Dr. Roger West and Dr. Dale Ream founded sound Lab on July 1, 1978. Their founding belief was that electrostatic transduction is the optimum loudspeaker technology. Over the decades since, the company has continued to offer updates to older products. The Sound Lab Ultimate 545, the subject of this review, is the same speaker that […]

I heard about the wonders of a small device by Sonore called the microRendu, a product that takes an Ethernet audio stream from a computer or server and “renders it to a perfect, ultra-low noise USB feed to one’s USB DAC.” It purportedly boosts digital playback in terms of clarity and “musicality.” One of my […]

Why So Jittery? Ah, so you haven’t re-clocked your USB signal … yet. Computers are noisy in theory and in practice. Operational noise aside, the USB signal coming out of it is not only noisy, but unclean and read that to mean imprecise. This is where jitter enters the frame and as computers were never […]

I learn something from every component I evaluate. Mostly this learning takes the form of discovering—or rediscovering—an aspect of music reproduction that I realize I’ve been missing. With the Omen Dirty Weekend loudspeaker from Zu Audio (Ogden, Utah), I rediscovered several things that I had drifted away from in the last few years of assembling […]

Furutech has a new cable riser, named the Booster, which utilizes the company’s Nano Crystal Formula (NCF) technology. I have been using Furutech NCF outlets, outlet covers and power cable connectors for quite a while and consider them a significant upgrade to my reference system. Nano Crystal Formula is an active anti-resonance damping material. It […]

My Lifetime, A Lifeline You don’t know it as a kid, especially born on one continent and growing up in another. It can be real difficult, really painful. Navigating grammar school and the playground is tough on its own, doing so when you don’t grasp the finer points of American boyhood is wholly another. Going […]

This is my third TriangleArt turntable to review. I’ve reviewed the Symphony, the Symphony SE and now the Maestro. The two Symphony turntables have been discontinued, and the Maestro has taken the place of both. All three turntables have had a few things in common. They all are eye-catching, they are all high mass designs, and […]

Read Part 1 At around 50% of the cost of the TriangleArt Master Reference system, but costly nonetheless, the Spiral Groove Revolution turntable system and Centroid tonearm is capable of high drama of a different kind. Allen Perkins, founder and designer of Spiral Groove, began his career in the mid-80s as the chief designer for […]

Respondent: David MacPherson, Studio Electric, Room 5224.   What’s the “elevator pitch” description of your company? “Do one thing and do it well.” We build speakers that exceed expectations.   What makes your company and products special – how do they stand out from the pack? Dave MacPherson, managing partner at Studio Electric, has a 30-year […]

  The Infamous Burp Hollow, San Francisco Nightclub, 1956-66 “A seamy hole in the wall on Broadway — the booming entertainment strip of North Beach — this joint was near the bottom of the long list of jazz rooms flourishing in San Francisco around 1960.” — Clarinet player Bill Carter, 2014   A Colorful Nightclub […]

Publisher’s note: Doug Schroeder, in conversing with Gary Dews, owner of BorderPatrol, found him “perfectly polite and technically succinct,” which inspired him to write this review in the style of notation form of the Owner’s Manual. This review is separated into two parts, namely a Q&A section, followed by the review observations. Per Doug: “Do […]

Respondent: Rong Zhang, Unisinger Inc., Room 5231.   What’s the “elevator pitch” description of your company?  Unisinger’s mission is to provide artistically designed and affordably priced natural, balanced sounding high performance loudspeakers with Venturi Effect technology for improved aerodynamic and acoustic characteristics.   What makes your company and products special – how do they stand […]

Brendan Jan Walsh is anything but conventional. I met him here in Columbus, Ohio of all places at what was billed as a Classical Music Rave. On that alone I made a bee-line for the event, not knowing anything about him, but mindful of my past raving, this had to be experienced. Yes, there were […]

Everything’s venomous in Australia. Well, not everything, just a lot of things; snakes, spiders, jellyfish. I recall reading in the book In A Sunburned Country, by Bill Bryson, how in 1967 Prime Minster Harold Holt, a man very comfortable in the water, went for a swim with family and friends during high tide at Cheviot […]

Respondent: Mark Waldrep, AIX Media Group, Outer Booth #1   What’s the “elevator pitch” description of your company?    AIX Records specializes in the production of new high-resolution albums (96/24) mixed in surround and stereo and available on disc or downloads. Company founder and Chief Engineer Mark Waldrep has also written a book call Music […]

Swing Era Trumpeter Buck Clayton Swing era trumpet player Buck Clayton (1911-1991) is best known for his role in the early success of Count Basie and his Orchestra and his sensitive accompaniment for Billie Holiday’s records. Clayton was the son of a tuba-playing minister, and yet because he had some Native-American blood his mother called […]

A Passive Low Noise Filter Designed to Open Up A System To know me is to suffer my eccentricities. It is my nature to be both a skeptic and a cynic of the highest order, so imagine how I must be feeling now when something which originally caught my eye at an Hi-Fi show as […]

(Recorded on November 11, 1970 in the Medinah Temple, Chicago) Jacqueline Du Pre, cello Chicago Symphony Orchestra Daniel Barenboim, conductor Selections: Antonin Dvorak (1841-1904) Cello Concerto in B Minor, Op.104 1. 1st Movement: Allegro 2. 2nd Movement: Adagio ma non troppo 3. 3rd Movement: Finale: Allegro Moderato 4. Silent Woods, Op.68   The story of […]

Vincent Belanger was named official musical ambassador of Audio Note UK as of February 1st, 2016. Two years and some months onward, I am curious not only as to what this position entails and how it came to be. To get down to the matter, I interviewed Vincent to find the answers to the questions and more, hopefully. […]

I love gear, music and people. I don’t like the prospect of growing old. I know it is an inevitability, but that doesn’t mean I have to accept it without reservation. Over the years I have attended many a hi-fi show as both attendee and journalist and participated in more hi-fi related online groups than […]

The Mundorf speaker is available as a package of parts and detailed plans for constructing the speaker boxes, not actually meant to be sold assembled. I’m sure many of our readers have heard of the West German company Mundorf in the context of highly regarded speaker crossover parts, such as capacitors, coils, resistors, complete crossover […]

  Respondent: Martin Grennall, Audio Note, Room 5226.   What’s the “elevator pitch” description of your company?    “Audio Note (UK) is Europe’s largest and most established manufacturer of ultra performance high fidelity equipment”. What makes your company and products special – how do they stand out from the pack?    No other audio company invests as […]

Read Part 1 Part 2: Eugene Bullard, Florence Embry Jones, Willie Lewis Valaida Snow and Bill Coleman This is the continuing story of how the Montmartre section of Paris was transformed into a booming Harlem-style Jazz district between the World Wars. Jazz arrived in Paris with the wild success of Josephine Baker in the mid-1920s. […]

The digital revolution of the 1980s that spawned the digital audio compact disc was catalyzed partly by new advancements in transistor miniaturization. Integrated circuits had finally emerged and empowered innovators to fit a laser generating and reading system along with the necessary codec circuits into a small box. The promise of this revolutionary digital audio […]

Text: Marc Silver Photography: Jeff Dunston   January 9, 2018: Today started out gloomy cold and rainy as I drove to the Sacramento International Airport for a 7:30 am flight to attend the 2018 CES in Las Vegas. This normally short flight turned into a half day of boredom and sitting. Though I have to […]

Over the past two years my go-to cables have been from Clarity Cable and TEO Audio, makers of the Liquid Cables. I have put together literally dozens of systems using these brands, from full looms of one brand to mixtures of both. Most of the time I use them in combination to improve the performance […]

  Respondent: Arthur Smuck, Destination Audio, Boardroom 3.   What’s the “elevator pitch” description of your company? Destination Audio makes the world’s finest horn loudspeakers and single-ended triode high fidelity equipment. We are the destination for lovers of music who admire beautiful design and require the highest quality craftsmanship.   What makes your company and […]

Lyra builds approximately 400 Etna and Atlas cartridges a year, with all final assembly and voicing done by a single individual; consequently, it is not unusual to wait for several months after placing an order before one’s cartridge is delivered. The cartridge I ordered, the Atlas SL, differs from the normal Lyra Atlas in having […]

Michael Stern, conductor Kansas City Symphony Jan Kraybill, organ   Side A 1.       Adadio – Allegro moderato (10:18) 2.       Poco adagio (9:43) Side B 1.       Allegro moderato – Presto (7:25) 2.       Maestoso – Allegro (8:01)   We’re living in the wake of the great vinyl generation of the 70s when labels poured their resources into […]

“In a class of its own” HiFi enthusiasts know their classes of solid state amps, the most commonly used ones being Class A behemoths that tend to run hot, Class A/B solid state designs that tend to run cooler and often yielding more watts per dollar, and Class D, or Switching (chip) amps, which are […]