As with most other industries, the high-end audio industry fell victim to the economic downturn. The preceding 18 months have witnessed all importers impacted by the recession, as some of them reprioritize their product lineups, while some others changed product lineups altogether. It has thus become a far more common, though no less daunting sight, […]

I have been quite the ripper lately, ripping CDs like a madman onto my miniature Toshiba portable hard-drive via my Gateway laptop. Of course, since 2008 Jack Roberts has been transferring CDs onto his hard-drive and listening to them via the ModWright-modified Slim Devices Transporter. That makes Jack the first ripper amongst his Dagogoans. Seriously, […]

The best thing happening to audiophiles on a budget is the rise of Chinese high-end audio manufacturing. Even for those who aren’t on a budget, there are products like the Opera Consonance Droplet LP5.0MKII Turntable and Stand for an MSRP of $5,700, or the Jolida Musical Envoy products. I know it’s hurting some Western manufacturers […]

If you Google ZYX, you’ll find plenty of opinion on the line. An observation that seems to be pretty consistent is that they are accurate. Accurate in that they don’t have any obvious colorations, tracking problems, romanticism, etc.. I’d only heard one ZYX in person, and only for about an hour, and in an unknown […]

Part of the excitement of being an audiophile is the fun derived from browsing online classifieds. Within our respective budgets, we can have so much fun examining the various listed equipment from the laptop on your lap in a lazy Sunday afternoon. So many times I was bent on acquiring yet another piece of gear, […]

              It seems no secret in the industry that reviewers do not flock in droves for the chance to review cables. It is understandable as the difference from one cable brand to the next can generally be very subtle, unless of course, we are talking about the difference between […]

There are some things that just stick in your memory, like the first time someone suggested that I should pay for speaker cables. If you’re like me and you’re over 50, you remember when you purchased your speakers the dealer would ask you how much wire you would need. He would then pull out a […]

I have often read CD player reviews that imply that the sonic differences between CD players are very minimal. This has not been my experience. It is true that this may have generally been the case in 1990, but things changed by the late 1990’s, and the last 5-7 years have seen an amazing variety […]

Description Chinese audio company Opera Consonance has been in high-end audio manufacturing business for over 15 years. While not a household name in the U.S., their products are beginning to get more and more notoriety. The company is operated by chief designer and owner Mr. Shi Hui Liu. The Droplet LP 5.0 MKII turntable system […]

There has been very little in the past few years at CES or in the two-channel audio industry as a whole that would qualify as groundbreaking, despite what the marketing people and the designers would have you think. Most of what we see year in and year out is a rehashing of the same old […]

Preface I first would like to thank Constantine for inviting me into his audiophile- virtual commune and for giving me the opportunity to share my thoughts and views on all things Hi Fi on these pages; and also thank all of the warm well wishes I received from my fellow staffers. While I have written […]

The year is almost over and it’s dawned on me that next year will be my fifth year with Dagogo. When I decided to write the ‘Beatnik’s Journey” it was my desire to share two things with you: the memories I have of a life as an audiophile (40 years now, the obsession started when […]

In the fall of 2007 I subscribed to both of the Blue Note 45 RPM reissue series from Music Matters and Analogue Productions. This is a rather hefty expenditure in great jazz, and can only be considered an investment if you plan to sell them at a latter date. I have to admit that I […]

I recall being in a discussion years ago with a long time audio manufacturer who mentioned a person nicknamed “Gizmo”. I blanked, “Uh…,” while trying to cover my profound ignorance. Harvey “Gizmo” Rosenberg, the colorful owner of New York Audio Labs, made his mark as a manufacturer of Output Transformerless (OTL) audiophile amps. It was […]

What the heck are these things? Well, most obviously they’re shiny silver cylinders about 4” in diameter and 4 ¾” in height and weighing 8.8 pounds each. On top, they have two inputs, one RCA and one XLR. They also have one XLR output. Based on that unsophisticated description, they’re gizmos, thingamajigs or widgets. Turns […]

I now have definitive proof: you can never have too much power. A few months ago I received a single Plinius SA Reference amplifier to review as a stereo amp. At the time I received it, I had several other high-power amps available, all of which were monoblocks. I thought it would be interesting to […]

Getting Wired Up! I have to make an admission. I am known far and wide as a Type A personality. I prefer to think of myself as a recovering Type A. You can say that I am fairly wired by nature, and this review seems sort of serendipitous in a way. I also have another […]

I consider myself rather fortunate that I review almost exclusively high-end Hifi items. It has been my experience thus far that I have not listened to anything that did not sound rather spectacular in its own way. When you are playing in this rarified air you have the right to expect things that are beyond […]

Lowther’s worldwide debut of the DX-65 driver in the Teresonic Magus XR A new driver from Lowther is real news. A new five inch driver is even rarer news, so it was with great anticipation that I waited on this pair of speakers to arrive. It was the Teresonic Magus XR with the new Lowther […]

Mike Allen and Jolida always brings great gear and this year he displayed a trio of his little 12-watt EL84 driven Cube amps. He was also using his own Tascam BR-20 10-inch reel-to-reel. Are these tape decks making a comeback? Evidently so and I for one am glad. While Mike’s little amps may not be […]

Sanders I have always been taken with the Sanders speakers and electronics. This year the system had excellent speed and leading edge definition, and excellent extension at the frequency extremes. Resolution and imaging were also strong points. It could have been a bit warmer through the midrange but overall was one of the better systems […]

Some of you may not be familiar with the name of Haniwa yet but you will be. Born out of the fertile mind of Dr. Tetsuo Kubo and his Kubotek Creation Engineering company, known worldwide for their CAD engineering programs, Haniwa and is manufacturing the full compliment of audio gear including amplification and phono cartridges! […]

Last year I did a show report entitled the “Top Ten Rooms” where I simply listed my ten favorite rooms in alphabetical order. This year I tried to spend more time in the rooms that “really floated my boat” so I would be able to tell you much more about these rooms. I’m not claiming […]

ECONO-SHOCK! In the past Wharfedale has always meant polite Brit sound to me and nothing serious. Lately the company is getting more serious, especially with its Opus 2-2 Towers ($2,299 – 3,499 depending on finish). The big payoff in design is the implementation of the same upper drivers as the flagship Airedale at $20K. Large […]

Attendance was down significantly this year. A number of exhibitors chose to stay in the rooms which they had used in past years (Audio Federation, Aaudio Imports, EAR, Audio Unlimited, etc.). In general this was a wise choice, particularly with respect to setting up systems in more familiar acoustics. Exhibitors generally seemed upbeat. Sound was […]

K.T. Audio Import The K.T. Audio Import exhibit took place in the extremely large Evergreen Ballroom A. Though large, the room was occupied by none other than the $155k Gamut S9 loudspeaker system, as driven by the $26,000/pair M250 monoblock amplifiers. What normally would require the larger of systems to fill the room sonically with, […]

Do you really want a system that let’s you hear what’s on the record? We audiophiles often say that’s what our goal is. Other audiophiles say they want a system that brings them as close as possible to what the original performance sounded like. I don’t know how the second could work if, by it, […]

Sometimes the little things irritate me. What little things in particular? Misleading frequency response specifications, an example of which would be, “20 Hz – 25 kHz”. It means very little to real world audio. I could tell you that I am 6’ 5” tall, weigh 175 pounds and can slam a basketball. Of course, that’s […]

My mind brims with thoughts about enduring, not pertaining to involvement in the audio hobby, but to the habit of finding new gear, putting systems together in an effort to achieve that “work of art”, the realization of a rig that brings us as close as we can to our ideal HiFi experience. This article […]

Five of these six albums showed up at my house early in November. The Live in Paris album I have had for a few months; two are remasters of rather old LPs and two are new releases. The two Diana Krall albums are new vinyl released of CDs that have been out for several years. […]