A new year brings the Consumer Electronics Show, and the opportunity to review the latest audio designs. Right now, I have no less than three 300B amplifiers crowding my listening room and competing for my attention. The DA08SE’s were first to arrive just a few days after C.E.S. ended, courtesy of C.C. Poon, proprietor of […]

You youngsters out there may think that Oracle is the name of a database management system, and the name of the company that owns and sells it. You older (and, I hope, wiser) folks know that an “oracle” is an entity that is a source of wise counsel or prophecy, usually supernatural in nature. In […]

Prologue The 1980’s was a period of certain enlightenment for the audio industry. After a decade’s worth of joint engineering efforts between Sony and Philips, the industry finally introduced the compact disc technology to the market, injecting unprecedented excitement and energy into both the music and the hardware manufacturing business. Just as the compact disc […]

They’re white. They’re heavy. Heavy-duty even. They have lots of ins and outs. They’re in my office and they get lots of attention… and that’s without anyone even listening. I have had the AudioEngine A5 powered loudspeakers in my office for just about two months now. They are always on… mostly at low volume in […]

I’ve been treated like royalty. My ears have been treated like royalty. John Quick, Verity & Nagra’s North American marketing rep, drove down from Massachusetts to deliver the Tamino x2’s, Verity’s entry-level loudspeaker, to my Philadelphia home. What a gentleman. He did all the unpacking… from those awesome protective foam-lined luxurious flight cases. He placed […]

Wayne Parham of Pi Speakers is an Electrical Engineer with a software consulting business, Parham Data Products, and the very passionate belief that everyone should have high quality speakers he’s become the John Beresford Tipton of Audio. Pi Speakers will sell you a completed speaker for your living room, saloon or church, but Wayne would much rather give […]

The Roksan Caspian FR-5 Speakers are tall, elegant beauties. Taller than both my Meadowlark Kestrel II’s and the Verity Audio Taminos, which are also in for review. With their high-gloss deep lacquer on black, and with their straightforward geometry, they are also very confident-looking speakers. Clean and simple, they look like a fine piece of […]

The I60 is a Chinese-assembled, Genesis-designed 60-watt, KT 88-based integrated amp with a passive linestage. It uses a special hand-made, stepped volume attenuator featuring precision-matched resistors. According to the Genesis website, the I60 uses very low negative feedback, with hand-selected and matched components, such as custom designed hand-wound output transformers with high-grade copper and silicon […]

The Tour Saturday, 8th April, England; day of the Aintree Grand National when even the most dour-hearted individuals are often tempted to venture through the door of the local bookmaker to place the almost customary pound on a four legged nag which inevitably deposits it’s jockey unceremoniously on his backside before half a dozen fences […]

Accustic Arts of Germany not only produces an entire audio system of electronics, speakers and cables, it also runs a professional recording studio, thus is uniquely positioned to harness a wealth of knowledge from aspects of audio engineering. Coordinated by Martin and Steffen Schunk, the sons of the company’s founder, Fritz Schunk, the company’s tremendous […]

So I’m back and have been listening to the Audia ‘Flight CD-One’ for over a month. This has given me a chance to listen to it with almost every kind of music. It let me do some serious listening. It let me listen to it as I write and I work. I’ve even listened to […]

Error: In July’s Review of Roksan FR-5 loudspeaker system by Sandy Greene, in a paragraph which he stated, “I was not surprised as I really liked, not loved, the Roksan Caspian CD player with Rogue amplification”, it should’ve read: “I was not surprised as I really liked — no — loved, the Roksan Caspian CD player with […]

Here again with another perspective venture, on course with a series of articles that have direct and informative takes from various professional artists culminated from a succession of personal interviews. This following excerpt was from an interview with a visual artist, working primarily with the acrylic and tempera mediums, in a category that would most […]

I have always noted with great curiosity and interest the fundamental and the rather consequential significance of sonic characteristics between transistors and vacuum tube circuits. My personal inclination is I prefer the gestalt presentation of tubes, since the impression they convey in comparison to solid-state is a better sense of harmonic structure, palpability and bloom, […]

Foreword by Constantine Soo Steve Keiser is setting out to design a preamplifier of his ideal, and has agreed to share his thoughts on the priorities of the design with Dagogo’s readers. Dagogo is privileged to be chosen as the exclusive platform for presenting such rare articles by the creative mind behind the original B&K […]

Reviewing a Ken Shindo component outside of a full Shindo system is to miss a lot of what the artist had in mind (don’t read that to mean the amp must be used in a full Shindo system, far from it). It means we are dealing with handmade electronics that are works of auditory art. […]

My System B&K Reference 31 Preamp/Processor, B&K Reference 7270 Amplifier, Boston Acoustics VR-970 Speakers, DIY Infinite Baffle subwoofer, DIY speaker cables using Belden 1810A, DIY audio cables DIY using Canare LV77S, DIY sound treatments. When evaluating the Song Audio, I used three sources: a Music Hall Maverick SACD/CD Player (which I was evaluating at the […]

(Effective August 1, 2009, Maxxhorn has changed its company name to AFFIRM AUDIO. -Ed.) Legendary horn iterations of the past, such as those from Altec-Lansing, JBL and Klipsch utilized separate horns for reproducing specific spectrums via complex crossover schemes to attain sufficient bandwidths, while still being able to play loud; and their purist counterparts as […]

It had been a while since I last auditioned a preamp, and I had asked Constantine Soo to get me a solid state pre to review. When he told me that I would get the Sphinx Laboratories Project Eight to play with, I drew a complete blank. I had never encountered Sphinx Laboratories products before. […]

In The Beginning Let me begin with what is now an oft-told tale. In the early days of audio, amplifiers were tube-based and of low power. The speakers they powered were, by necessity, of high efficiency/sensitivity, often incorporating horns. The introduction of the transistor dramatically changed the landscape as it became possible to obtain higher […]

Audio Note Audio Note Room 1, hosted by the hard-working Josh Turney of Audio Note USA Peter Qvortrup exhibited two systems in two adjacent rooms. The first room was hosted by Josh Turney of Audio Note USA, Audio Note’s U.S. Distributor, who put together a relatively modest AN system consisted of the AN-E LX loudspeakers […]

Quantum Products Quantum’s president Bill Stierhout (pictured) has a long list of reputable clientele from within and outside of the industry. The most notable one in the industry being Mr. Kazuo Kiuchi of Combak Corporation. Mr. Stierhout’s Quantum Resonance Technology™ (QRT) has been adopted by Mr. Kiuchi for deployment in his Harmonix Reimyo CDP-777, CAT-777, […]

GamuT Audio David A. Stephens of Rhythm Marketing, GamuT Audio’s U.S. Distributor, and Lars Goller, the owner/designer of GamuT Audio, put on their work suits and greeted visitors at their exhibit. Being showcased were the top-of-the -line, $14,800/pair L7 loudspeaker, featuring: * two 7-inch Low Frequency driver made of sliced paper cone, spike-mounted in low […]

Nagra, Audion, Verity Audio Dagogoan Jack Roberts listens to the Verity Audio Sarastro loudspeaker via a Nagra system with the Audion Premier Quattro monoblock PREAMPLIFIERS ($10,995/pair, see below) John Quick, Nagra USA and Verity Audio’s mutual U.S. sales and marketing manager, exhibited two Nagra / Audion / Verity systems at opposite ends of the over-sized […]

Harmonix Reimyo and Harmonix Royal Stage, by Combak Corp. Mr. Kazuo Kiuchi, Managing Director Mr. Kiuchi’s “Bravo!” minimonitor already encompasses his goal of recreating a full-range sound. His recent ongoing development of the matching Consequence subwoofer system is, in reality, a succumbing to the demands of the majority of audience for emphasis in bottom-end vigor, […]

It’s flexible and modular. It’s sleek and minimal. It’s imported and unique. It’s the future of hi-fi for the masses. Well, probably so… it certainly is at least a step in the right direction. There’s been a lot of talk lately about the future of the high-end audio industry. That the manufacturers must find a […]

The following are specifications on the second subject of this review, the Furutech Speaker Reference III: Fitted with the same EMI-absorbing GC-303 module and the company’s own FP-201 Rhodium-plated, non-magnetic Pure Copper spade terminals, this time constructed with six bundles of the 20-strand of the α-OCC conductors with a center αμ-Conductor in two twisted cores, […]

The Furukawa Background The high-end audio industry of the 80s saw the ascent of high-performance cable manufacturers that advocate the application of Oxygen Free High Conductivity (OFHC) copper, as a means to pushing the performance envelope of an audio system. Rather than the 100% removal of the oxygen content in the conductor as indicated by […]

The Audio Note range of speakers have a history which is both extensive and well documented. For the benefit of the uninitiated, I’ll give a quick run through in the next couple of paragraphs. In a (quite large) nutshell, the late Peter Snell designed and built speakers which Peter Qvortrup of Audio Note obviously regarded […]

The subject of this review is the Accuphase E-550 line-stage integrated amplifier. The phase-accurate Accuphase of Japan has been producing award-wining amplifiers since its founding in 1972, and that majestic power meter in gold chassis design has become the arresting visage of all Accuphase amplifiers shortly after. In fact, Accuphase believes that there will be […]