Audiophilepure

https://www.stereophile.com/content/klipsch-nines-integrated-loudspeaker-system

I closed my eyes, forgot I was listening through little wooden boxes (and worked hard to ignore the vinyl ticks and clicks). Lo and behold, there he was in front of me, to my right, blowing that wonderful solo.

But can these speaker-gadgets rock? My acid test for speakers—for determining whether they have any hope of compatibility with my listening tastes—is the Rolling Stones’ “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking” from Sticky Fingers. The version I have preferred lately is on the Japanese SACD, which claims to be a “flat transfer” of the master tape. It preserves the dynamics I remember from the LP—nice, crisp drumbeats and distinct and varied guitars—as opposed to recent CD reissues, which are superloud with almost no dynamic range and so sound mushy. To my surprise, The Nines played the DSD file on my hard drive (ripped from the SACD by a friend who knows the “PlayStation method”) through the Foobar2000 player with the DSD/SACD plug-in.

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