Audiophilepure

The Friggs are great for classical music thanks to their detail and airiness. Soft passages can go right down to nothing with the sound hanging on by a fingernail on a cliff’s edge. Electronics with a low noise floor will get the most out of them. My Emotive/Anthem combo did that.

Where I enjoyed them most, though, was for rock and metal. They have insane bass that’s present, controlled, and balanced. They don’t need a subwoofer to shake the room and provide slam to drum kits. They separate distorted instruments and preserve tone and character at any volume level. And though it’s hard to imagine them as a party speaker, they most definitely are that. You can fill a room of any size with a detailed and present sound stage that works at all volumes from background level to eardrum-melting.

As of May 2026, Rick Schultz Audio’s Emersion power cord is the best sounding A/C cable that I’ve ever heard. No other power cord currently exists that cleanly beats the sound quality of RSA’s beast. Not surprisingly, the Emersion isn’t cheap. You want the best? Well… the best doesn’t come cheap.

And yet, if the Emersion PC was being sold through retail outlets, it would likely sport a price tag of $33,000 or $35,000 US dollars. Thankfully, it doesn’t. By selling direct to the audiophile public and eliminating all of the elements within the retail distribution chain, an Emersion power cord can be had for 1/3^rd of that cost. Priced at $11,000 USD, the Emersion is not only an end-game A/C cable, it’s also (by audiophile standards) a stone-cold bargain.

Stated succinctly, nothing cleanly beats the sound quality of the Emersion PC – nothing. In 15+ years of writing professional audio reviews, this is the only A/C power cord that I’ve ever accredited with offering a component level improvement in sound quality. And by “component level”, I mean Aeris Cerat or CH Precision level. Germane to this, I bought the review sample. And, as my budget permits further down the audiophile autobahn, I will be buying a few more of these breathtaking power cables. Highly recommended!

https://pt.audio/2026/05/23/oe-audio-ymir-loudspeakers

By the end of the review period, I had deduced that the Ø Audio Ymir loudspeakers had one very important ace up their sleeves. They don’t sound like horn speakers. Sure, they’re big and dynamic like horn speakers, and occasionally the sweet spot needs to be marked with crime scene tape. But as I mentioned, off-axis listening is still thoroughly enjoyable for such a design if you’re not requiring full 100% commitment. The Ymirs are very adaptive when it comes to that restless, mobile listener, but there is a small space where everything jumps into focus and locks in. They do avoid that dreaded sense of beaminess, that feeling like spatial cues aren’t entirely lifelike in their movement and your brain says whoa there fella, that felt kinda weird. This is a coherent speaker from top to bottom, however, and it is a two-way with a crossover designed to be as simple as possible. That, in conjunction with the rigid enclosure and that stainless steel baffle, is a quick and easy recipe for sound this persuasive and coherent.

Progress within existing architectures brought improvement, but also exposed a limit. Systems adapted from general-purpose computing could not fully govern how the signal took form. Variability remained, and with it, a loss of predictability in how music would be conveyed. The work shifted to a different approach, centered on creating the right conditions from the very beginning.

This required a system designed specifically for digital audio, where behavior could be defined and maintained, rather than managed after the fact.

Oladra is the expression of that shift. It brings the formation of the signal into a controlled and predictable state, so that what leaves the source retains its structure. When this is achieved, everything that follows operates on a stable foundation, and its contribution becomes additive rather than corrective.

Antipodes Audio remains the originating company and continues to develop its Kala range. Oladra carries this work forward as a dedicated platform for digital audio sources, representing the point at which the approach could be realized in full.

https://www.soundstageultra.com/index.php/equipment-menu/1311-engstroem-arne-integrated-amplifier

I’ll happily vote the Arne in as the most elegant component that’s flowed through my listening room. There. I said it. But the Arne isn’t just a pretty face. It’s fully balanced, from input to output, which is perhaps the most interesting design feature, since you don’t see this type of configuration on other triode tube amps. It’s a pure class-A amplifier, using direct-heated triodes, with zero negative feedback. What further distinguishes the Arne is its direct-coupled driver stage, which connects directly to the power tubes.

The Arne employs two 300B power tubes and two D3A driver tubes per channel. You don’t see many D3A tubes these days. The D3A is a nine-pin miniature frame-grid pentode developed in the 1950s for wideband telecommunications applications. The particular ones in this amp are Siemens NOS types, and I envision Timo Engström purposefully descending a ladder into a well-provisioned cellar containing a steamer trunk full of these little guys. The 300Bs are high-quality tubes from Emission Labs. Engström carries a host of other brands, and you can discuss other options for driver and power tubes with them at the time of purchase.