This is the work station for the critical vertical bearing assembly; the small hand press (right) is used to check tolerances/resistance. Detail of bearing assembly SME's latest tonearm, the twelve-inch V-12 V-12 tonearms awaiting final ...

At this year’s CES I was introduced to Sonus Faber’s new Liuto which was being demoed in the Sumiko room. Filling the gap between the Domus line and the exclusive Classic line, the Liuto is ...

Before turning to the next batch of images a little background on SME Ltd is in order. The company was originally formed in 1946 by Alastair Robertston-Aikman and was known as the Scale Model Equipment ...

There are few names in audio, analog or digital, that get the heart racing like the turntables and tonearms from SME Ltd. Long admired for its precision mechanical engineering and jewel-like construction SME components are ...

Since the early 1970s, the arrival of a new preamplifier from Audio Research has been an occasion for excitement, and sometime early next week I’ll be getting ARC’s latest thinking on a piece of equipment ...

J. Gordon Holt: An Appreciation and a Remembrance Harry Pearson [This is a preview of a piece that will appear in Issue 197 of The Absolute Sound—RH] This isn’t going to be a conventional farewell. ...

Demo or Die! Robert Harley “Publish or perish” is a well-known phrase in the academic world—if your work isn’t published in professional journals, your career will perish. The high-end audio industry should adopt a parallel ...

An interesting shootout is shaping up chez Valin. As some of you already know from previous posts and blogs (see www.avguide.com/blog/best-amp-ever-soulution-710-amplifier), I’ve had the Soulution 710 stereo amp, the Soulution 700 monoblock amplifiers, and the ...

Founded in 1978, T+A Elektroakustik of Germany began by building loudspeakers and by 1988 had expanded to electronics. By 1997 T+A which stands for Theory + Application was into active loudspeaker design, CD players, tuners, ...

The Audience ClairAudient Loudspeaker: A 20-Year Dream Realized Robert Harley On a recent visit to Southern California, I stopped in to see Audience, maker of a highly regarded line of AC power-conditioner and signal cables. ...

It’s been a while since I’ve laid my hands on some new Rotel products. Fact is, I was beginning to wonder what was up since the line was getting a little long in the tooth ...

(Note: Following is the technical "sidebar" for my review of Vienna Acoustics' "The Music" loudspeaker that will appear in the September issue of The Absolute Sound. I also nominated The Music for a 2009 Golden ...

I can’t resist ending this essay with a little photo gallery of some of the breathtakingly beautiful things I saw during my stay in Japan. The first printed above is a photo of the gate ...

One of the first things Osamu Ikeda asked me when we met—and it wasn’t the first time that the question of age, mine or theirs, was brought up by these Japanese craftsmen—was, “How old do ...

Not all of Mr. Imai’s Audio Tekne systems cost small fortunes, although, outside of his tweaks and incredibly reasonably priced cables and interconnects, they do tend to be pricey, as handcrafted works of applied art ...