MARK LEVINSON NO515 TURNTABLE $10,000 REVIEW
May 17, 2019 Comments Off on MARK LEVINSON NO515 TURNTABLE $10,000 REVIEW
“I checked out this album during the holidays and found it to be very fun and engaging. Of course the No515 deck brought out the best in it. When we had my wife’s family over on Christmas afternoon, this was one of the albums I played during their visit. Everybody took note of the excellent sonics. It became more than just background music and soon enough there was a small group gathered around enjoying the funky arrangements. The next thing I knew, my mother in law said she could “listen to this all day”. That was another first!”
FLUANCE RT85 REFERENCE HIGH FIDELITY TURNTABLE REVIEW
May 16, 2019 Comments Off on FLUANCE RT85 REFERENCE HIGH FIDELITY TURNTABLE REVIEW
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The vaunted ‘speed regulation’, was a curious note for me initially in that the RT85 seemed to spin fast when the tone arm was lifted only to settle down after a few seconds later before properly regulating the speed. The only way to mitigate this was to lift the tonearm and remember to wait a few seconds for the speed to regulate and then place the needle down. It’s not a deal breaker but it is noticeable and mildly irritating.
I had to fight the urge to touch the vinyl as I normally do and kept the dust cover on for most of my listening, so I wouldn’t give it a shot.
While the RT85 is quite substantial in appearance, I did find that having only three isolation feet rather than four made the deck susceptible to wobbling or tipping over if nudged by accident. Again, unfairly compared to the Technics which is much heavier and planted on four feet, I realized I couldn’t be as hard on this turntable as I am with my DJ gear, as sometimes the needle would jump or even worse, I would fear flipping the turntable deck itself! So, I backed off.”
SVS SB-3000 Subwoofer Review
May 15, 2019 Comments Off on SVS SB-3000 Subwoofer Review
“The driver uses a lightweight and rigid aluminium vented cone with a composite fibre dustcap, which is combined with a proprietary injection moulded gasket and long-throw parabolic surround to allow for extreme excursion and incredibly deep bass. There’s a dual ferrite magnet motor assembly weighing over 11kg, along with a flat edge wound split-wind voice coil within the motor assembly. Together, they deliver sufficient power at the highest excursion levels, but reduce mass and improve overall driver efficiency.The driver’s ability to move massive amounts of air is backed up by a rear-mounted Sledge STA-800D2 amplifier, combining the high current output of discrete MOSFETs with Class D efficiency to deliver a claimed 800W RMS and peaks of up to 2,500W. All this is governed by a 50MHz Analog Devices DSP with 56-bit filtering that SVS claim is the most advanced digital processor ever used in a subwoofer.”
Master & Dynamic MW65 Active Noise-Cancelling Wireless Over-Ear Headphones Review
May 14, 2019 Comments Off on Master & Dynamic MW65 Active Noise-Cancelling Wireless Over-Ear Headphones Review
“I flew down to Palm Springs in February and looked on with envy at passengers with comfy, over ear ANC headphones. We had none in for review and my old Bose set broke some time ago. So, I organized a couple of reviews of top models in time for Audiophilia’s trip to High End Munich 2019 (we’re live blogging May 9-12). I could write the reviews and then test them in the noisiest environment I know, Air Canada’s Q400 and its two howling Pratt & Whitney turboprops. The plane is used for the 10 minute flight from Victoria to Vancouver, where the big jets fly. As we are flying on the date this review is published, I had to test the M65s in alternate noisy environments. I’ll post an M65/Q400 follow up in Comments, for those interested.
I contacted three manufacturers, two of which I knew had highly regarded models debuting this year, and one, Sony, who never got back to me. I didn’t bother with Bose. They’ve been done to death and the result is always the same, great ANC, but sound is usually below those of similarly priced models. Ditto for the current Bose QC35s ($349). The Sennheiser PXC 550s ($349.95) arrived the day after my request (thanks Katie Kailus) and the review will appear in June. ”
REVEL PERFORMA M126BE STAND-MOUNT LOUDSPEAKER REVIEW
May 14, 2019 Comments Off on REVEL PERFORMA M126BE STAND-MOUNT LOUDSPEAKER REVIEW
“The other half of the ‘not what you do’… equation is to be found in the crossover; the M126Be has a ‘high order’ (actually, fourth-order) slopes provided by film-only capacitors and air core inductors. This is a well-regarded approach to keeping distortion at a minimum and transparency good and high. The mid/bass driver has an aluminium cone of the sort Revel describes as a ‘deep ceramic composite’ and is finished in the same white as the tweeter waveguide. The colour contrast gives it and the PerformaBe floorstander a distinctive look that sets them apart from the crowd, but you can’t help wondering if they got the idea from their colleagues at JBL who have used white woofers for decades. Little is said about the box itself, which presumably means it’s fairly conventional in construction but distinguishes itself with a curved top section finished in metallic black with the brand embossed in relief using a process called electroforming. The finishing overall is to an exceptional standard. On the back panel there is a reflex port and a single pair of cable terminals. Bi-wiring seems to be on the wane these days; it’s hard to say whether that’s because of fashion or the limited aesthetic appeal of cables in an increasingly wireless world, but I for one am all for it. ”
WELLS AUDIO HEADTRIP II HEADPHONE AMPLIFIER $7,000 REVIEW
May 13, 2019 Comments Off on WELLS AUDIO HEADTRIP II HEADPHONE AMPLIFIER $7,000 REVIEW
“The original Headtrip had two blue LED’s by the Right and Left outputs to indicate power was on. A few clients complained that the lights were bright and distracting so they were removed and replaced with a green lit power button that is more subtle but still indicates the unit is on. The original had dual 3-pin XLR’s for balanced out while the new version has one 4-pin balanced XLR output. What has not changed is the units power output of 50 WPC at 8 Ohms, 25 WPC at 32 Ohms and 1.8 WPC at 600 Ohms. It is a powerful amplifier and yet in listening to it, you discover a vanishingly low noise floor. The Headtrip II also has the ability to display all the nuances of the recording including the most subtle and delicate passages and details. No matter what headphones you own, the Headtrip II will drive them with aplomb.”
IBASSO DX220 $899 REVIEW
May 13, 2019 Comments Off on IBASSO DX220 $899 REVIEW
“The DX200/AMP1 sound has this slight bloom of warmth in the lower mids, nothing extreme but enough to create a little softness in the tone of the DX200. The DX220 timbre is more neutral to my ear, not as soft and not as warm but nothing I would describe as overly analytical or cold sounding.
The control on the treble presence on the AMP1 MK2 is excellent and partly why the DX220 sounds a little more neutral in timbre compared to the AMP1 first gen. It injects a little more odd-harmonic presence in the DX220 instrumental and vocal timbre so notes sound a touch cleaner and more articulate.
The accuracy and details levels seem to have gone up a notch even if the overall lower-midrange instrumental body drops down marginally.”
Revel Performa F228Be Loudspeaker £10,000 Review
May 11, 2019 Comments Off on Revel Performa F228Be Loudspeaker £10,000 Review
“Let the Revels begin: these wonderfully enjoyable speakers are able to conjure realistic scale and impact while conveying all the detail and flow of whatever’s being played. With effortless dynamics, fine integration and the ability to create excellent 3D soundstage images, they deserve very serious auditioning if you’re in the market at this level – and show a clean pair of heels to some more expensive rivals, too. ”
FIIO M9 DAP REVIEW
May 10, 2019 Comments Off on FIIO M9 DAP REVIEW
“Using FiiO Link is easy and FiiO is promising even more integrated support. To start, make sure your smartphone has FiiO Music installed and the Bluetooth is enabled. Then on the M9 or other FiiO link supported device, enable Bluetooth and hit the switch on “Bluetooth decoding amp mode” and then turn Bluetooth on again. Open the FiiO Music app, hit the gears Settings icon and enable FiiO Link. Then on the smartphone’s FiiO Music app, also go down to FiiO Link, enable that and hit Client. And you’re good to go. This needs to be done every single time and so is painful at the moment but FiiO says they are working on making it more seamless. The experience of using FiiO Link with the M9 DAP is mind-boggling with it still in a beta phase. It feels like you are untethered from having the headphone wire going to your device as you go to change your song since you are now using your DAP remotely. The speed is great and delays are rare. You can effectively do almost all the functions of the M9 as you would normally using the app, from searching for songs, browsing your playlist, changing the volume and even favoriting. Album art gets downloaded only when you click into the song and what is shown is lower quality to save on size of caching, but is good enough as is.”
Clearaudio Innovation Basic Turntable | Review
May 10, 2019 Comments Off on Clearaudio Innovation Basic Turntable | Review
“Earlier in the week, I had matched levels between The Clearaudio + TRACER + Hana ML + D’Agostino Momentum Phono vs. my dCS Vivaldi Digital stack. So I decided to have some fun and listen to Mercy Street on a Vinyl LP vs. Mercy Street in DSD.
I started the track on both devices simultaneously and switched back and forth. Sure there were differences (some LP noise for example), but in general I didn’t prefer one over the other. YES, I usually prefer the AMG Viella V12 over the dCS for a lot of content, but in this case the Clearaudio + D’Agostino Momentum was just as enjoyable as listening to that track on the gold standard dCS Vivaldi.”
Audiophilepure 
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