@Featured

PS Audio is one of the most time-tested and trusted brand names in the audiophile hobby. Not every audiophile knows that, a few years back, PS Audio made the controversial move to dump all of their traditional dealers, thus leaving… Read the Review »

When commercial operations first began in 1991, Pass Labs took the innovative amplifier creations from the kitchen table of founder Nelson Pass and rose to become one of the more respected and awarded audio companies currently in business. In 1994,… Read the Review »

Orchard Audio is an American audiophile company based in New Jersey, where its products are designed and assembled with its owner and product designer, Leo Ayzenshtat. Orchard Audio could be described as a fan-favorite, direct-to-the-consumer audio manufacturer that focuses on… Read the Review »

One of the key editorial tasks that we took on was taking on audiophile lore and cliché and seeing how it holds up over time. We’ve recently stepped into the “all DACs sound the same” topic (hint: they don’t). We’ve… Read the Review »

If you have been an audiophile, even for a short time, you have come to understand that different regions of the globe have a certain geographically specific sound to their loudspeakers that is hard to miss. One of the more… Read the Review »

The audiophile world is jam-packed with companies making uber-expensive components that cost what they cost mainly because of scarcity, esoterica and, sometimes, simple gross profiteering. Bricasti’s audiophile offerings are a breath of fresh air in this sometimes-polluted world of technological… Read the Review »

Unless someone comes up with a highly innovative alternative, connecting all those various components in our audiophile systems still requires the use of cables. Some people believe cables absolutely improve sonics, while others feel all cables are the same, with… Read the Review »

The Anni from Chord Electronics is a small form factor, desktop-style integrated amplifier. This small but powerful integrated amplifier features both a 3.5 and a quarter-inch headphone jack, as well as 10 watts into eight ohms of Class AB amplification… Read the Review »

The world of semiconductor-based amps has been the most wonderfully disruptive category in the audiophile hobby, and Orchard Audio is one of the main brands behind the movement. We discussed this matter in depth in this featured news story. A… Read the Review »

The Eversolo DMP A6 (buy at Amazon), which retails for $859, is a full-featured audiophile music streamer and audiophile digital to analog converter (DAC) that from here on out we will refer to as a streaming DAC. The Eversolo DMP… Read the Review »

For 20 years, there have been some faint voices discussing demographic issues that the audiophile hobby has, mainly being the fact that the hobby is nearly all-male and predominantly supported by Baby Boomers who are now aged into their 70s.… Read the Review »

There are a lot of things to love about the audiophile hobby, from its long past dating back to the 1960s (perhaps even before depending on your historical outlook), as well as the rich potential that listening to music has for today’s… Read the Review »

The Chord Qutest audiophile DAC is a small form factor $1,595 dedicated digital-to-analog converter designed for both audiophile and desktop solutions. Made in England, this diminutive DAC is built to survive any possible unforeseen nuclear fallout, with its thick aluminum… Read the Review »

The Stereo 230 from Leak is a modern take on a heritage design from the English audiophile brand Leak, which has been making high-performance components since 1934. This $1,695 integrated amp is designed to look similar to the Stereo 30,… Read the Review »

 It is likely the audiophile forum Audio Science Review that should get credit for starting this thread talking about digital to analog converters and the vast improvements in today’s DAC chips. The question was “Do All DACs Sound the Same?”… Read the Review »

The RS520 from Korean brand HiFi Rose is a what the company calls a “All-In-One Network Streamer.” In this case, all-in-one means it has a built-in network player, DAC and amplifier, and I can tell you that is just scratching… Read the Review »

Last year, I reviewed RBH Sound’s SVTR fully active speaker system. They are a monster in terms of performance, size and is pretty expensive at approximately $40,000 per pair, depending on configuration. While I was working on that review, I… Read the Review »

Don’t feel bad if you can’t tell me the unique differences between an audiophile endpoint and a music streamer. It is a bold new world where streaming music services have delivered basically full access to damn close to every album… Read the Review »

The newly-released SVS Ultra Evolution line consists of floorstanding speakers, satellite speakers, height channel speakers, a three-way center channel speaker and bookshelves. I had the opportunity to review the latter. The SVS Ultra Evolution Bookshelf speakers (buy at Crutchfield) are… Read the Review »

Even the audiophile elders admit that streaming provides the best performance and most cost-effective way to get CD- to HD-quality audio into your audiophile system. In 2022, only a tiny fraction of the record high sales for recorded music was… Read the Review »

Conventional wisdom and, frankly, common sense tells us the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. If you wanted to travel from one city to another several hundred miles away, you’d simply look at the map and pick… Read the Review »

JBL is a name that resonates with anyone who’s had even a fleeting interest in high-quality audio. From their humble beginnings in the 1940s, JBL has been synonymous with pushing the boundaries of high-quality sound reproduction. Enter the JBL L52… Read the Review »

Do you wanna know when an AV company is the real deal? Some might say that it is when they are sold in Best Buy or Magnolia stores, and that’s a good standard. Before Sonos made that distribution leap, they… Read the Review »

Audiophiles today have more and more digital music options available to them, thanks to the last of the spinning disc players and countless options in the streamer and/or endpoint market. Many of the above audiophile digital source components come with… Read the Review »

By Jerry Del Colliano You’ve seen the film This Is Spinal Tap!, right? Even if you haven’t, the chances that you don’t know the joke that goes “but this one goes to 11” are pretty slim, unless you’ve been living… Read the Review »

Why is Wall Street trying to get every classic rock-era artist to sell them their songwriting? Streaming is why. The music business is now the software business, and the software business is good and always has been. Just as you… Read the Review »

You know when Wall Street is buying up all of the music catalogs that there is something good going on in the music industry. What’s good is that, according to the RIAA in 2022, gross combined revenue (including all sources)… Read the Review »

Having spent many years producing high-quality remastered LPs, when the newly-established electronics division of Mobile Fidelity decided to manufacture a turntable, a natural segue from recording to source component was born. MoFi Electronics was formed, and today produces turntables, cartridges,… Read the Review »

The Clarus Sextet is a six-outlet power conditioner with advanced surge protection. The Sextet’s smaller sibling, the Duet, has been a staple in my system for nearly five years. At the time, the Clarus Duet was the first power conditioning … Read the Review »

Unless you are into sports like golf or polo as your pastime, the audiophile hobby is one of the more expensive ways that you can spend your discretionary dollars. While audiophiles like you and I are always looking for those… Read the Review »

Thirty years ago was the first time that I saw a Sonus faber bookshelf speaker. I was working in very high-end audio sales at Mark Levinson’s Cello Music and Film boutique, nestled in the Hollywood Hills right above Geffen Records,… Read the Review »

The Victrola Hi-Res Carbon (buy at Crutchfield) is the latest turntable from the Victrola brand of turntables. While this brand was once thought of as a maker of phonographs, it is now making products like the Hi-Res Carbon, which has… Read the Review »

I’ve said it before and I will say it again – the single most important component in any audiophile system are your ears. Surprisingly, this is an often-overlooked topic of conversation among audiophiles, who are (given their age and male-dominated… Read the Review »

Few mainstream electronics brands offer such a vast array of products and yet still manage to maintain a reputation for quality, customer service, and value as the California-based Monoprice. Looking for a couple THX-certified dual 15-inch 2000-watt subwoofers for your… Read the Review »

Orchard Audio is a six-year-old audiophile electronics company that is the brainchild of an electronics engineer named Leo Ayzenshtat. Leo has earned his stripes by designing digital electronics for satellites. Yes, the ones that orbit the Earth and cost more… Read the Review »

Upgrading our audiophile system is a big part of the fun in this hobby. Maybe we want to simply heighten our musical enjoyment by improving the configuration of our audio system. Perhaps recent listening experiences at an audiophile dealer, an… Read the Review »

The Bluesound Node music streamer (buy at Crutchfield), with its built-in DAC (digital to analog converter), provides a convenient way for consumers to access their preferred music streaming service from the Internet, or from digital music files stored on a… Read the Review »

By Jerry Del Colliano  Anybody who’s been in the audiophile hobby, even for a little while, knows that when they enter the realm of the audio salon or stereo store, they can pretty easily ask for (and get) a 20-percent-off… Read the Review »

The Pro-Ject X1 B (buy at Crutchfield) is a $1,299 mid-range, belt-driven audiophile turntable that is a clear step above the plethora of $350 to $500 more entry-level players flooding the market today. The Pro-Ject X1B turntable features 33, 45, and 78 RPM… Read the Review »