During the just concluded "Making Vinyl" symposium 9/28-9/29, 2023 in Haarlem, The Netherlands, Record Industry, one of the world's largest pressing plants, opened its tours to attendees and conducted tours all Friday afternoon. TrackingAngle will have full "Making Vinyl" coverage coming up over the next few days.The approximately 6500 square meter Record Industry originated in 1958 as privately held Artone—which remains the name of the studio... Read More

Eric Astor, Furnace Record Pressing President and CEO invited me to tour the plant for the second time. The first time was a few years ago when the company was just setting up shop in the Alexandria, Virginia building that formerly housed The Washington Post's printing presses. During that first visit, Furnace was still shaking out the vintage Toolex Alpha presses it had purchased in Mexico plus it had added a few new WarmTone presses. This new tour shows... Read More

Last Spring, 2023 Clearaudio, a company best known for it's turntables, tonearms, phono cartridges and record cleaning machines celebrated its 45th anniversary. Rather than mounting its usual large High End Munich main floor exhibit, the company chose to throw a big party before the show for its distributors around the world and for others who would normally have met with them at the High End show to do business. The cozy restaurant attached to the Inn in which... Read More

Veteran disc mastering engineer Paul Gold runs Salt Mastering out of a small, Greenpoint, Brooklyn, N.Y. studio crammed with tape machines—including a few rare and unusual ones you'll have to watch the video to see— and a pair of Neumann lathes. He contacted me to say he's just completed a "shaker console" he's been working on for fifteen years! And he thought I'd enjoy seeing it. I did. It's not like Shaker furniture. Gold goes back... Read More

Michael had such a good time interviewing Peter at the Seattle Audio Fest, he got himself invited to the Koolance warehouse where he saw all of Peter's vintage and replica vintage audio gear along with a few new KLAUDiO products. Also interesting was seeing Peter's "real" business, which involves industrial water management and cooling systems. Mr. Cheon has 200+ products he's designed in his line, many of which are patented. This is a short,... Read More

Following "Making Vinyl" in Minneapolis, which was the best-attended most significant of these events (though the one at Hansa Studios in Berlin was the most exciting) and attended by 500 industry people from around the world, I took a short Uber ride from downtown Minneapolis to Audio Research inMaple Grove.Managing Director Dave Gordon took me on an "after hours" tour of the factory you're sure to enjoy. The company moved to this somewhat... Read More

Following High End Munich, I took a train ride to Zurich, Switzerland with members of the CH team: CEO and founder Florian Cossy, publicist Louise Ford, Head of International Sales, Kevin Wolff, and software developer Eduard Kohler. Then, in a whirlwind visit to the heart of Swiss watch making territory, I toured CH Precision in Préverenges as well as Telsa, the company that does CH's "board stuffing". Also in this video you'll see the machine shop... Read More

Last summer, while visiting Geneva to attend the Montreux Jazz Festival and produce a Nagra factory tour I also visited darTZeel Audio's brand new manufacturing facility. The company had just moved from its old funky loft location into this brand new, modern cooperative facility and CEO Hervé Delétraz was anxious to show it to me. The Lake Geneva photo was taken from the air as my plane approached the airport.Delétraz had arranged with his friends at Nagra to... Read More

A tour of the VPI House in Matawan, N.J. and a full introduction to both the company's latest turntable line-up and Alta Audio speaker offerings explained by designer and owner Mike Levy.

In early September Tracking Angle editor Michael Fremer flew to Salt Lake City, Utah and then took a car ride to Wilson Audio Specialties in Provo, Utah, where on assignment, he shot this factory tour video with assistance from TAS's Lee Scoggins. TAS's Charles Kinder expertly assembled the raw footage to produce this fascinating tour. If you've never seen how capacitors are made by hand you'll see it here. Of course, that's but a small part... Read More