Audiophile News, Opinion and Insights

Every so often, FutureAudiophile.com likes to revisit a featured news story subject because of its major importance to the audiophile hobby. Because speaker placement is so important, and so unique to the room, we thought it might be interesting to… Read the Review »

When a British loudspeaker manufacturer with a five-decade legacy decides to look backward for inspiration, you know something interesting is about to happen. Monitor Audio’s latest offering pays homage to the culturally explosive 1980s with the Monitor Audio Studio 89, a compact bookshelf… Read the Review »

Spend any time whatsoever perusing the wealth of technical information on the audiophile hobby, and the importance of a low noise floor will be prominently discussed. Simply put, noise, aka distortion, is the enemy of an excellent-sounding audiophile musical reproduction… Read the Review »

Before leaving for the 2025 Capital Audiofest (read Jerry Del Colliano’s 15 Thoughts article here)in Rockville, MD, I took the time, as is my custom, to completely power down my entire audio system. I also took the extra precaution of… Read the Review »

SVS, a leading manufacturer of high-performance home audio products, proudly announces the 3000 R|Evolution Series subwoofers, bringing transformative advancements from the flagship R|Evolution platform to make reference subwoofer experiences possible for more people than ever. Building on the technology platform… Read the Review »

“Because things eventually wear out and need replacing…” This simple answer to a presumably simple question – why I should replace something audiophile – carries a bucketful of stipulations and conditions. There is no one perfect answer, despite the nearly… Read the Review »

My first thought when I learned that I was receiving the FiiO K15 desktop DAC and headphone amplifier was that the name was a mouthful, which was quickly followed by excitement, as FiiO is one of the Chi-Fi brands that… Read the Review »

On February 11, 2026, FutureAudiophile.com and a select group of its most generous partners are scheduled to donate a studio-quality audiophile system to the Shelemay Audiolab at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Under the leadership of John Pax, PhD., the students at… Read the Review »

The meteoric rise of artificial intelligence, or AI (not to be confused with the steak sauce … just clarifying, in the event that Linda McMahon is reading) over the past few years has been fascinating and, to be honest, a… Read the Review »

The Metronome DST Compact Disc transport is a product that is a bit of an anomaly in a world where so much of today’s audiophile content is consumed by streaming services. Why build something to play antiquated Compact Discs, you… Read the Review »

The mission statement for FutureAudiophile.com is clear and well-stated, in that we are trying to inspire the next generation of audiophiles to fall in love with the hobby in the same way that the original gangsters did. Generation X and the Baby… Read the Review »

Interior design is something that I spend a pretty good amount of effort on in both my professional and personal life. I find it a creative outlet that directly affects your overall happiness and living well. Right now, I am… Read the Review »

There were two concepts that many in the industry thought would be the ultimate draw for new audiophiles. The first was unlimited access to all the recorded music that we know of. The second was the proliferation of really good,… Read the Review »

Every year, we pick out the best of the best audiophile gear from what we have reviewed. To be clear, we don’t purposefully review “bad gear” (sometimes we even send it back or to another reviewer if we aren’t feeling… Read the Review »

There aren’t many North American audiophile shows that I miss these days. I have also added the Munich (now moving to Vienna in 2026) HI-FI Show to my list as well. Every year in the fall CEDIA (often in Denver… Read the Review »

To say I can’t believe that it has been three years since we started FutureAudiophile.com might be a little bit clichéd, but is completely truthful. 2025 has been an absolutely brutal year, with the Palisades Fire that destroyed our home.… Read the Review »

Many years ago, I worked for a company selling products both direct to qualified OEMs – original equipment manufacturers – and to authorized distributors. For the direct business, an Original Equipment Manufacturer purchased component parts to use in the manufacture… Read the Review »

Qobuz will be the first to tell you that they had literally no role in having their weekly subscriber base unexpectedly grow 500 percent in just a few days. The people responsible for this sea change in premium HD music… Read the Review »

After cutting the grass and raking the leaves at almost every one of the neighbors’ homes surrounding my Mom and Dad’s house, I had finally saved the requisite sum of money to purchase my first audiophile stereo system. My Mom,… Read the Review »

There are a lot of varied reasons why people are into the audiophile hobby. Some just love listening to music, and that passion drives their electronics-buying decisions. Some audiophiles are more into audio gear, so that the music is second… Read the Review »

Can you imagine how bad things must have gotten at General Motors back in the day when they realized that their highest end, most iconic car brand, Cadillac, was fully positioned to The Greatest Generation at a time when they… Read the Review »

MartinLogan, a pioneer in high-performance audio technology, is thrilled to announce the latest addition to its all-new subwoofer lineup, the Grotto® Series. This new series follows the introductions of the Dynamo® Foundation, Dynamo® and Abyss Series, announced in August 2024.… Read the Review »

If you’re just getting started in the audiophile hobby – or maybe you’ve been dabbling for years but haven’t wrung the full potential out of your system – here’s the tough-love truth: most people blow their budgets in all the… Read the Review »

Kanto likely needs no introduction for the majority of audiophiles these days, but in case you’re new to the brand, here’s a quick refresher: based out of Canada, Kanto has been crafting high-quality, user-friendly audiophile speakers for almost 20 years.… Read the Review »

Subwoofers sadly don’t get the respect that they deserve in the audiophile hobby. I don’t know who the jackass was who poo-pooed subwoofers but they have done no favors to the music loving audiophile community. Subwoofers are one of the most simple… Read the Review »

As audiophiles, our auditory DNA encourages us to seek better sound in virtually any way possible.  Our main stated goal is to enhance and improve our listening experience. We move speakers and listen. We change settings on components and listen. We… Read the Review »

Bowers & Wilkins, the renowned British audiophile brand, just announced its new flagship active noise cancelling wireless headphone – the Px8 S2. Bowers & Wilkins is trusted by music professionals the world over to deliver some of the most detailed,… Read the Review »

For most audiophile enthusiasts, our hobby is one best mandated by a provable hypothesis and not by unrealistic claims. We employ manufacturers to realistically corroborate performance specifications for which they claim their equipment is capable. Audiophiles, we tell ourselves, live… Read the Review »

If you ask Bose or Harman, the future of the audiophile hobby is clearly accelerating quickly on four wheels. Historically, audiophiles and car audio enthusiasts were as different as oil and water but installed, premium audio inside of all sorts… Read the Review »

Even those unfamiliar with where the phrase came from (and yes, such people exist) know “It goes to 11.” This, and so many other cultural/musical/movie touchstones, were bestowed on us by the 1984 mockumentary This Is Spïnal Tap.  Should you… Read the Review »

The pink elephant in the audiophile listening room is that audiophile equipment is almost always really expensive. These days, a few thousand dollars for a component is considered “mid-fi” audio. There are establishment media in this hobby that focus all… Read the Review »

BluOS™, the premium multi-room management platform from Lenbrook Media Group, just announced the upcoming support for Qobuz Connect. The update enables users to stream high-resolution audio directly from the Qobuz app to any BluOS device, delivering a simplified and enriched… Read the Review »

One of our primary goals at Future Audiophile is to introduce the hobby to new enthusiasts. It matters not if a listener is a teenager or someone closing in on retirement, we want to be able to help any and… Read the Review »

Have you noticed that the price of audiophile components always go up but seemingly never go down? This phenomenon started in earnest during the COVID-19 pandemic’s widely publicized supply chain issues. Simply put: everybody was pretty much stuck at home… Read the Review »

If you want to know the health of an industry at any given moment – ask someone who sells said industry advertising. For more than 25 years, this is pretty much how I’ve made my living and I can tell… Read the Review »

People who live in California, especially by the beach like me, often forget what how short the summer season is in the rest of the nation. The weather is always about 70 and sunny here and that is equally as… Read the Review »

Without exception, when I talk with a younger audiophile about the hobby and what is important to them, I will hear some repeating themes, such as headphones (we will make a list just for headphones next), HD streaming, sometimes vinyl,… Read the Review »

Being a millennial audiophile for me means straddling two worlds – one foot in the analog past, the other in the digital present and future. We are a generation of huge contrasts, having witnessed the widespread adoption of the Internet… Read the Review »

Few things in this world bring the feeling of dread in the way that having to contact customer support can. But as a person who has spent close to 10 years of their career working in technical support (all the… Read the Review »