CATEGORIES

Bel Canto e1X DAC/Control Preamplifier

STREAMING D/A PREAMPLIFIER

Music Hall Stealth

RECORD PLAYER

Tannoy Stirling Prestige Gold Reference

LOUDSPEAKER

Get rid of the ego, keep the fun and the music

Attracting new customers is essential for brick-and-mortar dealerships’ long-term survival. Over the last several years, many b&m dealerships have continued to expand into home automation and custom installation.

Marantz Model 40n

NETWORK INTEGRATED AMPLIFIER

MEASUREMENT BEYOND THE ATOMIC LEVEL

The setting is surreal. As you drive into the Satsop Business Park in rural Elma, Washington (pop. 3500, max), eyes immediately fixate on the looming 481'-tall cooling towers of an abandoned nuclear facility!

GRAMOPHONE DREAMS

Wired for beauty

Genelec G Three

ACTIVE LOUDSPEAKER

Fremer sings standards

Whenever I do turntable setup seminars, I complain to the participants about the lack of cartridge-pin diameter and clip-opening standards. Anyone who does their own setup has experienced it: The connection is too tight or too loose.

Stromtank S 1000 - COMPUTER-CONTROLLED BATTERY POWER SOURCE

The Kingdom of Audiophiledom rests on a paradox. Inanimate audio systems and rooms aim to deliver music that animates our senses and touches our souls. The inherently lifeless exists to bring music to life.

Rotel Michi S5 POWER AMPLIFIER

It took some time to figure out why, in the middle of auditioning Rotel’s Michi S5 stereo power amplifier ($7499.99) with the room-shaking opening of Richard Strauss’s Also Sprach Zarathustra, Ravel’s far subtler and perfumed setting of Tristan Klingsor’s lyrics from Shéhérazade came to mind. And then the pathway opened: As mundane a task as reviewing a component may be—listen to this, listen to that, compare to your reference, take copious notes, ponder, and proceed—we music lovers perpetually long for more. We want to be seduced by music and soar aloft on its wonder. We want to transcend routine, rise above the commonplace, and experience the beauty that can rise amidst the ashes. We want to fly.

Clearaudio Reference Jubilee RECORD PLAYER

There’s an enduring debate among the turntable-tech intelligentsia between opposing theories of turntable design. Some designers, notably Roy Gandy of Rega, follow a lessis-more approach, building stiff, lightweight turntables that release energy rather quickly. Others, such as Franc Kuzma, whose Kuzma Ltd. manufactures my reference Kuzma Stabi R turntable and Kuzma 4Point tonearm, believe in heavy mass-loading to dampen vibrations, including transparency-miring resonances. Though analog sages and savants have argued for decades, the question remains: Should turntables be light or heavy? Should you liberate or dampen internal energy to achieve perfect analog sound forever?

Technics SU-G700M2 Grand Class INTEGRATED AMPLIFIER

When I reviewed Technics’s SU-R1000 integrated amplifier for the December 2021 issue, I found its performance beyond my expectations. It practi-cally rewrote the ritual of listening to music on my home hi-fi. With its wealth of technological advancements, significant user options, and clear, three-dimensional sound, it cast a large sonic shadow over the other integrated amplifiers in my possession.

RABBIT HOLES

New rock music as an odd musical niche

Lejonklou Entity PHONO PREAMPLIFIER

Sometime around 483 BCE, in Kushinagar, the capital of the Malla Republic in what today is the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, an aristocrat named Siddhartha Gautamaknown better to us as the Buddha, or the Awakened One-passed away. For 45 years, he had wandered the North Indian River Plain teaching a method of overcoming ignorance, craving, and the cycle of death and rebirth to a growing community of followers. As he lay dying, the 80-year-old teacher was surrounded by disciples, many of them crying. Gautama was by no account a sentimental man, and several times he told the monks to cut it out.

LYLE LOVETT

Music among great players can be a conversation

Gryphon Audio Designs Commander LINE PREAMPLIFIER

Are well-heeled audiophiles ready for a knob-free future? Gryphon Audio Designs thinks so. In contrast to Gryphon's volume knob-dominated Pandora preamplifier, the Danish company's new Commander offers nothing on its bold front panel to grab or turn.

GRAMOPHONE DREAMS

Dream incubation

ANALOG CORNER

The J.Sikora Reference turntable and KV12 VTA tonearm

Bluesound Powernode

Streaming integrated amplifier

Melco N50

DIGITAL MUSIC LIBRARY

PrimaLuna EVO 400

INTEGRATED AMPLIFIER

Meitner MA3

INTEGRATED D/A PROCESSOR

The Art of Cable

GRAMOPHONE DREAMS

Chario Aviator Amelia

LOUDSPEAKER

JansZen Valentina P8

LOUDSPEAKER

Linn Klimax LP12

RECORD-PLAYING SYSTEM

Revinylization

Round Trip: Ornette Coleman’s Blue Note sides

CH Precision D1.5 SACD/CD/MQA-CD Player/Transport

There’s a school of thought that maintains that among all hi-fi components, the D/A converter is easiest to perfect or come close to perfecting. Just make sure that every sample is converted accurately, that there’s little rolloff in the audioband, that aliased images are suppressed almost completely, and that background noise is extremely low, and you have a top-quality D/A processor. Use of a high-quality DAC chip is assumed.

Analog Corner

Paradox’s remarkable Phono 70 Signature MC phono preamplifier