Equipment Reviews

For audiophiles on a limited budget the choices have never been more fantastic. Especially for the folks who want to find out what all the noise is about regarding vacuum tubes. A glut of affordable (some ridiculously so), vacuum-tube-based, integrated amps have recently appeared on the market. Most are from companies located in China, South Korea, and other parts of East Asia, but in the last several years, more and more of these glowing glass bottle beauties have been coming out of Poland.

We live in a clickbait, hype-infested, hyperbolic, anything goes commercial world—even when it comes to medicine. You can buy a brush-on cure for "toe fungus". Of course, there's no such thing as "toe fungus". There's toe nail fungus that no brush on liquid cures but these telemarketing geniuses have conflated the two and are probably raking it in from people who think they can now brush away gross looking, thick yellow, fungus-infested... Read More

AVM’s Ovation PH 8.3 vacuum tube-based phono preamplifier is among the most versatile, useful, and well-conceived phono preamps I’ve yet encountered. How’s that for an opening paragraph? As with all models in the Ovation 8 series, the PH 8.3’s output stage uses a matched pair of AVM’s 803T tube, which is a 12AX7, modified per AVM’s specifications, that helps produce, according to the company, “an unmistakably charming tube sound”. BTW "AVM" stands for Audio... Read More

In 1953, a music-loving Cambridge University engineering student named Finch James Shepherds-Pye had an idea. He was fascinated by the reproduction of recorded music on discs and had started thinking seriously about the subject. This led to (the eventually knighted) Sir Shepherds-Pye's doctoral thesis on the tonearm and the geometry required to place a cartridge stylus at the most accurate point on a record. He came up with the concept of mirroring the cutter... Read More

My relationship with subwoofers began in the late 70s while making my rounds at the Palmer House Hotel in Chicago, back then one of two summer Consumer Electronics Show high performance audio hotel sites. The other was the nearby Blackstone. The main show was at the giant McCormick Place Convention Center.I walked into the Janis Audio display room, where owner/designer John Marovskis had set up a demo of his new Janis W1 subwoofer and Interphase crossover/amp. I... Read More

When in 2018 Micha Huber's Switzerland-based HiFiction AG bought the storied brand EMT Tontechnik, taking control of EMT's cartridge business including development, production, repair, and international distribution and moving it to his Winterthur, Switzerland factory, he clearly had more in mind than just phono cartridges, though that's the core business he purchased.A year later in order to have space for both the EMT production line and increased... Read More

Maryland-based Black Ice Audio manufactures and markets an extensive line of vacuum tube-based audio products. The company had a long association with the late audio genius Jim Fosgate, who passed away in 2022.Rather than list Jim’s accomplishments here, please read his obit, though if you don’t, just know that among his many tech accomplishments Jim invented and licensed to Dolby what became Dolby Pro Logic II. It made him a well-deserved wealthy man, but it didn’t... Read More

Reviewing an elegant analog system from Clearaudio.

Dave McNair reviews a uniquely enjoyable preamplifier that pushes the envelope on the usage of italized and bold in a HiFi review. 

The latest wrinkle in the 50 year Rega “vibration measuring machine” saga is a special edition of the “bread and butter” Planar 3. It’s no surprise that the cover photo of Rega’s 2016 hardcover book “A Vibration Measuring Machine” features a P3. It's the model that gets you all Rega’s core design concepts well-executed at an affordable $1595 price including a top of the moving magnet line Exact cartridge.For its 50th, Rega offers the Planar 3 50th Anniversary... Read More

In the autumn of 1973, I walked into an audio store in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, intending to buy an album. As I entered the store, I could hear James Taylor's music playing from a pair of Rogers LS3/5A loudspeakers. At that time, I owned a Marantz 1060 and AR 3a loudspeakers that I had used during my college days in Boulder, Colorado. I was instantly captivated by the sound that day, and this singular moment initiated me on a lifelong pursuit to experience those... Read More

In the SL-1200GR2 review I said I'd produce this video so you could hear the Seto-Hori Remodel and the turntable, so here it is. Plus the video shows the incredible packaging. It even sounds good on computer speakers. I'm not sure who will spend $4000 on a cartridge and put it in a $2199 turntable but this demonstrates that the 'table can do the job on most any cartridge you choose to use with it and produce excellent sound.You can read more about it on... Read More

Can you name an audio product that for more than fifty years has been manufactured and sold unchanged? Technics iconic SL-1200 isn’t one of them. Yes, today’s SL-1200 turntable series looks like the original SL-1200 introduced back in 1972 but looks can be deceiving. Nonetheless, YouTube comments confirm that many SL-1200 enthusiasts continue to believe that what they bought in 1972 is equal to or better than what Technics produces today, partly because most current... Read More

“Are you okay? Did something happen?” asked my audio pal, Colin.“I’m crestfallen. Life seems to have lost all meaning,” I reply. “I had to pack up and send back those Luminous power amps, and now I don’t feel like listening to music on my system.” But of course, one evening a few days later, I was spinning Mellow Waves by Cornelius using my Ampsandsound Zion Monos, and feeling it big time. The Zions, which had become chopped liver only a week prior, were back to... Read More

In 2016, a company called Sweet Vinyl introduced the SugarCube SC-1 vinyl noise reduction system. Placed between a phono preamplifier and line preamp or integrated amp, the SugarCube digitizes the incoming signal at 192kHz/24bit, applies an adjustable real-time surface noise reduction algorithm, then outputs the cleaned-up signal. Though not for purists, the SugarCube made a good point: sure, you could digitally archive an especially noisy record, remove the annoying... Read More

Various versions of the Linkwitz LX521 speaker have captivated my interest since I first heard it at RMAF 2012. In subsequent years, I prioritized visiting the Linkwitz room, where I would be consistently impressed by the speaker's ability to create an excellent sound stage and perform remarkably well in various rooms.Siegfried Linkwitz is renowned among loudspeaker designers for introducing several revolutionary advancements in the audio industry, the most... Read More

Rega likes to point out that cartridges and turntables are “vibration measuring devices.” That sounds simplistic, or fanciful but it’s true. The stylus wiggling its way through the record groove unleashes a large amount of vibrational energy. Most of it reaches the intended target, which is either magnets or coils. But some of that energy causes the cartridge body to vibrate—we’ll ignore in this discussion unwanted energy returning to the record grooves or making its... Read More

The Bricasti M3 arrives in the familiar Bricasti black-anodized-and-silver enclosure, but with a smaller form factor. It is 14" W x 11.25" D x 2.5" H, and weighs 10 pounds. The M3 has AES, S/PDIF, Toslink (Optical), and USB digital inputs as standard. An RJ45 Ethernet connection is optional. Furthermore, you can specify that your S/PDIF connector will be a BNC jack, rather than an RCA jack. I highly recommend the BNC, even though my review sample did not have it. I know this from previous experience, because the Parasound Halo CD-1 transport has that rare and special thing, a BNC S/PDIF output jack. Compared to Bricasti’s other offerings, the M3 is actually kind of cuddly looking. If you have a moderately spacious desk (and some extra cabbage in your bankroll), I am sure that the balanced-headphone-optioned M3 would make for an amazing computer-stereo headphone-listening setup.

U-Turn Audio made a bold move last year, introducing the Orbit Theory turntable fitted with its new 220mm effective length OA3 gimbaled bearing tonearm, featuring a one piece molded, tapered magnesium armtube. The research and development costs of the made in USA arm must have been relatively high, yet the Theory sells for a very reasonable $999. Now the company has introduced a full line of turntables featuring a variant of that arm, with prices starting at $249.... Read More