@Featured

Music Hall recently released its latest audiophile Compact Disc player, the CD25.3, a no-nonsense source component that is very competitively priced for an audiophile-grade disc spinner at $649. Music Hall is well-known for its high-value offerings in the audiophile world,… Read More »

Anybody tired of inflation yet? I sure as hell am, and I bet you are, too. I refinanced my home-equity loan to help get FutureAudiophile.com funded and off the ground. Less than a year later, the cost of the interest… Read More »

The Stax brand has been synonymous with electrostatic headphones – aka earspeakers – since the early 1960s. Back then, they didn’t have much competition. Later, Shure and Koss produced electrostatic models but they were aimed at a more entry-level than… Read More »

A close friend of mine is a big-time wealth manager and former executive at Goldman Sachs. While not normally prone to conspiracy theories, he has strong beliefs that retail, as we’ve known it, is dead. When pressed, he points to… Read More »

By now, unless you’ve been in a cave for the past six months, you’ve very likely read about Mobile Fidelity’s SourcePoint 10 loudspeaker ($3,999 buy at Crutchfield). It is, by all accounts, a kick-ass plus-sized-bookshelf loudspeaker. But its size has… Read More »

While Pass Labs bares founder and chief designer Nelson Pass’ name, his business partner, Wayne Colburn, is responsible for the company’s elaborate line-level preamplifier designs. First, let’s clarify the terminology: this type of component is often called an audiophile stereo … Read More »

Luxman Corporation has a solid reputation for very high build quality, and while not necessarily or even exclusively budget oriented, their products are not out-of-reach expensive. Such is the case with the recently released Luxman PD-151 Mark II audiophile turntable.… Read More »

PSB is a highly regarded brand of speakers distributed by Lenbrook, who also handle Bluesound and NAD. For a few years now, PSB has also been making some premium headphones that have been well received, the latest of which is… Read More »

For as long as I can remember, the audiophile world has been awash with uninspired, shoebox-like speakers with IKEA-grade finishes, especially for those on a budget. Orb Audio, a self-described affordable luxury speaker brand, set out to change the notion that… Read More »

Powered by tremendous enthusiasm from often younger generations, much greater scrutiny is being paid these days to the environment and the impact we have on it. We are moving towards the goal of reducing our carbon footprint. We are looking… Read More »

The Benchmark DAC3 HGC (buy at Amazon) is one flavor of many in their DAC 3 line-up. The HGC model is a full-featured, mature DAC rocking the latest and greatest ESS ES9028PRO chipset. At 37 years strong, Benchmark has been… Read More »

The Andover SpinDeck 2 (buy at Amazon) is a belt-drive turntable that uses a jazzy AT-3600 phono cartridge from Audio-Technica. With a price tag of just $299, this product is aimed at entry-level listeners, and Andover has added some thoughtful… Read More »

The HIFIMAN HE-R9 is a wired, closed-back pair of audiophile headphones from a company primarily known for its open-back offering. It’s a somewhat entry-level pair priced at at $369with a 3.5 mm TRS connection, along with a 6.35mm adaptor so… Read More »

There are a lot of things the audiophile world does well. For decades, we presented the coolest new tech at the Consumer Electronics Show. More importantly, the audiophile hobby allows us to bring music into our lives in ways that is often… Read More »

Right now, I’m on a crappy flight in United (seat 1E on a crappy old Trump-Shuttle-era 757) en route home from a very well-attended and produced AXPONA 2023 audiophile show. Props the the AXPONA people, who put a lot of… Read More »

One of my favorite places on Earth is the North County region of San Diego. Sound United (right before they got bought by medical technology company Masimo for a cool $1,000,000,000) moved to a sleepy little cul-de-sac in Carlsbad, with… Read More »

From my latest experiences, it is high time we stop discounting Class D amplification (learn more about Class D here) as a serious high-fidelity  option. Like the screaming metal-dome tweeters used in loudspeakers from the 1980s era that have been… Read More »

About eight years ago, PS Audio introduced the PerfectWave DirectStream audiophile DAC to quite a bit of audiophile fanfare. It immediately garnered significant acclaim and was praised for its sonic capabilities relative to its price. Introduced late in 2022 (but… Read More »

The PS Audio Stellar S300 stereo amplifier is PS Audio’s entry-level two-channel amplifier (buy at Amazon) targeted at those thinking of upgrading from a receiver or integrated to quality separates. Make no mistake, though: entry-level or not, this is a… Read More »

When Mark Knopfler famously sang about “money for nothing and chicks for free,” he might have over-exaggerated the glamor of working in consumer electronics, but not by that much. Never have I had so much fun going to work in… Read More »

In the early days of digital audio, Ed Meitner was frequently asked about circuit design from industry people interested in his ideas. It was this recognition of an insight into digital audio that led to one of the most innovative… Read More »

I was first introduced to audiophilia by way of an all-McIntosh system when I was 15 years old. I was still riding a bicycle and most of the music I heard was by way of a handheld AM transistor radio… Read More »

The Topping A90 Discrete ($599 buy at Amazon), while marketed principally as a headphone amplifier, ranks as one of the most ideal analog preamplifiers I’ve used. A couple of months back, I reviewed Topping’s Pre90 analog preamp. The A90 Discrete… Read More »

The Music Hall Classic turntable (buy at Crutchfield) features an intriguing mix of traditional design elements and modern technology and features. The turntable comes packaged with a tonearm and cartridge, which are partially assembled so the listener can go from… Read More »

When Paul McGowan and Stan Warren founded PS Audio in 1973, their first product was a standalone phono preamp. After several different design iterations, the PS Audio Phono Preamplifier was introduced in 1975. Now, some 48 years later, PS Audio… Read More »

Audiophiles tend to fall into a number of different camps when it comes to the philosophy of system design. The first one if the Linn Camp, which suggests that your system is only as good as your main source component. That’s… Read More »

At $849 per pair, the PSB Alpha T20 floorstanding speaker (buy from Crutchfield) from the legendary Paul Barton at PSB is the company’s entry-level tower. It features a 0.75-inch black anodized aluminum dome tweeter, two 5.25-inch textured polypropylene woofers with… Read More »

Focal introduced its top-of-the-line wired headphone model, the Utopia, in 2016. In the seven years since, the company has developed some new ways to improve the design. The improvements and time since the initial launch warranted a revision of the… Read More »

There was no more unifying concept for my college buddies and me than going Compact Disc shopping. In the mid-1990s, the CD was the unquestioned king of all silver-disc media, and when we weren’t spending every free dollar on audio gear,… Read More »

The Stellar PowerPlant 3 AC regenerator ($2,999) is PS Audio’s entry-level power regenerator intended for powering audiophile source components as well as small to medium power Class AB amps or high efficiency Class D amps in smaller to medium sized… Read More »

Las Vegas is the undisputed gambling mecca in the United States and perhaps the world. Home to casinos galore, breathtaking hotels, entertainment of all varieties and even a surprising amount of debauchery, Vegas is a gambler’s paradise. Catering to all… Read More »

If you’re an audio hobbyist, you are probably aware of Pass Labs, its founder Nelson Pass, and the company’s reputation for innovative audiophile amplifiers, preamplifiers, and integrated amplifier designs. All the company’s amplifiers are solid-state designs (meaning that transistors amplify… Read More »

By any reasonable measure, the T+A SD 3100 HV Streaming DAC is a world-class audiophile component with numerous features and a high degree of engineering excellence. Designed completely in house by a group of 12 full-time staff engineers and even two physicists,… Read More »

The NAD C 338 Hybrid Digital DAC Amplifier (buy at Crutchfield) is a budget friendly $799 integrated amplifier from one of the industry’s most storied audiophile brands. Its power section provides 50 continuous watts of output into both 4 and… Read More »

One of the biggest historical criticisms of the audiophile hobby is that many old-school traditionalists sometimes fall into a habit of listening to audio more than listening to music. In a perfect world, your audio system should be able to… Read More »

Although many loudspeakers are marketed as full-range, in reality only a minority actually go deep enough to rightfully deserve such a moniker. To achieve a truly full-range audio system using less than full-range loudspeakers requires a subwoofer to produce frequencies… Read More »

Bricasti Design was founded in 2004 by two executives formerly associated with Lexicon. Bricasti’s initial focus was on the pro audio side, and the company immediately gained a solid reputation thanks to its M7 reverb unit. Before long, Bricasti turned… Read More »

Audiophile music can be tough to swallow for non-hobbyists. Incredibly well-recorded albums from mostly unknown artists with unfamiliar songs and often obscure musical genres can be a bit off-putting to anyone who hasn’t already drank the Kool-Aid. If you’re buying… Read More »

The SVS Prime Wireless Pro Powered Speakers (buy at Crutchfield) come packed with as much thoughtful, audiophile-grade technology as you could possibly ask for from a $899/pair of active bookshelf speakers. Dressed in either gloss black or gloss white (my… Read More »

Audio Technica’s AT-LPW50BT audiophile turntable at $499 (buy at Crutchfield) is feature rich, with a built-in phono stage and Bluetooth transmitter. Its model number may not easily roll off your tongue, but it’s one of the newest turntables from a… Read More »

Audiophiles collect gear. Audiophiles collect music. Many of us also collect books that enrich the hobby. These can range from technical explainers to music-oriented to books about the hobby and the business itself. While these books can be a design… Read More »

Circa 1994, I fondly remember hearing Polk Audio loudspeakers in a long-gone Circuit City store as a burgeoning audiophile who dreamt of having the $400 in my pocket needed to actually own a pair. Jump forward to today and Polk… Read More »

It has been a long time since I rock and rolled… and I think thousands of others at AXPONA 2023 felt the same way. For the past few years, real-world fears of COVID-19 made it unreasonable to for most of… Read More »

NAD is a company with a long-standing history (50 years, in fact) of making great products. The NAD C 538 (buy at Crutchfield) is a great example of what the company does so well, as it’s a straightforward entry-level Compact… Read More »

Pro-Ject’s Debut Carbon EVO Turntable ($599 buy at Crutchfield) is the latest version of the Debut, which was first released at the end of the last millennium. The Debut Carbon was released just over a decade ago and utilized a… Read More »

The first time I saw a FiiO audio component, the old nursery rhyme “fee, fi, fo, fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman” popped into my head. FiiO’s track record of commandeering the market share of their competitors from… Read More »

Overall, despite a very successful launch, there are a few things I wish I would have done differently from the get-go with FutureAudiophile.com.  One of the biggest faux pas was picking a higher-commission source for affiliate sales as opposed to going… Read More »

Apple didn’t pay $3,200,000,000 to Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine for nothing. The headphone company they carefully pried from the hands of Monster Cable founder, Noel Lee, is a key part of today’s overall tech-lifestyle aesthetic. Be it at work, walking around town, working out at… Read More »

Last week, I was talking to the guys at Linn about getting Paul Wilson one of their legendary LP-12 audiophile turntables for review, which looks to be about two weeks away from arriving at Paul’s home. Linn’s audiophile philosophy pretty… Read More »

About 13 years ago, I became acquainted with Eric Alexander and his outside-the-box loudspeaker company, Tekton Design. Eric was kind enough to ship along a pair of Tekton Mini-Lore loudspeakers, and shortly thereafter an original pair of Tekton Pendragon floorstanding… Read More »

The GO bar by iFi (buy at Crutchfield) is a $329, ultra-portable USB-based audiophile DAC and headphone amplifier. If you want to know what I mean by ultra-portable, it is approximately the size of my index finger (15/16 inch wide,… Read More »

Few teenagers forget buying their first car. My father refused to give me a car like all of the other 16-year-old kids at my fancy prep school in Philadelphia. He played me cassette tapes of 1970s sales training guru and… Read More »

NAD, an audio company well-known by enthusiasts worldwide for their high-value electronics, is part of the Lenbrook group, which also includes PSB speakers and Bluesound wireless streaming devices. The technology behind each brand is often shared within the family, as… Read More »

The Bricasti Design M30 monoblock audiophile amplifier is a rack-friendly version of the company’s beloved M28 amplifier, which is also a mono amplifier. The difference between the two is their form factor. The M30 carries the same award-winning differential amplification… Read More »

If you connect a turntable directly to a line-level input on your integrated amplifier or preamplifier, I guarantee you will be disappointed by the sound. Why? Because the signal from a turntable’s cartridge needs to be boosted and equalized to… Read More »

The year was 2007, and Tam Carlson was a man on a mission. Tam wanted to build a cost-no-object listening room seating 20, in which every last detail would exist only to serve the playback of great music from an… Read More »

Like most audio companies these days, Denon—best known for its AV receivers, no doubt—has thrown its hat into the proverbial high-end wireless headphone ring with two over-ear models and two in-ear models. The Denon AH-C830NCW (buy at Crutchfield) earphone is… Read More »

It was going to be a matter of time before the high-end audio business got serious about high-end, luxury headphones and 2022 was that year. With audiophile headphone products like the Sennheiser Momentum 4, Bowers & Wilkins Px8, Focal Bathys,… Read More »

There are tens of thousands of audiophile components on the market today from hundreds of well-known and well-respected brands. Many of them have very specific naming conventions that are the handiwork of experienced marketing executives, Madison Avenue PR firms, enthusiastic… Read More »

The SVS 3000 Micro subwoofer (buy at Crutchfield) might be small in stature but there is more bass inside this little sub than meets the eye. This subwoofer features two opposing eight-inch drivers and 800 Watts of class D power… Read More »

Andover is now shipping the Andover Audio SpinDeck 2 ($299 – read the review), the latest addition to its Spin Collection, striking the ideal balance between value performance and convenience for vinyl fans. Featuring high-quality materials, precision-engineered parts and plug-and-play… Read More »

The Monitor Audio Silver 300 7G (buy at Crutchfield) is a three-way audiophile floorstanding speaker with an asking price of around $2,850 per pair, about $1,000 more than the Paradigm Premier 700F (read the review) floorstanding loudspeakers I recently reviewed.… Read More »

It doesn’t take a lot of investigation to determine that audiophile equipment prices can get very expensive. In our beloved industry, we see floorstanding speakers, audiophile subwoofers, power amps, stereo preamps, and beyond that cost well into the five-figure range—and… Read More »

The F328Be is the top dog in Revel’s Performa Be audiophile floorstanding speaker line, and a number of well-respected people within Revel would say it is the best speaker the company currently makes. Revel took advantage of parent company Harman’s… Read More »

Historically, audiophile-grade amplifiers hold their value over time. So do good stereo preamps. The best audiophile floorstanding loudspeakers also hold their value in most cases over a reasonable amount of time. Solidly built audiophile turntables don’t tend to lose their… Read More »

Some music fans buy one LP a week, others one a day, and still others buy so many that they can’t (or won’t) keep count. The Isonic CS6.1 Pro is the record cleaning system for the that last group, the LP-purchasing power… Read More »

The PS Audio Sprout100 (buy at Amazon) is an entry level audiophile integrated amplifier made by the folks at PS Audio. Packed into one tiny little package (and I mean tiny) it measures at 6.2 inches wide by 1.9 inches… Read More »

You can’t find a product in the audio/video space that says “custom installation” more loudly than the Anthem MDX-8 distribution amplifier. It is an eight-channel power amplifier that has up to 200 Watts-per-channel of Class-D power waiting for any number… Read More »

My audiophile publishing comeback wasn’t supposed to ever happen. When I sold HomeTheaterReview.com and AudiophileReview.com back in late December 2019, I told anybody that would listen that I was pretty much done. I was looking for some new challenges and… Read More »

For several years, the Parasound Halo A21 reigned as the amplification king in my listening/design space. It was an affordable monster that could drive any speaker one could throw at it. I shorted the outputs of the A21 several times… Read More »

Stax is known primarily for one kind of component: electrostatic headphones. Its first headphone/amplifier combination, the SRD-1 and SR-1, were released in 1960 and are legendary today. Currently the company has nine models ranging in price from the $455 to… Read More »

So there you are, all primed and ready for a true audiophile experience with your bad-to-the-bone stereo system – the one you’ve spent months/years/decades researching, curating, purchasing, and setting up. You select the music, press play, and wow, doesn’t it… Read More »

Just like any sort of hunting, audiophile bargain hunting involves a modicum of danger, but that’s part of the thrill. The risk of finding a stinker is part the process, and the rise of Chi-Fi, or Chinese-made gear has made… Read More »

The SVS SB-1000 (buy at Crutchfield) is SVS’s entry level subwoofer. It features a 12-inch driver and 325 watts of class D power to ensure that the sub produces plenty of desired low frequency sound. The SB stands for sealed… Read More »

Much lip service has been given to the failing health of the audiophile hobby, and with the demographics looking about as close as you can get to 100 percent male and a median age of well over 55, who could… Read More »

An audiophile digital-to-analog converter (DAC) is a device that converts a digital signal into an analog waveform that your speakers can produces and your ears will ultimately understand. DACs are in everything these days. They are ubiquitous devices that perform… Read More »

Call me what you want… publisher, editor, entrepreneur, schmuck or just Hey You and I likely will respond quickly and with a smile. Despite running my own publishing business for nearly all of 25 years, I still pretty much consider… Read More »

PSB was founded in 1972 by Paul Barton, a designer who believed speakers should sound natural without adding or subtracting anything from the original recording, which the company refers to as the True to Nature design philosophy. Equally important for the… Read More »

Ask 1,000 people at The Mall of the America if $999 is a lot of money for wireless, over- ear, Bluetooth headphones and you might get a fully unanimous 1000/1000 people saying yes. For audiophiles, we often view things a… Read More »

Watching the Internet come to life as a commercial entity in the 1990s, when I was in music/business school, was most eye opening. From the time that I got to South Central Los Angeles to celebrate the pending West Coast… Read More »

The Paradigm Premier 700F (buy at Crutchfield) is a mid-level floorstanding speaker from Paradigm priced at $1,800 per pair, which puts it right in the fray with many of the best players in the high-value speaker market. These moderately tall… Read More »

The iFi xDSD Gryphon (buy at Crutchfield) is a portable balanced headphone amplifier and digital-to-analog converter from a company renowned for both its DACs and its HPAs. It will handle just about any connection you can throw at it, including USB,… Read More »

Two weeks ago, I was on the phone with a public relations executive I hadn’t spoken with in a few years. Frank currently represents PS Audio, Audio-Technica and a few other audiophile brands and he was confirming that he had… Read More »

An integrated amplifier doesn’t have to be physically large to be high performance and fully featured. When I read the initial press release for the Pro-Ject MaiA DS3 I thought, “There’s an amplifier that seems to fulfill all the requirements… Read More »

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 audiophile 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.… 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. Today, they offer a broad range of products, including some revered integrated amplifiers, but if you’re looking to move… 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 Crutchfield) 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 »

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 »

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 »