I recently had a mind-blowing listening experience I'd like to tell you about. No, it doesn't involve hearing a high-resolution disc on mid-six-figure stereo system, but rather a 40+ year-old recording reproduced by a sound-reinforcement ...

Anticipated Product Introduction Dec 13 - As I write this, the first examples of Arcam's new DV139 universal player are hitting the market. Arcam's marketing director, Geoff Meads, visited me last week with the $2995 ...

Wilson MAXX 2 Loudspeaker: Further Thoughts Dec 19 - I've lived with Wilson's MAXX 2 loudspeaker for nearly two years now and can report that I'm just as thrilled with this loudspeaker as when I ...

Upcoming in The Absolute Sound Dec 29 - We're just finishing Issue 170 (March 07 cover date, January 31 mail date) and it has some reviews of exciting new products. Neil Gader reports on an ...

HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc as High-Res Music Formats? Dec 30 - All the talk about HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc has centered on their video capabilities and the unfortunate war between the two competing ...

Upcoming in TAS Jan 3 - One of the great mysteries of digital audio (to me, at least) is how CD transport-mechanism quality affects the sound. I'm not talking about the differences between transports as ...

The Loudness War: A Must-View YouTube Video Jan 4 - It's no secret that record companies crush the dynamic range of rock and pop releases in order to make their records sound louder during radio ...

The Next Speaker-Manufacturing Mecca is . . . Cali, Colombia? Jan 5 - China could be in for some competition as the loudspeaker manufacturing capital of the world. I know someone in the industry who ...

The Heyser Box Jan 5 - I was talking to Absolute Multimedia CEO Tom Martin recently about why subwoofers sound so different (and why we can't quantify those differences through measurement). He suggested that we're ...

How Do Professionals Listen? It's fairly well-known that recording engineers, producers, and recording artists listen at fairly high playback levels when recording and mixing. But just how loud is the mix they listen to? And ...

Audio Trivia The data rate of 44.1kHz/16-bit PCM audio as used in the CD format is 1.41 million bits per second (44,100 samples per second multiplied by 16 bits per sample, multiplied by 2 channels). ...

A Great Web Site Gets Better A powerful feature of electronic-content delivery is the ability to tailor the content you receive to your specific interests. This concept is beautifully demonstrated by Pandora, an Internet-radio Web ...

Coming up in the next The Absolute Sound We've just sent Issue 171 (April/May cover date, February 28 mail date) to the printer, and what an issue it is. For starters, the issue includes a ...

We're just putting together The Absolute Sound Issue 172 (June/July cover date, April 30 mail date) which has a special analog theme. The issue includes reviews of eight turntables ranging from $299 to $26k, six ...

Fans of the type of swing pioneered by Gypsy guitar virtuoso Django Reinhardt and violinist extraordinaire Stephane Grappelli are in for a treat from a new CD called Yerba Buena Bounce from The Hot Club ...