Equipment Reviews

It’s no secret that the world’s two largest cartridge manufacturers, Audio-Technica and Ortofon generate most of their cartridge income from inexpensive, mass-produced units, many of which they supply OEM to turntable manufacturers. Yet both lavish time, attention, and financial resources on the far smaller (it would be fair to say “tiny”) top of the market, where ultra-precision hand-built limited-edition models garner more attention than sales from audio... Read More

Speaker manufacturer PureAudioProject occupies a unique marketplace position. Instead of shipping fully assembled loudspeakers, it mostly sends its worldwide customers modular components for home assembly. The individual components are shipped directly to the customer from company warehouses in the US and Germany or directly from the manufacturers of individual parts. This business model offers the customer excellent value and the ability to customize the sound.While... Read More

Koeppel Design has some cool products including a stylish record bag, record dividers, a "now spinning" stand and some other products for style conscious vinyl fans/record hoarders. This newest accessory may for some be a stretch.Koeppel offers a pad of catalog cards —a notepad of 50 sturdy cards plus pen—that you use to catalog each record in your collection (or the ones most meaningful to you). One side of the card features this information:The other side... Read More

Owners of the Audio Deske record cleaning machine know it's convenient and does a good job cleaning records. They also know that the Audio Deske cleaning fluid is costly: $33 for a single small bottle of detergent good for cleaning approximately 150 records, depending upon how clean or dirty they are going into the machine. Because of the cost, it's tempting to use the tank up to the 150 record limit even if you think it's better to change it more... Read More

Timerette is an automatic stylus timer that works even if you forget to start it, because when the platter starts to spin. Timerette starts counting.

I have yet to give up on solid-state components for HiFi systems entirely; however, my love affair with vacuum tube circuitry is stronger than ever. While auditioning the latest iteration to the top-line Rhythm 1.3 linestage from Delaware-based Backert Labs, I got a sense of the same unmistakable mojo I feel when listening to recordings played on other well-designed and constructed tube gear.In my years as a professional listener in music production and as an... Read More

When discussing high-end cartridge brands with fellow audio enthusiasts I find that many companies like Ortofon and Audio-Technica don’t elicit from them the same respect and brand panache recognition they pay to some of the smaller cartridge manufacturers—especially in the multi $1000 price range, where many want to own a cartridge they feel was built by an “artisan”.While having an artisan single-handedly craft your cartridge is certainly appealing, overlooking or... Read More

Moving Iron is the Rodney Dangerfield of cartridge technology. It gets no respect. Analog enthusiasts regularly debate “moving coil or moving magnet?” but rarely is moving iron part of the discussion. It’s true that “moving iron” is a type of moving magnet cartridge, but companies that manufacturer them, (Grado, Goldring and Soundsmith are today’s main players, though in the past ADC, Sonus, B&O and probably others did as well) make it a point to distinguish their... Read More

Technics couldn’t have better timed its 2015 re-entry into the audio enthusiast turntable market. Interest in vinyl took off that year, growing 30% from around 9 million sold in 2014 to 12 million in 2015. Skeptics and naysayers credited Adele and Taylor Swift for that year’s boost but each year since, and without a “big” record, sales continued growing until in 2021, unit sales, not just dollar sales surpassed those of CDs. Vinyl was victorious. Sales grew 22% in the... Read More

This review is late, a victim of job change-related delays (among other things) but better late than never, even if PS Audio's updating history indicates a newer edition might be on the way—the Sprout100 replaced the original Sprout, which began life as a Kickstarter funded project back in 2014. The Sprout100 came about five years later so the "next gen" Sprout if there is to be one, might come next year.For now though, there's the Sprout100, which... Read More

Even if you don't collect 78rpm records and can't understand why anyone would want to listen to crackling, breakable 3 minute obsolete antiques, consider that streamers and CD fans think the same of people who collect vinyl records. Of course, we know better, and you can believe so do 78rpm collectors.Regardless of your enthusiasm or not for 78s you are sure to enjoy Amanda Petrusich's book "Do Not Sell At Any Price" subtitled "The Wild,... Read More

Since its founding in 1949 by Frank McIntosh the company that bears his name has flirted with non-electronic analog gear, but only rarely did it produce any, though of course for decades records and to a lesser degree pre-recorded tapes were the primary sources of music. McIntosh produced its first AM-FM tuner, the MR55 in 1957 and later became well known for its MR67, MR71, MR77 and MR78 tuners, the latter two designed by Richard Modafferi, who was a Senior Engineer... Read More

Luxman’s LMC-5 MC phono cartridge got “caught” in the move from my previous endeavor to TrackingAngle.com, so this review has been delayed for many months, but what’s the rush when there’s a forty year gap between this cartridge’s introduction last March and the LMC-2’s debut back in 1982?Not sure what took them so long, or what happened to LMC-3 (four is an unlucky number in Japan, which is why when you play golf there you yell “three!” or “five!”), but welcome back!... Read More

U-Turn’s most ambitious and sophisticated turntable yet offers an impressive package of performance-enhancing features starting with a new one piece molded tapered magnesium 220 millimeter effective length, gimbal-bearing tonearm fitted with a pre-installed and aligned nude elliptical stylus Ortofon 2M Blue MM cartridge. The Theory adds electronic speed control that at the turn of a knob lets you change from 33 1/3 to 45rpm . More important than the convenience of it,... Read More

"The last thing I'd want to do is decouple my cartridge from the tonearm's headshell!", I barked at Funk Firm's Arthur Khoubessarian (BSc physics, University of Surrey) at last Spring's High End Munich show as he attempted to introduce me to the Houdini cartridge de-coupler. Everything I've learned and been taught by my mentors is that headshell/cartridge coupling is essential for efficient energy transfer; the goal being to drain it... Read More

A rough definition of “economies of scale” is the cost advantages produced by increased production. The more you produce, the lower the cost per unit, measured by the amount of output per unit of time. Usually this results in either the same product costing less, or a better product for the same cost as a not as good previous one.It's not clear how long it takes to assemble, box and package Pro-Ject’s new X8 Evolution turntable, or how economies of scale work at... Read More

Priced from $99 to $1500, these 5 phono preamplifiers offer fine build quality and sound to match. Equally important: they are from stable companies that will exist when in the future you might need customer support. Of course, there are many others worth noting but we want to avoid a laundry list here. Meanwhile, as in “Miracle on 34th Street”, where Macy’s Santa sent people to Gimbel’s, please visit my “former endeavor” and scroll through the phono preamp reviews.... Read More