Dynaudio Special Forty Loudspeakers Review
February 9, 2018 § 1 Comment
“Those 20 hours didn’t change the Fortys’ sound enough to make them sound like a different pair of speakers, but the improvements were significant. The first 30 seconds of “Misguided Angel,” from The Trinity Session, told me that the bottommost octave was still missing — only to be expected with a speaker of this size and driver configuration — but also that the octave just above now sounded fuller and even tighter than before, and no longer thuddy. And the clarity of the bass was astounding — playing at fairly high volumes such kick-drum-heavy tracks as “Objection (Tango),” from Shakira’s Laundry Service (16/44.1 FLAC, Epic/Tidal), or the title track of Jackson Browne’s Running on Empty (16/44.1 FLAC, Asylum/Tidal), I found the bass much cleaner than I’ve heard from any other stand-mounted two-way. Furthermore, when I push most two-ways very hard in my big room, I can often get them to make nasty sounds through their ports — chuffing and/or other nonmusical noises that are audible at my listening seat. Not the Special Forty. Pushed to pretty high listening levels, their sound remained clean through the bass and the rest of the audioband.
Chord Poly Review
February 8, 2018 Comments Off on Chord Poly Review
“It turns out the Mojo sounds its best with the Poly and in my testing, better than even a direct USB cable. So not only are you cutting the wire out, you’re actually getting better sound. We all know our PCs are noisy and USB conditioners could only do so much. This is a very compelling case for using WiFi to transmit high-res files. Although I’ve heard WiFi will compress the music being streamed, I’ve actually never tested this (or heard it). All I know is…streaming from the Poly’s internal card reader has given the Mojo a new life it didn’t know it needed.”
MQA Reviewed
February 8, 2018 Comments Off on MQA Reviewed
“Time for a real curve ball, HQPlayer. In order to use HQPlayer with the Meridian Prime, I had to change software settings for the microRendu, which takes about a minute. Since sending music through HQPlayer breaks the MQA chain, I was only able to compare HQPlayer upsampling everything to 24/192 PCM (using the poly-sinc-mp, NS5 settings) to my recent memory of the MQA-decoded version. Hmm. There remains the more obvious Ms. Simone to the right placement with MQA, but HQPlayer appears to add, back?, some of that lovely spatial information that MQA did so well with this recording. In other words, HQPlayer helped close the gap between the 24/96 file played through the Meridian Prime and the MQA-encoded/decoded version.”
Technics SL-1200GR Turntable Review
February 7, 2018 Comments Off on Technics SL-1200GR Turntable Review
“Long-term pitch stability is often cited as a strong suit of direct-drive turntables, and the Technics drive system has always been one of the best. There’s no hint of the proverbial “hunt and peck” speed wavering and cogging that belt-drive fans often accuse direct drives of committing. Even the sustained piano chords at the opening of Sviatoslav Richter’s 1959 recording of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 on Deutsche Grammophon were totally in tune and steady as a rock by my ear. Technics makes a big deal about their new coreless direct-drive motor design, and it seems to be the real deal. There was a time when audiophiles would eschew direct-drive systems as not being capable of truly high-end performance, but more recent designs like the Brinkmann Bardo and the Grand Prix Audio Monaco have proven otherwise to many, albeit at vastly higher price points. Technics, with their coreless system, can now hold their own.”
Monitor Audio Silver 100 review
February 7, 2018 Comments Off on Monitor Audio Silver 100 review
“The Silver 100s are given an opportunity to prove their smooth balance, standing on tip-toe to reach those soaring guitar lines, fully charged but without the coarseness that (in lesser hands) can have these arrangements giving the listener’s ears a pretty exhausting work-out.
Axiom Audio M5HP Loudspeakers $968 Review
February 6, 2018 Comments Off on Axiom Audio M5HP Loudspeakers $968 Review
“Although, like most audio reviewers, I tend to throw around a large number of descriptors to convey the sounds of products, that doesn’t guarantee that the reader is left with clear senses of those sounds. While I can (and do, below) use many adjectives to describe the aural character of the Axiom M5HPs, much of what I heard from them can be summarized in three words: clean, effortless, neutral.”
Feliks Audio Espressivo MKII OTL Tube Headphone Amplifier Review
February 6, 2018 Comments Off on Feliks Audio Espressivo MKII OTL Tube Headphone Amplifier Review
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I could go on and on about this amp, but to me what sums it up is my willingness to just listen out of it for hours on end, with nothing but pure joy. So is it worth the money? Well at €799 it is not cheap, but it is an investment, and also a work of art. It is expertly hand crafted, and built to bring you years of service. So if you have some higher impedance full size headphones that you will be holding on to for a few years, then the Espressivo MKII should be on your list of amps to pair with them.”
DYNAUDIO SPECIAL FORTY STANDMOUNT LOUDSPEAKER $2,999
February 5, 2018 Comments Off on DYNAUDIO SPECIAL FORTY STANDMOUNT LOUDSPEAKER $2,999
“The Dynaudios captured Bebe’s voice with a rare quality of immediacy and razor-sharp focus that would do credit to far more expensive loudspeakers. But what was equally impressive was the way the Special Forty’s revealed not only the subtle sound of the bassist’s fingers on the strings of the instrument, but also the sound of the amplifier—clearly positioned a few feet away from the bassist—reproducing the amplified sound of the performance. The result was one of the most intensely realistic hi-fi moments I’ve experienced in quite a while. I felt almost as if I had been permitted to sit within the studio as Bebe and her accompanist rehearsed the enchanting song.”
EARSONICS ES-5 REVIEW
February 5, 2018 Comments Off on EARSONICS ES-5 REVIEW
“This is one of the better sub-bass signatures with excellent depth and presence as well as an above average level of control. The pace of the low-end driver is spot on. It never lingers with a balanced level of decay to sound fairly natural yet never boomy or sluggish.”
Pass Labs XA25 Stereo Amplifier $4,900 Review
February 4, 2018 Comments Off on Pass Labs XA25 Stereo Amplifier $4,900 Review
“There is an old platitude often used in high-end audio: the perfect amplifier would have the best of both worlds–the beautiful colors, lack of grain, and space/imaging of a great tube amplifier and the dead quiet nature, rock-bottom/tight bass, and transient speed of a great solid-state amplifier. In my 30 years of listening to great amplifiers from Threshold/Pass Labs, I believe that Nelson Pass and his team have come closest to this utopian ideal with the new XA25 amplifier than ever before in their long and illustrious history.”
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