@Featured

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 »

iFi audio has established itself as brand that loves to produce smaller form factor audiophile equipment. As a reviewer, I have reviewed close to half of a dozen pieces of their components, and I don’t believe any of those items… Read the Review »

Every so often, a new company comes along and reignites a spark in the audiophile hobby, reminding us that it’s perfectly fine to challenge the status quo. Too often, speakers in the under-$1,000 per pair range look and sound more… 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 »

The French audiophile brand Metronome was founded in 1987 and is known for building some of the finest digital components available. Historically, this has been a company that has only made very, very high-end audiophile components. Luckily, this is changing… Read the Review »

One of the most transformational products ever launched during my audiophile career was the Mark Levinson No. 38 stereo preamp. It was released soon after I went to work for Christopher Hansen Ltd. in Beverly Hills back in 1993, and… 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 »

If you’re not familiar with Totem Acoustic, they are a Montreal-based speaker manufacturer with a wide variety of audiophile speakers, from small bookshelf speakers to some beautifully designed full-range floorstanding speakers. I was excited when I learned that I would get the Totem… 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 »

Let us begin by first getting a few things out of the way. Yes, there is an actual Dr. Feickert. In fact, Dr. Christian Feickert holds a PhD in both physics and chemistry. He worked for years as a research… Read the Review »

One of the more challenging questions for many audiophiles who own a physical media collection is how to both play your Compact Discs and get them ripped to your network server or wherever you like to keep your music files.… 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 »

ArgentPur is a company that is fairly new to me as a long-time audiophile, and this review is the first time I had any of their products in my house. I will tell you I was just a bit skeptical,… Read the Review »

Bias is a funny thing sometimes. When I was told that there was a set of headphones coming to me from Romania, I was skeptical at first. I have only met a few people in my life from the Eastern… Read the Review »

Advance Paris is not a household name in the United States for one simple reason: they never exported their product to the U.S. market until just recently. Advance Paris, based in France outside of Paris, as the name would suggest, started… Read the Review »

Studio Electric is a boutique loudspeaker brand offering a selection of stand-mounted and floorstanding loudspeakers. The Studio Electric M4 loudspeaker is their entry-level two-way stand-mount design, featuring a proprietary 6.5-inch copolymer midrange/woofer and a one-inch soft dome tweeter. The sturdy cabinet… 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 »

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 »

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 »

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 »

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 »

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 »

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 »

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 »