CLARUS CONCERTO POWER CONDITIONER $3,699 REVIEW
January 29, 2020 Comments Off on CLARUS CONCERTO POWER CONDITIONER $3,699 REVIEW
“The point I want to make here is that high-end audio equipment will likely not have a lot of noise peaks because they already have noise-reducing circuitry. However, they may very well have some high-frequency noise that makes its way into the signal. The origin of this high-frequency noise is not known. It could be coming from anywhere in your home, including appliances, Wi-Fi router, etc. Everything these days seems to have Wi-Fi capability, so this noise can be in the megahertz range.
Removing high-frequency noise is a matter of your own priorities. If you want to maintain the purest signal possible, then adding a high-quality power conditioner is desirable. The Clarus Concerto is certainly of that category.”
Tidal review
January 28, 2020 Comments Off on Tidal review
https://www.whathifi.com/us/tidal/review
“We also noted that Masters music can be hard to find, and that’s still the case. Only a minority of tracks (around 450 albums-worth) are easily discoverable in the Tidal desktop app, found in the ‘Home’ tab under the ‘Master Quality Audio Albums’.
The other million-odd Masters (such as Fleetwood Mac’s remastered Tusk) are buried within Tidal’s 60m+ database of tracks, and there’s no way to specifically search for them.
“However, Tidal has built on its discovery feature with 30 Masters-specifics playlists such as ‘Tidal Masters: New Arrivals’ and ‘Tidal Masters: Essentials’, as well as some genre-specific (‘Tidal Masters: Motown’) and artist-specific (‘Tidal Masters: The Smiths’) options.
Hifiman Ananda-BT Bluetooth Headphones $999 Review
January 28, 2020 Comments Off on Hifiman Ananda-BT Bluetooth Headphones $999 Review
“The Ananda-BT gives you everything you expect from a world class pair of open back planar magnetic headphones with none of the drawbacks, no cables, and no headphone amp or DAC to worry about, you simply connect them via Bluetooth and start enjoying your music in all its high resolution glory. A molded plastic carrying case and USB mic are included for portability, phone calls, and gaming.
The Ananda-BT aren’t finicky, pray at the audiophile altar headphones, they go where you go! You’ll quickly fall in love their fabulous sound, untethered freedom of movement, and absence of sacrifices. I’ve used them for critical listening (god I hate that term), danced around my living room listening to Billie Eilish, made a fabulous red sauce streaming Pavarotti, and drifted off to a peaceful late night slumber with Windham Hill. These aren’t your father’s headphones, they’re easy breezy carefree sonic showstoppers you’ll be fighting to get back from your significant other. Recommended without reservation.”
MBL 101 X-treme Omnidirectional Loudspeaker $263,000 the pair Review
January 27, 2020 Comments Off on MBL 101 X-treme Omnidirectional Loudspeaker $263,000 the pair Review
“Auditioning the 101 X’s was a virtual replay of their original sojourn in my room. Then as now I can’t stop listening to the things. Then as now visitors—friends, colleagues, and manufacturers—think they are the best transducers they’ve ever heard (as do I), and eachof them has had the same slack-jawed initial reaction to hearing them, expressed in almost exactly the same words: “Where are the speakers?”
Despite any shortcomings (and I will come to these), the MBL 101 X’s (properly situated and adjusted) sound less like loudspeakers than any other system I’ve heard. As I wrote the first time around, “all of the various ways in which conventional transducers betray that their sound is being projected in narrower or broader dispersion patterns by individual drivers in resonant enclosures simply aren’t present.” What you hear, instead, as I’ve already repeatedly noted, is a soundfield that seems to have been magically imported in toto from some other place—from a concert hall or a studio—and plopped down in your listening room with all three of its dimensions intact. To quote again from my first review, “where other transducers sound the way a film looks—like a two-dimensional medium imitating a three-dimensional reality—the 101 X-tremes sound the way a theatrical play looks—no ersatz third dimension, but actual people on an actual stage right there in front of you.
Totem Acoustic Tribe Tower Loudspeakers $5300 Review
January 27, 2020 Comments Off on Totem Acoustic Tribe Tower Loudspeakers $5300 Review
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By most standards, the Totem Tribe Tower would be considered a relatively tiny floorstander, but the pair of them sounded big in my mid-size room. Having heard what their similar sibling, the Sky Tower, could do here less than a year before, I wasn’t completely surprised, but unsuspecting listeners might be at first caught off guard, then quite pleased — this speaker should be of interest to anyone who wants room-filling sound but who doesn’t have the space for a pair of big boxes.
At first I thought I’d prefer setting up the Tribe Towers closer to the front of the room, to make better use of the front and sidewalls to help reinforce the bass — indeed, Totem recommends placing them as little as 4” from the front wall. While I was never going to do that — I’ve never been happy with the sound of speakers from that close to the wall behind them — I did try pulling them out just over 12” from the front wall. Unsurprisingly, the Tribes benefited from room gain — the bass was fuller, the overall output greater. However, even with 2’ between the wall and the speakers’ rear panels, I was still more than satisfied with their low-end performance, while preferring the greater three-dimensionality of soundstage I experienced with them farther out from the wall. Ultimately, they ended up very near the positions where most speakers tend to work best in my room.”
Parasound Flagship Halo JC 1+ 450-Watt Monoblock Power Amplifier
January 26, 2020 Comments Off on Parasound Flagship Halo JC 1+ 450-Watt Monoblock Power Amplifier
https://novo.press/parasound-flagship-halo-jc-1-450-watt-monoblock-power-amplifier/
The Parasound Halo JC 1+ is remarkably quiet and is the first commercially built product to employ active high-frequency noise filtering with Bybee Music Rails, eliminating input stage noise that compromises sound quality. Curl’s newly-designed driver stage employs a cascode circuit with greater open-loop bandwidth and increased linearity. In another first for the JC 1+, the input and driver stages reside on FR-408 printed circuit board material. Until now FR408 was used in super-computer and aerospace applications. The input-stage power supply is totally independent from the main power supply. Its R-core transformer isolates sensitive circuitry from high-frequency power line noise. This input stage power supply employs quiet high speed/soft recovery diodes and 22,400 uF filter capacitance, to deliver +/- 112 VDC rail voltage, virtually eliminating distortion. Premium Wilson Audio REL capacitors use a proprietary design, which resists micro vibrations that typically degrade the sound quality of other caps. The addition of an XLR Loop Out as well as a 12V-trigger/delayed-turn-on improve the connectivity and utility when multiple JC 1+s are used in bi, tri, and quad amp configurations.
FIIO K5 PRO $149 Review
January 26, 2020 Comments Off on FIIO K5 PRO $149 Review
https://headfonics.com/2020/01/fiio-k5-pro-review/
“You may not notice the upgrade on the outside, but this is a great feature that allows much more precise low-volume control, letting you enjoy sensitive IEMs in a quiet environment also to use the K5 Pro as a volume controller/ Preamp for powerful power amps.
Channel balance issues have always been a nightmare for mid-night listens especially with multi-ba IEMs and sometimes it may get too loud before you find the sweet spot/ minimum vol. that works, if you have very sensitive ears this may be a great feature.”
Audiophilepure 
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