REED MUSE 3C TURNTABLE AND 3P ARM REVIEW
March 5, 2017 Comments Off on REED MUSE 3C TURNTABLE AND 3P ARM REVIEW
“If the deck is great, then the tonearm is excellent. It’s lively, entertaining, and ever so slightly warm and rich sounding; an almost perfect counterpart to the turntable in fact. OK, so if you are looking for the ultimate in analytical neutrality, keep looking, but as a beguiling performer that draws out the passion and fire in a recording, the 3P comes highly recommended.”
Elac Element EA101EQ-G Integrated Amplifier/DAC Review
March 4, 2017 Comments Off on Elac Element EA101EQ-G Integrated Amplifier/DAC Review
” In direct contradiction to my above statement, I began to wonder if the amp had a certain affinity for soundstaging. Tracks with generous hall sound (or high-grade studio reverb), and tracks with unusually wide stereo imaging, seemed just a shade more alive, distinctly wider, and even a bit “taller” than I remembered. A track I’ve heard countless times, Diana Krall’s version of “Frim Fram Sauce,” ballooned its gorgeously recorded vocal’s natural reverb above, behind, and around the piano in convincing fashion, but it kept unblurred the punchy pianoness of the occasional sharp accents from Krall’s fingers. With my worldview shaken, I tried to compare, but the process of switching source inputs and speaker outputs is laborious enough to make such comparisons inconclusive at best. Suffice it to say that the Elac not once suffered from the contrast.”
Alta Audio Titanium Hestia Loudspeaker $32,000 Review
March 3, 2017 Comments Off on Alta Audio Titanium Hestia Loudspeaker $32,000 Review
“The Titaniums are a majestic version of the Celesta. For 30 years I have happily lived in an apartment in New York City, and resisted over the years every attempt by friends, wife and family to encourage me even to think about moving into the suburbs so as to live in a house with all the more space and rooms it can provide, and to buy/drive a car (necessary then) to make it all work out.”
KINGSOUND M-03 & KS-H4 ELECTROSTATIC SYSTEM REVIEW
March 3, 2017 Comments Off on KINGSOUND M-03 & KS-H4 ELECTROSTATIC SYSTEM REVIEW
“One can understand then the use of the H04 as the primary headphone to pair with the M-03 given the feedback that the H03 was the more analytical and brighter headphone and the H04 is the smoother more relaxed version, you simply do not want to push a good treble performance into a harsh one on this system.”
CYPHER LABS AUSTRU $800 REVIEW
March 3, 2017 Comments Off on CYPHER LABS AUSTRU $800 REVIEW
“The Austru from Cypher Labs is an accomplished, smooth and rather balanced sounding hybrid IEM. Rather than emphasizing the bass weight with the filter switch, Cypher Labs have instead given us something a lot subtler in terms of fullness. It is also a source dependent IEM with stronger amps, or perhaps more musical sources benefitting the most from the bass filter switch effect on the low-end response of the Austru.”
HiFiMan HE1000 V2 Headphones Review
March 2, 2017 Comments Off on HiFiMan HE1000 V2 Headphones Review
In his “Conclusion,” Brent wrote: “HiFiMan’s HE1000 V2s aren’t all that different from their original HE1000s, and that’s a good thing — the HE1000s are widely regarded as being some of the very best headphones you can buy.” Instead, he described the V2s’ sound as “a little different from their forebears’ — not better,” and added: “But hey — when you’re already making one of the world’s best headphones, it’s pretty tough to deliver a dramatic improvement.”
Wilson Audio Alexx Loudspeakers $109,000 Review
March 2, 2017 Comments Off on Wilson Audio Alexx Loudspeakers $109,000 Review
“At $109k a pair, you’d most certainly expect any speaker to reproduce all these attributes and then some; and rightfully so. That’s a whole lot of dough. Cough, rasp, cough. To the initiated—i.e. those who already drink from HiFi’s Kool Aid—the speaker’s price point has today become quasi accepted. To the uninitiated, the price point seems absurdly ludicrous. That is of course, until they are educated on the “Why” question. No more could your average weekend warrior speaker “guy” create a transducer like Alexx than violently shaking the pieces of a Daytona hoping for the final product to magically materialize in your mystical box of trickery. A quick review of the facts, a visit to the Wilson factory, would reveal the resoluteness and sanity of Alexx’s asking price.”
ELAC Uni-Fi UF5 floor standing speakers – Review
March 1, 2017 Comments Off on ELAC Uni-Fi UF5 floor standing speakers – Review
“Of course, being too inexpensive has its downsides as well, as I mentioned earlier in this review. If a component isn’t expensive enough, or if it’s wrapped in vinyl instead of a rare (but sustainable, of course) African wood veneer, it tends not to be taken seriously by the audiophile community. I myself am vulnerable to such thinking, as I am sure many of you are. Make no mistake though: the ELAC UF5 should be taken seriously as a contender for anyone looking to spend upwards of $5000 on a pair of dedicated, high-end tower speakers. I’d even wager to say that if ELAC chose to clothe the speakers in a fancy automotive paint job or an exotic hardwood veneer, they could easily ask $3000 to $5000 for a pair and have no trouble at all getting them to sell.”
Bowers & Wilkins 805 D3 loudspeaker $6000 Review
March 1, 2017 Comments Off on Bowers & Wilkins 805 D3 loudspeaker $6000 Review
“I very much enjoyed my time with the Bowers & Wilkins 805 D3. It is a superbly engineered, superb-sounding thoroughbred of a speaker. Its transparency, dynamic-range capability, and combination of low-frequency weight and control are something special. That somewhat elevated high treble will make it fussy when it comes to system and room matching, but in the right circumstances—and especially if piano recordings dominate your playlists—this might be all the speaker you’ll need, at a lower price than you might think you have to pay.”
PureAudioProject Trio15 Voxativ open baffle speakers Review $5,490 Review
March 1, 2017 Comments Off on PureAudioProject Trio15 Voxativ open baffle speakers Review $5,490 Review
” It is lovely that so simple a solution presents itself; if this were a speaker with a closed cabinet such an anomaly would be disastrous, but in this case it is merely a niggling issue to resolve in a matter of minutes. I have not downgraded my opinion of this speaker because of such a discovery. The PureAudioProject Neo15 series is brilliantly designed with excellent parts quality and executed with the capacity for superb performance. I have found idiosyncrasies in products at all price points and many are not fixable. In the larger scheme of this review the isolation of the crossover is a quirk, not a roadblock.”
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