Publisher’s note/warning: This article depicts French nightlife of the 1920s and contains one semi-nude image of personality of note on page 1.   Part 1: Josephine Baker, Ada Bricktop Smith, Alberta Hunter and Friends Here’s a once-upon-a-time story almost too outrageous to be true — how the Montmartre section of Paris was transformed into a […]

  The Pass Laboratory Xs Phono arrived after I have wrapped up my review of the Hartvig TT turntable system with the Ikeda IT-345CR1 tonearm and the 9TT moving-coil cartridge. The phono stage at that time was the Pass Labs XP-25, a $10,600, two-chassis phono stage that raised the splendor of vinyl playback to such […]

33rpm 180gram vinyl HQ Pressing Fidelio Music Inc. FALP025 45rpm 2-LP set Test Pressing Record Technology Inc. CAM5-4109, January 4, 2017 Remastering engineer: Bernie Grundman www.recordtech.com Side A: 1. Little Black Lake 4:09 2. Soothing Your Soul 3:30 3. Hoping Love Will Last 4:31 4. Dragonfly 3:25 5. Do What You Please 3:09 Side B: […]

EMM Labs firmware update to DA2 digital to analog converter Read the EMM Labs TX2 and DA2 Review. DA2 V2 Firmware Update Details: More than a year in development, the DA2’s DSP engine has been completely updated. The updated DA2 now has a newly redesigned digital signal path that is built from the ground up […]

Publisher’s note: In my upcoming Pass Laboratories Xs Phono preamplifier Review, I provide brief technical description of the unit for readers’ benefit. But no writing by me or any other reviewers can surpass insights and the sense of adventure directly from the pen of the phono stage’s own designer, Wayne Colburn. Hence, instead of quoting […]

A star of the audio industry has fallen. Arnie Nudell passed away from complications of pnuemonia and his family put him to rest on Monday, November 20, 2017, according to an account by Bill Leebens on his Facebook page. Generations of burgeoning audiophiles grew up reading about Arnie’s pioneering accomplishments, from his tenure at Infinity […]

It’s not Just a PC – It’s A Component Let’s start with some perspective. The Stage III power cords, especially the Proteus, the subject of this review, and its siblings at the top of the Stage III pantheon, are not for the faint of heart. We’re not talking about any other power cords that purport […]

Les Grandes Eaux Musicales De Versailles, Le Concert des Nations, Alia Vox AV9842, 2004 L’Orchestre De Louis XIII, 1601-1643, Alia Vox AV9824, 2002 Jean-Baptiste Lully, L’Orchestra Du Roi Soleil, Alia Vox AV9807, 1999 Jean-Philippe Rameau, L’Orchestra De Louis XV, Alia Vox AVSA9882, 2011 Dagogo readers fascinated by the Versailles cable television drama series will be […]

Ethernet: a family of computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in 1983 as IEEE 802.3, and has since been refined to support higher bit rates and longer link distances. Over time, Ethernet has […]

The final part of my show report reveals the final two awards nomination, namely “Best System Performance” and the “Ultimate Cost No Object Design.” Both recipients come from the same room which were in Boardroom V. Since it is difficult to separate the components here I will say that CD sounded better here than anywhere […]

Entering Boardroom 3, I found my choice for “Best Industrial Design” in the Whammerdyne Truth 2a3 amplifier and Best Value in PureAudioProject loudspeakers. This is a large, 69lb $25,000 amplifier that puts out 4.2 watts per channel. Cables were handled by Verastarr cables leading to the very impressive PureAudioProject Quintet 15 Horn1, each speaker utilizes […]

My buddies in the local audiophile klatch get a glimpse of my angle on gear when I update them via email. They often are able to come by and listen. Once in a while they rib me, suggesting I’m being too effusive, but when they hear what I’m raving about they typically retract their criticism. […]

It figures, the one category of speaker I thought I could safely ignore through the years is the one I should have been paying closer attention to. I had concluded through listening events at shows, dealers and audiophile friends’ homes that lower power and high efficiency speakers were not the way to go to attain […]

The Anti-separate When I was growing up, my parents had a fancy Telefunken console audio system. It was an all-in-one system: speakers, AM and FM tuners, preamp, turntable and amp. My very first stereo was similarly an all-in-one unit. However, as I began to progress down the path of the audiophile, or should I say […]

This is the tale of a failed early stereo album that would have been the premier recording by a legendary San Francisco revival jazz group, Bob Mielke and The Bearcats Jazz Band, although it never issued a record. Recent recovery of the original master tape makes possible presentation of the extraordinary two-microphone “mid-side” stereo artifact […]

Eficion Another room that I quite enjoyed was Room 5205 using Eficion F250 speakers ($9,950), Plinius SA103 power amps ($10,150), Exemplar Audio eXception SE preamp ($5495), Oppo UPD-205 4k Audiophile disc player ($1,299) and Line Magnetic LM-502CA DAC ($1,800). I happen to own this DAC which sadly will soon be discontinued. This system had a […]

This commentary is a review of remarkable new technology from Jack Bybee. But it’s also a sketch of his intriguing concepts and the rarely profiled man behind them. I first met Bybee more than twenty years ago, adopting his AC filtering in the mid-1990s. I’ve followed his work with keen interest ever since, acquiring several […]

At some point after my Audio Note M10 review is written, a reviewer has to make the decision whether to purchase the review sample or return it to the manufacturer. For me, this is generally a fairly straightforward process as, other than with respect to digital pieces, I seldom make changes to my system. In […]

Spatial Audio/Vinnie Rossi Continuing with coverage of rooms with speakers under $10,000 that I feel offer good sound for the money, here is the Spatial Audio/Vinni Rossi room. This system generated a nice sweet sound with no bass issues. Unfortunately, they did not have a CD player which left me without the ability to play […]

Veritable books have been written about the Magnepan speaker company and its Magneplanar speakers. I’m not going to reiterate that history here. Instead, I will relate my particular experiences using the latest iteration of the sophomore model, the .7. The Magnepan .7 Quasi Ribbon planar speaker retains the tidy appearance of a field of speaker […]

This review is my subjective impression as a delighted new owner of an evolving audio classic, the Legacy Focus SE ($10,600/pr). A large floor standing loudspeaker, the Focus SE has won numerous awards and been widely reviewed positively, including in Dagogo, 2008. The Focus SE, like its better-known sibling Aeris, is compatible with Legacy’s Wavelet […]

Average Crazy Joe Audiophile attends CAS7 After a year of hiatus, the California Audio Show (CAS) returned to the Bay Area for its 7th iteration. The venue moved from hotels across the bay near San Francisco Airport (SFO) to the Hilton Oakland Airport, literally across the street from the Oakland airport (OAK). I’ve attended many […]

Co-author: Earl Weed The EMM Labs XDS1 SACD Player has now been in continuous production for ten years.  It created a stir when released and has received many favorable reviews, including one from me. Unfortunately, technology never stands still and at some point, the XDS1 began to show its age. About two years ago, the […]

Trenner & Friedl was started by two friends, Andreas Friedl and Peter Trenner, in the mid-1990s in Graz, Austria. If you spend some time reading about them on the Internet, you will discover that their goal is a little different from most high-end companies. In a review on TNT-Audio, Andreas Friedl says, “One of our […]

Tannoy/Steven Lester Co. In part 2, I will be covering some of the best budget rooms and components. Budget is relative of course, so these are rooms where the loudspeakers were priced at under $10,000. All of these speakers and systems sounded very good and it is sometimes difficult to separate one as being a […]

I’d like to start by saying that the overall sound of this edition of the California Audio Show has been the best yet and that several attendees mentioned to me that they felt it was the best sounding show across the board that they have heard. Perhaps being an airport hotel the construction to reduce […]

Von Schweikert Audio/Valve Amplification Company – California Room, Bldg IV. Best sound of the show in my opinion was the Von Schweikert Audio statement loudspeaker in a large ballroom shared with VAC. The massive Ultra 11 ($300,000/pair) cast a huge and convincing image all the way to the rear wall nearly twenty feet back.  vonschweikert.com  […]

Design History This is the fourth product I have reviewed from Margules. The quality and value of these products make me continue to question why they are not better known in the overall audiophile world. Julian Margules of Margules Group has been an audio manufacturer for over 40 years and is well known in Mexico […]

Publisher’s note: This is a part of a series of pre-CAS7 articles we have prepared for our readers. Enjoy! Questionnaire created by Dan Rubin, copy editor. Respondent: Leif Swanson of Von Schweikert Audio.   What’s the “elevator pitch” description of your company? With a history spanning more than 40 years, Von Schweikert Audio is a […]

In the last installment, I opined on the perceived general demise of the audio arts, recorded music, high end audio, the world as we know it, life, the universe and everything by my brethren and fellow audiophile…. all, so it is said, “Soon to be extinct.” You may also recall me commenting that as they […]