May - June 2018
Audio Discourse
Muddy Waters, Folk Singer, on Analogue Productions LP: It Feels...
Muddy Waters was born on April 4, 1913 and died on April 30, 1983. The 35th anniversary of his passing has recently come and gone. For this occasion, I...
Impressions: Select Portraits and Studies from the Munich Show...
You may have noticed a trend over the years in my response to high-end audio shows. I've gravitated more and more to photographs not of products, but...
Universal Disk Players Placed on Endangered Species List
"May you live in interesting times." Legend has it that in ancient China this was a curse to be invoked against one's enemies to deprive them of a...
In Memory of David A. Wilson II, 1944 - 2018
The world of fine audio was rocked by the news of David Wilson's passing. In this memoriam, our good friend John Marks, the editor of The Tannhauser...
Quickies: The ESS 422H Heil AMT Headphones, the Linear Tube...
ESS 422H Heil AMT/Moving Coil Hybrid Headphones: New Current Production Back in February when I reviewed these brand new headphones with their amazing...
First Systems, Part 1 - Julie's System
This will be the first of another sporadically updated series I hope to do, maybe annually or maybe more often, about helping people set up their first...
Kubala-Sosna Elation! Full Cable Set Preview
Two gents walk into a bar… So the joke generally begins. Unlike a joke, however musing, what comes next is nothing short of a blockbuster HiFi story...
Where Do We Go From Here - More on the Pear Audio Blue Little...
So, months, days and year (no "s") into my sojourn with the Pear Audio Blue Little John (system par excellence), I've hit critical mass. I'm taken,...
From an Editor’s Notebook: Follow-Up Thoughts on the...
Ye Olde Editor, in medias res… (photograph by John Robinson) No, this is not a major review. It is more of a retrospective and reflection on what...
Bricasti Design M15 Solid-State Stereo Amplifier
I just had a rather arresting (in the sense of, one has to stop doing anything else, and just listen) listening experience. I want to share it with...
Feuilleton: Celebrating 10 Years of Bergmann Audio
Bergmann Audio is a company and not an individual—and that's a good thing. Otherwise it would not have been very charming to admit that I did not...
Buy A Record Label and Blue Coast Prime
In recent years there have been major changes in the music industry. Sales of optical discs have declined while interest in other ways to get music...
AXPONA 2018 - Eleven Observations
Observation 1 Okay we all get it—the bigger the better. The more rooms the better for profits and attracting attendees, but let's be realistic, it...
Hardware Reviews
The Hana EL Moving Coil Cartridge: Exceptional Performance at an...
Late last year, I had a tremendous review opportunity that focused on ProJect's The Classic turntable; unbeknownst to me, the review unit arrived as...
STEALTH Audio Helios Phono Cable - Analog Dreams of Noise-Free...
Saturday mornings I'm at the Greenmarket early and later I make my way over to Academy Records, my favorite music retailer. While perusing the bins...
Naim Audio Uniti Atom vs. UnitiQute vs. Smoked Eel
Fergus Henderson—the chef who's the reason the hip restaurant around the corner from you serves bone marrow, sweetbreads, and other animal...
The Gingko Acoustic Resonance Clarifier™ (ARCH)
As I began listening to the Gingko ARCHs the many audio tweaks I've tried over the years ran through my mind. The more I thought about it virtually...
Audio Physic Avanti Loudspeakers
German loudspeaker manufacturer Audio Physic has a long and storied history of innovation. From the employment of side-mounted woofers and narrow...
JCAT USB Isolator - Enhancing USB Audio Playback to the Nth...
I've been using JPLAY as my go-to computer-based music player/streamer for the last couple of years—it's without a doubt the very best...
Shunyata Research Sigma Phono Cable
I think of Shunyata Research as an investigative research center for signal and power transmission. And I suspect its principal scientist, Caelin...
Q Acoustics 3050 Loudspeakers - The Antidote to Overthinking
I told a knowledgeable audio friend that I was writing about Q Acoustics speakers, and he didn't know the brand, so he looked it up. He saw online that...
Tellurium Q Interconnects and Speaker Cables
I wonder if Geoff Merrigan, the owner and designer of the British company TELLURIUM Q is having nightmares? The question seems to me to be all the...
Spendor A2 Loudspeakers: Legendary British Sound at an...
At the last Rocky Mountain Audio Fest, a conversation took place between Chris Morris of Bluebird Music (Spendor's North American distributor, based in...
Mojo Audio Déjà vu Music Server
I'm going to start off by saying that I feel like I have been on a digital journey during the process of reviewing the Mojo Audio Déjà vu Music...
All Systems Go! The Bakoon International AMP-41 and DAC-21
We hold these audio Truths to be self-evident…until we don't. There are times when I feel that everything ever said or published about audio is...
Argento Flow Master Reference Power Cord Utterly Natural Sound
You know how one thing leads to another. Since I am a huge fan of CH Precision, having acquired a whole system of their components, when I found out...
Tekton Double Impact Loudspeakers
One of the things I have learned to expect and appreciate in my search for high-value, lower-cost equipment is that as the price goes down the...
LessLoss C-MARC Power Cable (and S/PDIF Cable) Preview
What do you cleverly call a company that has at its core value the maximum extraction of auditory information from any given signal? LessLoss. Get it?...
Interviews
Dave and Carol Clark of Positive Feedback
Dave and Carol Clark of Positive Feedback. Dave and Carol give us all the details on creating a print magazine, shifting to an online publication and.... . . Read More »
Music - SuperSonic Recordings
Top 500 SuperSonic List - Part 8
This is an ongoing project by Claude Lemaire of Soundevaluations. 61. Pixies, Surfer Rosa. 4AD – 803 (UK) (1988), MoFi – MFSL 1-296...
Music Reviews
The B3B4 Organ Jazz Quartet
Self-released and available at b3jazz.com; CD $12.97, digital download $9.99 "My name is Kevin Gerzevitz and I play the Hammond Organ. I've learned...
Casey's Latest Album and Tom Weaver's Catharsis - "For All the...
Casey, Where I Go When I'm Sleeping. Hassle Records. Casey is an emotional melodic hardcore band from South Wales, United Kingdom. Their second...
Gabriel Mervine's People, Places, and Things
Gabriel Mervine's People, Places, and Things. Synergy Records SMCD 80040-2, 80043-2 and 80044-2, CD $12.98 each at Amazon.com Before I can introduce...
Lyn Stanley Moonlight Sessions Volumes 1 and 2
John Huxhold and Eric Meyer With this contribution, Positive Feedback adds more to its music review community select contributions from NativeDSD.com's...
New Old Stock - Articles from Our Days in Print
ATC SCM50asl Loudspeakers and the SCA-2 Preamplifier
This article, as reviewed by Francisco Madrid, Victor Chavira, and Larry Cox, originally ran when audioMusings was in print. Issue 13, 2001 This is...
Our Friends at HIFI Statement
Auralic Vega G2 Streaming DAC
Auralics Vega der zweiten Generation verfügt nicht nur über eine spezielle Verbindung zum kürzlich an dieser Stelle vorgestellten Aries G2 und einen.... . . Read More »
Audia Flight FLS1 and FLS 4 Preamp and Poweramp
Audia Flights sind auf dem Weg mit Schenker … Spätestens bei dieser Nachricht hätte mir klar sein müssen, dass der Begriff „klein“ sehr.... . . Read More »
Our Friends at High Fidelity
Fidata HFAS1-XS20U Network Server/Audio Files Transport
Before our eyes, slowly a hierarchy of devices used to play audio files begins take a shape. For a long, too long time, there was no clarity in this...
Krakow Sonic Society Meeting 113 - dCS Vivaldi One Super Audio...
Spectacle in Two Acts with Epilogue Prologue The plan was simple: we wanted to get to know the new dCS SACD player, the Vivaldi One. In December 2013,...
Our Friends at Part-Time Audiophile
AXPONA 2018: PS Audio Unveils New DSD Waveform-Generation P15...
The Renaissance Schaumburg played host to a number of announcements at AXPONA this year, of particular interest to me was PS Audio‘s room on the.... . . Read More »
Vancouver Audio Festival 2018: Bryston Meets with Sonus Faber
Sonus Faber is an Italian loudspeaker brand with a storied history, and designs which have been lauded as timeless classics. Bryston is an.... . . Read More »
AXPONA 2018: PranaFidelity, a One Man Powerhouse of Sound
Fresh and original, much of the story from here forth revolves around that feeling. Steven Norber is not only the founder of PranaFidelity, he is also.... . . Read More »
Radio Free Chip
Radio Free Chip - A Brief Assignation with Clark Terry, December...
Making the simple complicated is commonplace. Making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity. - Charles Mingus Years ago my friend,...
Show Reports
AXPONA 2018: End of the Road, Snow on the Horizon?
Top Five Show Sounds at AXPONA 2018 1. GTT Audio lineup YG Acoustics Sonja XV Jr. speakers Audionet Heisenberg amplifiers, Stern preamplifier, PAM 2...
AXPONA 2018 - My Top Rooms for Sound
AXPONA 2018 was an absolute delight. More head count. More smiling faces. More listening rooms. Friendly hosts. Friendly patrons. It wasn't the...
AXPONA 2018, Photo Essay Part 1
This is the first year Dave and I have attended AXPONA. I quickly learned, it's not just another show. With over 160 rooms, there was a lot of ground...
