@Featured

An old-time audiophile with a background in pro audio once told me that the fastest way to make your system sound better quickly (and often easily) was to add a subwoofer. That long-ago-given advice has never been more relevant than… Read the Review »

Mytek Audio has been high performance DACs as well as analog to digital converters in New York City since 1992, when Mytek was established by the founder and president Michal Jurewicz, working then at the Hit Factory and Skyline recording studios. For the first 18 years… Read the Review »

In the world of uber-expensive audiophile loudspeakers, there are many exciting new players in the space, but perhaps none has come as strongly in recent years as Switzerland’s Stenheim. Their rectangular, Bauhaus-inspired all-aluminum speakers might look a little boxy; however,… Read the Review »

In the audiophile world, it is rare but not uncommon to see a top-level dealer import a more obscure, non-distributed product, thus become their de facto U.S. distributor. These dealers take the risk of bringing the product over from wherever… 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 »

There are not too many audiophile brands out there today that have the history that Rotel does. As a company, they are in their 64th year as a family-owned and operated business that makes some of the most well-known, affordable… 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 »

Audiophile floorstanding speakers from between $7,000 to $10,000 are among the most contested products in the market these days. Many of the biggest brands in the audiophile world have speakers in this price range. Companies like Revel, Sonus faber, Dali, Focal, and Bowers & Wilkins each… Read the Review »

Hans-Ole Vitus, founder of Vitus Audio, began playing drums at age 12, and soon thereafter developed his admiration of the gear being produced by a company founded by fellow Danes, Gryphon Audio Designs. By 18, he was studying electronics and,… Read the Review »

There is no single more successful audiophile brand in the business today than Harman’s flagship electronics brand, Mark Levinson. Now, before you click to the next review in anger or disgust, let me explain why. The deal to put Mark… Read the Review »

My buddy Randy Goldberg is the co-founder of Bombas socks. He and family (his wife, Jen Isaacson, won an Oscar at 35 as a producer on the Questlove documentary, Summer of Soul, about the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, aka: Black… Read the Review »

The Orchard Audio PecanPi + Premium, with an online consumer-direct price of $1,499, is the company’s latest streamer DAC (digital to analog converter) and an evolution of the Orchard AudioPecanPi+ that I reviewed in May 2024 (around $900 as configured). At that time, I… Read the Review »

Subwoofers are often viewed as a necessary addition for home theater systems, but in high-performance music playback systems, they can be just as critical to sonic success. SVS has built a reputation for making subwoofers that deliver the kind of… 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 »

In the last few years, there have been few new technologies that have come along that are as exciting as what we have seen from modern Class-D amplification, many of which are using gallium nitride or “GaN FET” chips. If… 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 »

As a college student and burgeoning audiophile on a budget in the late 1980s and early 1990s, my local dealer made it easy to get hooked on the upgrade addiction many of us share to this very day. The store… Read the Review »

PS Audio has been steadily working their way up the audiophile food chain for over 40 years. My first exposure to them was with their power conditioning and regeneration, or PowerPlant, products. Then they made a splash with their highly-praised PerfectWave line of… 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 »

The Buckeye Amps PuriFi 1ET9040BA Monoblock is an audiophile power amplifier I’ve been really eager to review. I am a fan of the neutrality and low distortion of today’s best Class-D amplifiers (learn about the audiophile trend here), and also of their low weight… Read the Review »

Planar magnetic headphones have made significant inroads into the audiophile world over the last decade. Known for their detailed sound and fast transient response, planar headphones have traditionally demanded a premium price. The HIFIMAN Sundara stands out as an exception… 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 »

Founded roughly 15 years ago in Switzerland by Florian Cossy, CH Precision has gained a reputation for incredible engineering, incredible performance, incredible sonics, incredible build quality, versatile modularity, and user adjustability in the uber-high-end audiophile world. Not surprisingly, they are… Read the Review »

The truth is that most of us only listen to the first few watts of power available from our audiophile amplifier. Why? Because most modern speaker designs today are really good about not being power pigs, as some audiophile speakers… 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 »

The TEAC UD-507 is a completely redesigned 500 series DAC/preamp/headphone amplifier that TEAC says incorporates trickle-down technology from their reference TEAC 701 series design concept, but in a more compact two-thirds form factor. Given its smaller size, many music enthusiasts’… Read the Review »

One of the most popular conversations in the audiophile community today is centered around the value of Chi-Fi DACs. With companies like Topping, which have products that are priced at $1,000 (and lower) that can punch many times above their weight class,… Read the Review »

I have been aware of Nelson Pass and his work in the audiophile world for a very long time. In fact, it stretches all the way back to my high school years, before Pass Labs was even a thing. My… 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 »

The product category of higher-end wireless over-the-ear headphones is one near and dear to my heart. After selling HomeTheaterReview.com and AudiophileReview.com in late 2019, I was looking for some new challenges in my career, so my partner and I looked… Read the Review »

When discussing iconic American speaker brands, Klipsch stands tall with its distinctive design philosophy and instantly recognizable aesthetic. The Klipsch Reference Premiere series has long been the sweet spot in their lineup, offering much of the company’s celebrated technology and… 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 »

It was old-time rocker (and reportedly very good golfer) Huey Lewis who once sang “(it’s) hip to be square.” The T+A Caruso all-in-one system takes his musical inspiration to the audiophile world. This German-designed, physically square audiophile system is designed… Read the Review »

Last year, HiFi Rose introduced the RS130 (read my review), their first and only state-of-the-art dedicated network transport (streamer, no DAC) at a retail price of $5,195, was one their most expensive product at that time. Obviously, HiFi Rose must follow up with… Read the Review »

A key question that many audiophiles who are new to the vinyl space will have been what is the difference between a phonostage and a phono preamplifier? These two terms are often used interchangeably, but the key difference is the… Read the Review »

The $2,000-per-pair floorstanding loudspeaker category is one of the most key price points in the audiophile business. With today’s self-inflicted, tariff-based price increases here in the United States, perhaps that figure needs to be adjusted up a bit, as some of the… Read the Review »

When I purchased a new home (new to me, not to the world) in 2023, our publisher, Jerry Del Colliano, had made a series of creative suggestions to me about things I can do to get the most out of my… Read the Review »

You won’t have to search the audiophile portion of the Internet too hard to see how Chinese-made gear has disrupted the audiophile market. Companies such as Topping, S.M.S.L. and others have brought audiophile DACs to market with features on the surface that their North American… Read the Review »

The NAD Masters Series M66 Streaming DAC/preamplifier ($6,999 – buy at Crutchfield) is NAD’s flagship stereo preamp, offering features and connectivity well beyond NAD’s other preamplifiers and most audiophile components made by competitors. The NAD M66 earns its high-end credentials with its top-tier… Read the Review »