning to gain a little steam in the personal portable world; their top-of the line player sells for about a third of what an...
Medusa Speaker Cable from Stage III Concepts
Jeez, this thing is heavy. Schlepping the box upstairs, I stopped to catch my breath and wondered what they're made from. Thus I embarked on my latest...
The Audioengine HD6 Premium Powered Speakers
A Serious Overachiever From the moment I opened the box containing Audioengine's new flagship HD6 powered loudspeaker system, I had a feeling something...
LampizatOr Euforia DAC
Writing audio reviews is like a visiting a "nudie bar"—reviewers are exposed, so to speak, to things their significant others and financial planners...
Interviews
Interview: The Editors Series - Michael Lavorgna
If you return to previous interviews with journalists that I have conducted as part of "The Editors" series, you will find out that they represent both...
Music Reviews
Notes of an Amateur: Schnittke, Tchaikovsky, Jessica Lee.
Schnittke, Penitential Psalms; Three Sacred Hymns. RIAS Kammerch0r, Hans Christian Rademann, conductor. Harmonia Mundi 902225. Russian Alfred Schnittke...
Anne Bisson: Blue Mind An Audiophile Favorite is Given a...
Anne Bisson: Blue Mind, Co-sponsored by Wuti Larnroongroj, Brilliance Music and Studios and Gary Koh, Genesis Advanced Technologies. 15-ips, 2-track,...
Kinsky, Copula Mundi
Kinsky, Copula Mundi. SPV Poland/Requiem Records 104 | 2015. Premiere: 1993. Re-edition: 2015. Medium: Compact Disc The Kinsky band, which was...
Nikolaus Harnoncourt Conducts Bruckner
Bruckner: Symphony No. 3 in D minor, "Wagner" (Nowak ed., 1877) Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Amsterdam/Nikolaus Harnoncourt Teldec 4509-98405-2. TT:...
Notes of an Amateur: Handel's Water Music; Music@Menlo 'Live'...
George Frederick Handel, Water Music. Academie fur Alte Musik Berlin. Harmonia Mundi HMC 902216. Handel was German, but he was also a Londoner for 47...
Brief Impressions: HDTracks’ City of the Sun, to the sun and...
All of us who love music and audio have some sort of history that goes way back into our past. In my case, it was my Dad's love of all things classical...
Notes of an Amateur: More Wolpe, David Finckel as Soloist,...
Stefan Wolpe. Compositions for Piano, 1920-1952. David Holzman, piano. Bridge 9116. I decided I couldn't leave Wolpe where I left him last time out....
New Old Stock - Articles from Our Days in Print
MSB Link DAC II
This article, by Dave Clark, Larry Cox, Francisco Duran, and Lauren Stephens originally ran when audioMUSINGS was in print - Issue 10, 2000. ...
Our Friends at HIFI Statement
Avid Diva II SP
Plattenspieler aus dem britischen Königreich haben einen guten Ruf. Avid HiFi Ltd. bietet ein breit gefächertes Sortiment interessanter Modelle. In.... . . Read More »
Chord Dave DAC Part 3
Im dritten und letzten Teil geht es ansatzlos weiter mit Rob Watts im zweiten Teil begonnenen Ausführungen über das Noise Shaping des DAVE. . . . Read More »
Chord Dave DAC Part 2
Während es im ersten Teil vorrangig um den Klang des DAVE ging, werden hier die Überlegungen seines Entwicklers Rob Watts und seine ganz eigenen.... . . Read More »
Chord Dave DAC Part 1
Beim Besuch von Entwickler Rob Watts konnte ich – wie kurz in den News berichtet – viel zu wenig Songs mit dem DAVE genießen.. . . Read More »
Our Friends at High Fidelity
ENYA Dark Sky Island
Label: Aigle Music | Universal Music UK/Warner Music Japan WPCR-17045 Released: Nov. 20th 2015 Format: Mini LP CD Dark Sky Island is the 8th studio...
Curious Cables USB Cable
How our memory works is still a mystery. We know where memories are stored, we can literally point out parts of our brain responsible for that. But the...
AudioPax l50 Preamplifier and m50 Power Amplifier
This is one of those tests I've been wanting to do for a few years; but it kept being postponed and at one stage it seemed like it would never happen....
Show Reports
CanJam SoCal 2016 - Behind the Booths and Back
A Personal Audio Odyssey Dan Wrights ModWright Tryst headphone amp was stunningly musical & engaging. CanJam SoCal 2016 was a very special time.... . . Read More »
AES 2015 New York Awards
Best Sound in Show The 78 project brought in a live acoustic band, Sean Walsh and Ray Williams, sat them down in the conference room, stuck a...
