I’ll never forget the day I saw a picture of a “pocket poodle*.” How small can a dog get? It amazed me how far miniaturization has been taken. No less amazing is how tiny electronics have become. I remember very well my father’s Heathkit separates which he lovingly built and how the preamp/tuner and amp […]

Sounding Ultralock Just what is this “UltraLock” feature, the DAC1’s claim to fame? I conducted an informal online interview with John Siau, Director of Engineering at Benchmark Media, who happens to use the first hand-built prototype of the DAC1 in his home system. He summarized: “UltraLock is a clock isolation system. The incoming digital audio […]

Introduction If I told my family that I spent part of a Saturday afternoon writing a review on how different power cables sound, they’d think I’ve gone batty. Power cords? Come on! But it’s true, it’s crazy but true. And while I am a full-monty audiophile, I’m also trying to keep my audio habit (sounds […]

The purpose for starting this column was to share with you what its like to be a reviewer. So with this year’s “Home Entertainment” show in New York this May, I thought it would be a good time to talk about Audio Shows. I had been to a few shows over the years, and I […]

YG Acoustics first made its presence known in the high-end audio community in CES 2006, occupying two rooms for demonstration on a consumer model and a professional model, both featuring all-aluminum cabinets. The consumer model, dubbed Anat Reference Professional, retailing for $92,000 per pair, had won the top industry accolades from Hong Kong and Japan, […]

Midrange At the beginning of my audiophile adventure, I used Quad and Acoustat electrostatic drivers for the midrange frequency band in my hybrid speakers using my own design of subwoofers and ribbon super tweeters. Later, I used ribbon midrange panels in my quest for transparency. Although these planar drivers sound quite good in many respects, […]

Reviewer Anxiety When Constantine Soo asked me to review the Music Hall Maverick SACD Player, I accepted with just a bit of apprehension. Paradoxically, this apprehension originated out of two very different and somewhat contradictory concerns. First, I own an expensive high-end redbook transport/DAC combo, and I have periodically wondered whether SACD technology will make […]

Cables have to be the most underappreciated component. I chose the word “component” carefully, since I fully intend to convey that cables are a component in today’s high-end audio. Proof of this is found in the exquisite lengths (pun indented) cable manufacturers are going to producing conduits which will convey all the proper information. A […]

History And Description How do you say, “too good to be true”? Or maybe I’m just plain lucky. Whatever the cause I still can’t believe my first review in the world of vinyl playback is that of the latest incarnation of my favorite cartridge from my youth. There is no other audio component that I […]

Let’s Get Two Things Out Of The Way Before We Begin The Review: First, Clearaudio is a turntable maker who already comes with a reputation for making some of the most industrially beautiful, and sonically detailed, transparent, and accurate turntables on the market. In fact, when I talked about what was wrong with turntable these […]

May 11 – 13, 2007 Grand Hyatt Hotel, New York, NY As always there are some very exotic looking speakers at the show. Here are a few that caught my eye. A few eyeballs from Cabasse: Some funky horns from Loiminchay: An even funkier horn from Dr. Tetsuo Kubo, the Kubotek “Haniwa” speakers: I’m with […]

May 11 – 13, 2007 Grand Hyatt Hotel, New York, NY What was the most fun thing about the show? Well three things for me. Seeing old friends, making new friends, and the ballroom where there was lots of Vinyl to buy. John DeVore and Michael Lavorgna Michael this time with Jules Coleman Art Dudley […]

Wayne Parham of Pi Speakers (www.pispeakers.com) had a heck of an idea for an audio show that would appeal to both DIY’ers and small manufacturers: A BYOG (Bring Your Own Gear) show with minimal participation cost that would allow most anyone to be an exhibitor for just the cost of a hotel room. The concept […]

During the course of reviewing the Von Schweikert VR-4 SR MkII in February and March of 2007, reviewer Douglas Schroeder spoke with Albert Von Schweikert extensively. The following article comprises the bulk of their enlightening conversations. DAGOGO is grateful to Albert for spending the extra time to delineate his philosophy of speaker design, share some […]

Foreword The Chief Engineer and founding partner of Luminance Audio proves to be more than just a formidable engineering talent; he is also quite prolific in literary creativity if asked to do that. Including this article, DAGOGO has published five articles thus far by Steve Keiser. While three of the five articles were on his […]

I don’t want a simulation, I want reality. When I sit down to listen, I want to hear the real thing, not some weak representation of the music. As with all ardent audiophiles, I want virtual reality, the phrase Von Schweikert audio uses to describe the sound of their VR speakers, and essentially what every […]

Back in the 1950’s a movie character in a sci-fi film was just that, a character, one persona which was fixed throughout the movie. Fast forward fifty years and things have shifted a bit, and there is a fluidity to characters. With the utilization of digital effects in movies, “shape shifters” or “changlings”, beings that […]

Description We live in a world that is caught up in being glamorous and ostentatious, and let’s admit a good part of our hobby fits these adjectives. To this world, the Audience au24 cables come along like a basic little black dress—one without a celebrity designer label. When you first unpack the au24 cables and […]

How the Ikonoklast speakers found me I have read a few reviews over the years that started by saying something along these lines, “Every once in a while a product comes along that makes you rethink what you thought you believed about audio.” Well this is my first one. I didn’t even set out to […]

If you’re interested in hearing more about tables, arms, and cartridges from me, you will have to wait another month. This month, it’s all about the music. There are two things I’m certain of after three months of listening to vinyl. First, I prefer vinyl to digital by a larger margin than I have ever […]

Here with another in the series of articles from “Art! The Prospective In the Creative Process”, representing a variety of takes and procedures in regards to the artist involvement with the ‘perspective’ mindset. Samples with individual approach and applications of form, content, and practice, etc. of various professional artists’ in their fields, while working through […]

This tale begins late last spring when Constantine let me know the 47 Lab MC Bee cartridge and 4718 Shigaraki phono stage were on the way. Their arrival coincided with problems encountered with my tone arm, a vintage S.M.E. 3009R that had come with my Ariston RD-11 Superieur turntable. After just a few listening sessions, […]

Music Hall’s RDR-1 table-top radio is a reviewer’s companion. For when I was hard at work editing and typing reviews or making industry correspondences, the Musical Hall radio was there not simply playing crystal clear FM music from a classical station as never achieved by any other radios, it is also equipped with the Radio […]

There is an ancient saying, “A cord of three strands is not easily broken (Ecclesiastes 4:12),” a timeless way of saying there is strength in a cooperative effort. The principle is easily demonstrated by taking a thin string and noting how easily it breaks. Then, after tripling the length and twisting it, the cord resists […]

It didn’t take much cajoling from my editor to enlist me in writing the first review of the Esoteric X-01 D2, the upper model of the X-01 Limited, and now the premier one-box offering from Esoteric. This unit was designed for those whose passion is clearly SACD as the D2 circuitry is identical to that […]

What would you think of a product that comes with a half-sheet filled with warnings such as, “ATTENTION! SAFETY WARNING!! AFTER USE, PLEASE DISPOSE…IN A SAFE MANNER!” What kind of audio product is worth risking life and limb? Those are legally necessary alarms considering the object in question is a pin taped to a piece […]

Before I tell you about the Murata Super Tweeters, please allow me a few paragraphs to explain why and when you will reap the appropriate benefits from this truly unique product. Doing so requires a little bit of “myth busting”, so here it goes. The Myth Of “Diminishing Returns” As a child I listened to […]

Here was the plan. Even as heavy as the VSEI Level 5+ Sony 777 SACD player is, it was easier to move around than it was to bring lots of turntables to my house. So off I set to listen to, and where possible, compare the Level 5+ player to the best vinyl rigs I […]

My audio buddy Steve recently acquired an Audio-Technica 1005 tonearm and Grado Sonata cartridge for his Thorens TD-125 turntable. We decided to get together and listen to them along with a Denon DL-103 he already had. A classic ‘shoot-out’. I brought my Dynavector 10×5 to add to the mix, but left it attached to the […]

Think back to before you became interested in the equipment. If you’re like me, perhaps you listened to music on the radio, through a ‘record player’ or even one of the new little integrated amps and stereo speakers from Olson’s or Lafayette. If you wished for better sound at all it was probably that it […]