Woo Audio WA7 Fireflies Review
April 2, 2016 Comments Off on Woo Audio WA7 Fireflies Review
” The house sound of Woo has always managed to avoid a Goldilocks scenario with regards to “how much” tuby-ness it seeks to employ. The bed it chooses to lie in always supplies the right amount of warmth without leaving the mids too loose or allowing the low end to get destroyed in a grand wave of slushy softness. The “sweet” sound is there with the WA7, but it’s not in your face waving its hand wildly for attention. The subtlety of it all drives your music with a pleasant demeanor, one that can often counter-balance the directness of the room-less headphone listening experience. Listening to the 24/96 version of Jason Mraz’s Everything is Sound provided a very open representation of the fairly dynamic and varied track. The vocals to the introductory verse sounded robust and textured with a pleasing timbre. As the first signs of the backing band appear in the track, it was easy to pick out the left and right stereo location of the keyboard (right), organ (left), guitar and sax as they jumped around in the sound field.”
MARTIN LOGAN ETHOS REVIEW
April 2, 2016 Comments Off on MARTIN LOGAN ETHOS REVIEW
” Due to its convex nature in its panel, this uniqueness made their sound standout from the rest. The apex of the panel produces haunting vivid mid and high right on your face when you set it up correctly. It’s so frontal on your head that for a moment I felt that Kasia Lins was singing just mere inches from my face. It’s that eerie, but in a pleasant way. When my friend visited my place, whom is a headphone audiophile, exclaimed that the sonic presentation is exactly similar to a pair of high-end open can headphone. He called that intense impression I felt referred to as “headstage”. With that correlation, when the Ethos was perfectly tuned in placement, the sound stage was somehow becoming like what my friend mentioned. Not in a bad way, instead it’s very much open with full-scale presentation, back and forth, with vocal focus expressively towards you.”
TRON ATLANTIC INTEGRATED TUBE AMPLIFIER REVIEW
April 1, 2016 Comments Off on TRON ATLANTIC INTEGRATED TUBE AMPLIFIER REVIEW
” Try another recording from Atlantic’s back catalogue and suddenly the amplifier makes a lot more sense: John Coltrane’s Giant Steps from 1960. On the opening track of the same name, the amplifier’s ability to track this incredible piece of improvisation is lucid and coherent enough to hear just how much pianist Tommy Flanagan is struggling to keep up with Coltrane’s chord changes (in fairness, at times this track almost seems like Coltrane is reinventing musical harmony from first principles on the fly, and anyone this side of Lizst would have probably just given up). It’s a little difficult listening 56 years later to process precisely how revolutionary this was, but the key changes are quicksilver fast and perfectly related through the Atlantic, where many other amplifiers would simply gloss over them, making Giant Steps sound like yet another jazz album. The Atlantic amp portrays this through the use of effortless dynamics, a fine sense of foot-tapping fun, and a very deep (rather than wide) soundstage.”
Alta Audio Rhea Loudspeakers Review
April 1, 2016 Comments Off on Alta Audio Rhea Loudspeakers Review
” Use a decent amp (any kind) with the Rhea and you will get: Excellent total balance and dynamic range–live sound, no hardness or edginess at the high end, nice body and weight, large and clear soundstage (which, as with my Celesta allow it to float around the room as when I am sitting at the dinner table). Voices in particular are smooth and silky exposing venue reflections and reverb. Very nice bass dynamics; deep and extended, with some tightness and punch, and easily shaking my couch at times for some pieces such as Flight of the Cosmic Hippo by Béla Fleck and the Fleckstones”
fostex g1003mg Review
April 1, 2016 Comments Off on fostex g1003mg Review
“Any such statement epitomizes a transducer designer’s mutually exclusive goals. The thinner and bigger he make her diaphragms, the less rigid and stable they will be when driven. Increased material thickness adds strength but also weight. And for pistonic devices meant to move many thousands of times per second, less mass is better. This basic setup is behind the current trend into ‘hi-tech’ materials particularly for tweeters which undergo the most rapid of movements. The expense of laboratory-grown diamond prized for its ultimate hardness thus far limits it to mostly tweeters. But in the costliest of speakers, diamond has begun to appear in larger midranges. For drivers with increased breakup/deformation challenges from larger surfaces and excursions, clever engineers exploit dissimilar material bonding. For woofers, this could be carbon skins over foam, vapour-deposited metal on paper, harder oxide layers over softer cores or similar variations on the theme. With Fostex, these transducers are 99.9% pure Magnesium, not an alloy or multi-lam.”
Queststyle QP1R – Review
March 31, 2016 Comments Off on Queststyle QP1R – Review
” Take the track Strom from Australian modern jazz trio Trichotomy. This immaculately engineered 24/48kHz recording sounds like a very decent improvement over CD played on the FiiO: bold, warm, lavishly detailed and dynamic – especially through the Oppo PM-2. On the QP1R, the sound is warmer and richer yet also more pristine, resolute and atmospheric. Drummer John Parker’s delicate stick work acquires new levels of subtle intricacy while Sean Foran’s piano has harmonic complexity and a sense of its own acoustic space, which the FiiO suggests but can’t quite nail. The experience sells ‘hi-res’ so powerfully, it soon has you wondering if you can ever go back to ‘mere’ CD quality.”
Red Dragon S500 stereo amplifier Review
March 31, 2016 Comments Off on Red Dragon S500 stereo amplifier Review
” Ryan seems to know intuitively that customer service is of paramount importance in today’s consumer climate. I found him to be candid and completely inoffensive, timely in delivering on his promises and paying attention to my requests. For not having met him in person it was a comfortable introduction and purchasing experience.
Audeze’s Sine $449 Review
March 31, 2016 Comments Off on Audeze’s Sine $449 Review
” While the soundstage is obviously smaller and more intimate than on open-backed headphones, the Sine through Cipher have more dimension than through the standard cable. Of course, the use of any headphone amp would enhance the sound quality of the Sine, but most other headphone amps aren’t the size of a stick of gum. That a 24-bit, high-resolution DAC/amp/DSP could be crammed into the space where the remote and mic live on a cable and somehow still make a clearly discernable improvement in sound is amazing, and the kind of thing that makes me glad I live in the future.”
Transrotor JUPITER Turntable
March 30, 2016 Comments Off on Transrotor JUPITER Turntable
” Platter is made of aluminum and it weight 7 kg. It features a vinyl mate on top, and the bottom of the platter is not flat, but has concentric rings, which improve its mechanical properties. Same solution is used in other Transrotor’s models, such as Zet 3, for example, although Jupiter uses a smaller, lighter version of the latter. Platter is placed on a large (Ø 60mm) bearing, that acts also as a subplatter. An AC motor should be placed next to the deck, on the same surface. Its housing is made of brass and is not particularly tall.”
BOULDER AMPLIFIERS 2110 PREAMPLIFIER AND 2160 STEREO POWER AMPLIFIER REVIEW
March 30, 2016 Comments Off on BOULDER AMPLIFIERS 2110 PREAMPLIFIER AND 2160 STEREO POWER AMPLIFIER REVIEW
” I think there’s an instinctual recognition of transparency. It doesn’t need years of listening to increasingly expensive audio components, and it challenges the “I’m no expert,” mind-set of the neophyte. The Boulder 2000 series amps here are extremely transparent and faithful to the source, and that is not difficult to hear in test. It’s surprisingly easy, in fact. You know it’s right on some atavistic level, because the amps offer more of an insight into the recording with less artifice in the way. There are only a handful of amplifiers that offer that kind of clarity, and none of them come cheap.”
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