My love of monaural recordings began almost eleven years ago, a direct result of buying a Sony SCD777ES SACD player back in 2000. As an early adopter, the pool of SACDs to pick from was small, but there were a good many old jazz classics available. I discovered that a lot of these were mono […]

The second annual AXPONA, Audio Expo of North America, was held in Atlanta this year. The Atlanta Downtown Sheraton provided a substantially larger, upgraded, and more ambitious venue for this show when compared to the AXPONA Show held in Jacksonville, Florida a year ago. As was the case last year, the show attracted distributors, builders/manufacturers, […]

A company with which I was not familiar, but with which I ended up spending quite a bit of time, is Carnegie Acoustics. The company president is Ron May, whose prior company – Dr. Crankenstein – is well known in the car audio world. Ron’s goal in starting Carnegie was to bring high quality speakers […]

The second annual Audio eXPO of North America (AXPONA) was held in the Atlanta Sheraton Hotel from April 13-17, 2011. Though modestly sized with regard to both exhibitors and attendees, it was a great deal of fun, with some surprisingly good sound (given the difficulties of hotel room acoustics) and a relaxed, congenial atmosphere. There […]

Before I get to the substance of this article on my all out attempt to listen to vinyl in the most emotionally and musical involving way possible, let me list the components comprising this incredibly music playing system. The thing we seldom talk about is that you can’t really say how a preamp, a turntable, […]

A few months ago I dropped by a meeting of the Chicago Audio Society. The Bamberg Audio Series 2 TMM was playing and sounded quite good. Bamberg’s operations Manager Steve Fay then set up the top-of-the-line Series 5TMW but ran into some technical difficulties that prevented him from playing the 5 TMW (an audio salesman’s […]

Marten/EAR I walked into this room by mistake, and what a wonderful mistake it was. Though I did not hear the smaller system in the room, pictured above, the larger system was fantastic. The smaller system comprised of the EAR Acuete III CDP, EAR V12 integrated amplifier, and Marten Duke standmounts. The larger system, Marten […]

Lamm Industries The following listing was one of the “top gun” systems at either show including the following elements (not a complete listing): NeoDio NR22T Transport ($13,300) and NR22D DAC ($12,000), da Vinci AAS Gabriel Turntable limited edition ($59,900) with Grand Reference Grandezza Tonearm Luxury Edition ($10,989), Grand Reference Grandezza Stereo Cartridge ($8,525), Lamm LL1 […]

Naim Audio Naim Audio had an intriguing new speaker, the Ovator S-400 ($6,250) with a flat “Balanced Mode Radiator” for mid and high frequencies. While I would have preferred to hear the larger Ovator S-600 ($12,250 in standard finish), I found the smaller tower interesting. The flat tweeter/midrange sounds as a combination of point source […]

Introduction to Re-Submitted Audio Blast: Opamp Rolling the Eastern Electric Minimax DAC: The article which you are reading is a re-submission of one which discussed Opamp rolling the Eastern Electric Minimax DAC. The prior article which may still exist somewhere in the Net’s ether is to be distinguished by reference to reversed positions of placement […]

How Did You Spend Your Christmas Money? The favorite day of the year for my two sons when they were children was December 27th. My mother only had two grandchildren and she would give them all these clothes and things that they didn’t need or didn’t fit. She would leave on Dec. 26th to go […]

As many reading this undoubtedly know, retail marketing of high-end audio products underwent a profound change beginning in the 1990s, continuing to the present day. Stores that had previously focused exclusively on 2-channel audio found their survival dependent on embracing home theater and custom installation. This necessitated a shift of assets – gear, space, and […]

LB: Ted, welcome to Dagogo. Let’s begin with some history. How did you first get involved with high end audio? TL: My first experiences with high quality audio gear came from a cousin of mine. When I was just kid my family would visit my mother’s brother often and Willie, my cousin, as far back […]

About a year ago I embarked on what has been an absolutely fabulous journey into computer-based digital audio, culminating in what can only be described as a transformation of my main audio system. Along the way I have received quite an education. That education included learning a bit about setting up your own server, listening […]

Audio Note UK Audio Note UK was showing at the T.H.E. Show at Flamingo. I stopped by on the first day and wish I had a chance to return later in the show. Audio Note now has a new TT2 turntable and custom designed tone arm made in Austria. The table will be available in […]

Immersing myself in the CES/T.H.E. show environment again this year, I was like a fish swimming in water – right at home! At the end of three days of running the halls of the two hotels I felt as if I could do another three days. That’s how much I love exploring audio equipment and […]

It happens in the blink of an eye, in a flash, at the speed of light – the signal is sent, the music plays, and the ears are awash in waves of sound. The soul is stirred, and the mind feels… Free? Empowered? Thrilled? What is it like to hear sound conveyed at the speed […]

Your “Old Beatnik” fell into a bit of luck in November. My wife had to go to work in Paris for a whole week, in fact she would be there for eight days. Well I couldn’t imagine not be a gentleman and going along to keep her happy. Of course, while she had three free […]

Bob Dylan The Original Mono Recordings Label: Legacy Genre: Folk Rock Box Set of nine 180 gram LP Bob Dylan needs no introduction, and neither do most of these records. Pretty much this is folk music; but even 40 years removed from their original release, these albums still hold up musically, sonically, and have a […]

In the first part of “Pushing the Art of Listening to Vinyl” I shared with you about the remarkably lifelike sounding Shindo 301 Vinyl Playback System. It’s my goal to share with you in this three-part series of articles the system I have found to play vinyl in an incredibly lifelike manner. This has been […]

The much maligned transistor, the object of disdain and ridicule from audiophiles and musicians, doesn’t deserve its reputation. Most “transistor sound” is a result of multiple cascaded gain stages, electrolytic coupling caps and overuse of feedback. For some reason, electrical engineers think that just because they can get .0001 % distortion with feedback, then it […]

UPDATE 1/18/2011 Further investigation into op-amp rolling the Minimax DAC has been fruitful. I obtained these custom National Semiconductor op-amps for the EE DAC per recommendation from Chris and Melissa Owen of Clarity Cable, whose cables I am currently reviewing, and I consider this to be another efficacious improvement. This newest op-amp set is one […]

In this second part of my review of the Aural Symphonics family of cables, I will be describing the progression of effect each Aural Symphonics “Chrono” interconnect has wrought on the sound of my system and the final cumulative effect. I will also be describing the final effect of sound after introducing the Aural Symphonics […]

I was a fairly early adopter to SACD. I had struggled with redbook CD, finding only the Audio Note UK units really to my liking. I guess mostly I am a vinyl lover, but I was excited about what I was reading about the Sony SCD-1 and 777s. In 2000, I purchased a Sony SACD […]

As many of you know I am a big fan of the finer SET amps and of speakers that do not use crossovers. These two facts, along with the fact that the Turning Point Audio SD-X2s are 94 dB efficient, makes them immediately a speaker that I am interested in. So, it was with great […]

After attending CES 2010 and being impressed with both Audio Note rooms, I decided that I really needed to bring in one of Peter Qvortrup’s digital front-ends. Audio Note digital is most famous for its unique design in that all of their players use no digital or analog brick wall filters and no oversampling. Virtually […]

It would seem to me that the audiophiles on the other side of the pond have had PMC to themselves for far too long. This should not be the case. Especially when you consider the entire pedigree of action packed, star studded, blockbuster Hollywood soundtracks, sometimes those being the best part about the movie, that […]

by: Industry To all of my friends and colleagues: I’d like to wish you a warm and happy holiday season and take this moment to thank you for your friendship. Ours is a small industry, comprised of people who are motivated by a passion for music. We’re an unreasonable bunch with extremely high expectations chasing […]

I fell in love with music like most people as a child; in fact I think you have to be forced to not love music. Truth is most people need music. There are some who become too busy, too serious, too macho, or maybe somehow come to think of it as frivolous, but those people […]

As 2010 comes to a close it is perhaps timely to remind ourselves that it was a year that brought several notable anniversaries with it in the history of audio. Of course most wouldn’t be expected to get any attention even in the audio press but even the 90th anniversary of the first public radio […]