A Little Background on Me and Lowther Drivers My favorite audio writer by far is Art Dudley. I often still think about, and miss Listener magazine. It was he who whet my appetite to hear some Lowther-based speakers. That sounds easier than it is. At the time I started to read Listener, I lived in […]

Introduction When asked to review a pair of Bowers &Wilkins speakers, I jumped at it. While I have never owned a pair over the years, many of my audio buds have. I still remember the first pair of B&Ws I ever saw, they looked like they were made of white plastic. They were big, wide, […]

Opening Statement I started my review of the Vacuum State’s RTP-3D (January 2007), their all-out attempt at a “state of the art” preamp with these words: “This is going to be a very easy review because this is a very special preamp. So let me just say it right up front, this is the most […]

Why We Need Room Correction If you’ve read about human hearing, the effects of your listening environment on your sound, and the difficulties associated with getting realistic bass, skip the first two sections and proceed to “My Prior Attempts to Deal With My Room”. If not, read on. How does human hearing work? Most of […]

I had current events on my mind while driving to the Lone Star Audio Fest. The increasingly high cost of fuel and slowing economy is bound to hurt manufacturers. Even though the Fed says the economy is still growing, consumers are tightening the purse strings. Still, manufacturers must advertise and trade shows will always be […]

Seems that many are completely lost out there. Caught in a quagmire wondering just what the heck was going on with those abstract art pieces you saw when your friend dragged you out one night a few weeks back? Doing one of those ‘First Friday’ artsy-fartsy gallery strolls in your town USA? The World? Some […]

Certain indulgences seem ubiquitous, nearly a genre of consumer product name brands in their own right, such as Harley Davidson or Rolex. Among these is McIntosh Labs, a company that has been producing high-end audio electronics and speakers for more than half a century. I recall as a child occasionally having the pleasure of being […]

Roksan may not be the best known name in audio here in the United States, but most folk in Europe know it well. Roksan is a British high-end audio company who became famous for making one of the first turntables to seriously contend with the Linn Sondek table. The name comes from the name of […]

The new Ikonoklast Model 3 High Output loudspeakers look exactly like the older one, but when you listen to them, they sound like everything you had wished the old Model 3 could sound like and more. So I want to share with you this incredible new speaker. I have now lived with the original Ikonoklast […]

If there were one tweak that an audiophile could use to educate non-audiophiles on why we labor so much for sound, power conditioning would be at the top of my list. Whereas cables & vibration control accessories are often subtle in their effect, power conditioning can be as obvious as a yawn in church. Even […]

Back when I first began to listen to records in the Fifties you put Theresa Brewer or Elvis Presley on the ‘record player’ and ‘dropped the needle’. Since then the record player has become the turntable and the needle, the stylus, which resides in a cartridge. Turntables and cartridges gave way, for awhile, to the […]

I’ve been reviewing a lot of speakers lately. To my surprise, every pair has been at least good enough to let me enjoy music. A few have been really exceptional, some have been great bargains, and one pair even made me consider if I could afford them. All of this has led me to do […]

Ryan Coleman’s departure 1. Original draft of Acoustic Revive RTP-4 review by Ryan Coleman 2. Email correspondences between Ryan Coleman and me (two sub-sections, email correspondences in chronological order) (edited segments in italics, excluding final editing on syntax) Intro If there were one tweak that an audiophile could use to educate non-audiophiles on why we […]

American products are becoming more attractive to foreign buyers because of the weaker dollar, and companies that do not have an international presence are in a very probable disadvantage. One of the companies that is able to sustain its U.S. and international market amidst our current tumultuous state of economy is McIntosh. According to Ron […]

Intro As an audiophile, I love listening to new gear and purchasing the best-sounding equipment my budget will allow. But as an experienced businessman, I find myself taking an interest in high-end audio companies for reasons beyond their products’ performance. I find it interesting, nay, fascinating to see the high-end audio market accepts and rejects […]

To many 50-year-old+ audiophiles, Luxman Corporation Is perhaps most favorably remembered for its M6000 power amplifier of 1975, an avant-garde design that was the company’s response to the emerging high-end, high-output solid-state amplifier market at that time. To many vinyl connoisseurs, the company’s visually stunning and highly collectible PD-444 turntable of 1977 was the engineering […]

“That evening, Polyphemus herded his flock of sheep and goats into his cave and, for safekeeping, rolled a huge boulder across the entrance, not knowing the Greeks were inside. On seeing the one-eyed giant. Odysseus and his men gasped in disbelief, giving away their hiding place. Polyphemus rushed forward and killed two of the men, […]

The MBL 5011 Preamplifier is part of MBL’s Noble line, which is smack-dab (yes – that’s really a word!) between MBL’s Reference line and the Basic line. How I got it is: A Leap of Faith In April of 2006, after two years of being a die-hard member of the “no preamp is better than […]

Description Clearaudio is offering an update to owners of all their tables, except the Emotion. The upgrade features a ceramic alloy bearing material for the main shaft, that is said to dramatically reduce friction, along with a bearing housing that features magnetic donuts that repel one another. “… after placing the platter onto the bearing, […]

Introduction This is a long and at least for me at times, an exhausting review. So let me say up front that some of you may want to skip down and read the section on SOUND and then the CONCLUSION; then decide if you want to read all the rest. It is difficult to get […]

I thought I had ruled out tube cdp’s. I was under the impression that quality solid-state players had advanced to the point where they had eclipsed hybrid designs. In years past, my disc player comparisons had taken me from the Rega Planet 2000 to the Ah! Njoe Tjoeb 4000, a tube hybrid design. I went […]

Swedish label Proprius released the original Cantate Domino long-playing record in 1976 to a dazed audiophile community. No one before it has ever captured the nuances and power of the choir and pipe organ so masterfully, and no audiophile has ever experienced such level of sonic potency in his own system before it. For the […]

Description My Genesis 7.1p speakers came in the Arctic Silver bodies with the Metallic Slate Grey Shields. This is a very modern looking speaker that really fit well in my upstairs system in a room with black and red modern furniture. It has a very nice finish and looks simple but stylish. The G7p is […]

Why Was This Speaker Named Focus? It is an acronym for “Field Optimized Convergent Source.” What it means is that the speaker is tuned for the actual listening position in a room, not to a 1-meter close-microphone measurements in an anechoic chamber. Bill states that over a decade ago, he had learned that, “…the in-room […]

Becoming Legacy Established in 1983 by Bill Dudleston and his father in law, Jacob Albright, Legacy Audio began as an engineering-driven loudspeaker company with audiophile concerns. When Jake retired in 1997, Bill brought on the Allen Organ Company as a logical partner. For Allen was the world leader in digital organ technology, providing such niceties […]

For a guy who operated without a preamp for two years, I have sure been listening to a multitude of top-of-the-line preamps in the last 18 months. In fact, I recently auditioned an MBL 1510 that I decided to purchase as my principal preamp after an extensive search process. At the time that I was […]

When Constantine told me that he was sending me a Canadian produced speaker for review, I’ll admit that I had preconceived notions about what I was going to get. Canada has been producing high quality speakers for years now, and I imagine you can think of multiple brands, like I did. What I’ve heard from […]

There are plenty of ultra-expensive upper echelon speakers that I have not heard. When I refer to “ultra-expensive”, I mean seriously expensive – not just very expensive. I’m talking about (in descending order) the Genesis 1.1 ($165,000, though this includes amplification), the Rockport Technologies Hyperion ($92,000), the Avantgarde Trio with Basshorn ($72,000), the MBL 101E […]

A word from the publisher Steve Daniels of The Sound Organisation, Rega’s U.S. distributor, called the other day, and we had a hearty chat on the effects created by Dagogoan Doug Schroeder’s Reconsideration of the Rega Saturn CD player article. Per Steve, although Doug’s article did not create a full-scale paranoia among the bulk of […]

Audio Research Corporation LS-1 Line Stage: I acquired it early in the year, a 1989 model with its single, stock Sovtek 6922 replaced with a 7308 Amperex military tube. Like any 20-year-old component, it needed some work. The soundstage was narrow and the overall presentation of the music excessively dry and dull. I knew from […]