@Featured

Some folks prefer a tube-based preamplifier in their audio system while others prefer a solid-state preamplifier. By tube-based, I mean an audiophile preamplifier which uses a vacuum tube as its principal gain device. In contrast, a passive preamplifier attenuates the… Read More »

Sonus faber has a longstanding heritage of making audiophile loudspeakers for music lovers. It all started in 1983 when fine Italian craftsmanship met fine music appreciation in Monteviale, Italy. Not much has changed since, except that we’ve had advances in… Read More »

Things have changed quite a bit in the audiophile world as compared with just a few years ago when I left the business to try my hand at being an executive at a publicly traded Fortune 500 company. The pink… Read More »

The Anthem MCA 225 Gen 2 (buy at Crutchfield) is a two-channel class A/B audiophile power amp from Anthem, which also has three- and five-channel siblings in the 325 and 525. It puts out 225 watts per channel into eight… Read More »

Greensboro is much like any other mid-sized, sleepy college town in the Southeast. Home to the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG), part of a statewide system that quite surprisingly encompasses 17 colleges, universities, and institutions of higher learning,… Read More »

You may be surprised to learn that Cleer Audio sells an audiophile-oriented, wired-only headphone set. Cleer’s primary user base consists of younger, on-the-go listeners who are seeking headphones that perform at a higher level but also look really cool. The… Read More »

Audiophiles love wired headphones. Younger tech fans and music enthusiasts love everything to be wireless. For the past few months, I’ve reviewed nearly every high-performance Bluetooth headphone, from brands such as Sennheiser, Bowers & Wilkins, Mark Levinson, Focal, Technics, Apple,… Read More »

Parasound has been offering high-value audiophile gear for three generations now,  including many higher-end products designed by legendary consultant John Curl (18 page interview). Today, they offer a broad range of products, including some revered integrated amplifiers, but if you’re looking… Read More »

When I was 19 years old, I remember literally begging my boss, Christopher Hansen, to go to CES in early 1994. I was off from college, and back then the show was the Super Bowl of all things audio. What… Read More »

Scansonic is relatively unknown speaker brand at this point in the United States, but is uniquely related to some more familiar speaker brands such as Raidho Acoustics and ScanSpeak. In fact, it was developed to showcase ScanSpeak driver technology. Scansonic… Read More »

Acoustician Bob Hodas, who has tuned and pretty much every good recording studio—from Sony Music and Electric Lady Studios to Van Halen’s 5150 and so many more—also works with enlightened audiophiles seeking real-world, non-voodoo tuning of their rooms. This can mean… Read More »

The Naim Audio Mu-so all-in-one speaker/music system (buy from Amazon) is one of the biggest beneficiaries of the merger between electronics firm Naim Audio and French speaker juggernaut Focal. The second generation of the Naim Mu-so is a very slick… Read More »

Most of us have probably listened to music through two-way bookshelf-sized loudspeakers at some point or another. What exactly is a two-way bookshelf loudspeaker? It is a loudspeaker that has two drivers: a small driver called a tweeter that handles… Read More »

One of the advantages of living in a big city is all of the access to various services, products, and experiences. Being a resident of a major metropolis gives you access to cultural, medical, culinary, and—in the case of the… Read More »

There was a time when my dear friend Ethan and I brainstormed the concept of what a true pair of high-end wireless Bluetooth speakers would look, feel, and sound like. On my way to the plane for which I am… Read More »

There was a time when you could walk through Circuit City or other major electronics retailers and see speakers similar to MartinLogan’s ElectroMotion CLS on display alongside all of the traditional cones-in-cabinets speakers. These days, though, there’s a good chance… Read More »

One of my stated goals as a consumer is to support local retailers. Sure, I buy my fair share of crap from Amazon.com just like everybody else but when possible, I try to shop local. One store that I used… Read More »

It wasn’t long ago that a five-liter V8 engine generated 225 horsepower. Today, technology allows 260 horsepower from a much smaller four-cylinder engine – and the fuel economy is far superior. Well-designed bookshelf loudspeakers from a reputable manufacturer like Focal… Read More »

Like many of you, I don’t have a perfect listening room, so having room correction built into a preamplifier can be a game changer. The Anthem STR preamplifier (buy at Crutchfield) has Anthem’s ARC GENESIS room correction, bass management for… Read More »

It should be obvious that a clean record makes for a better listening experience. There are a multiplicity of ways to clean your records. When you pull a rock through a canyon (which is what a record player does) it… Read More »

Small subwoofers make the audio world a better place. I am not sure how the audiophile community once missed out on this news story, but with a modest sub, any music lover can add the entire lower octave of music… Read More »

You want to know why I’d rather be a high-end sports car dealer than an audiophile store owner these days? More often than not, high-end cars, over time, wear out or get old. People wreck them more frequently than you’d… Read More »

Given that many of today’s DACs, phono stages, and even amplifiers have their own internal volume controls, it may not be clear why you would ever want to integrate a preamplifier into your modern audiophile music system. In my view,… Read More »