When I played him Rapsodie espagnole from a test pressing of Chad Kassem’s soon-to-be-released (October 8), 200-gram Analogue Productions’ reissue of RCA LSC-2183 The Reiner Sound, my buddy and TAS Music Editor Mark Lehman, whose ...

Good old-fashioned American chauvinism notwithstanding, Munich is by consensus the world’s most important high-end audio show, replacing CES as the place to do business—that is, if doing business in Europe and the Far East are ...

To cut immediately to the chase, when used with the AAS Gabriel/DaVinciAudio Labs Mk II turntable and the Goldfinger Statement cartridge, the DaVinci Master’s Reference Virtu tonearm is the most realistic-sounding pivoted tonearm I’ve yet ...

Some three-and-a-half years ago now, my wife Kathy and I traveled to Bern, Switzerland, to visit audio engineer Peter Brem and his companion Jolanda Costa, the co-proprietors of DaVinciAudioLabs—makers of the AAS Gabriel turntable and ...

Not since 1994, when the Summer CES stopped camping out yearly along Michigan Avenue and Lake Shore Drive, has the Windy City played annual host to a large high-end audio show. That situation will certainly ...

Here’s the thing about the ceramic-driver loudspeakers I’ve reviewed in the past. At low-to-moderate SPLs or on music performed pianissimo-to-mezzoforte, they have always been marvelous at reproducing the fine detail that tells you which instruments ...

William Zane Johnson, God bless him, may be gone and his pathbreaking company, the Audio Research Corporation, may now be owned by an Italian holding company, but in spite of the loss of its founder ...

Like almost everybody else who grew up in the sixties, I can honestly say that rock ’n’ roll changed my life. In particular, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band changed my life. That girl doll ...

I’m happy to report that good-sounding speakers outweighed not-so-good-sounding ones at this year’s CES, although judging their virtues and flaws was made more difficult by two relatively new wrinkles. First, though most rooms were equipped ...

Composed in 1957 for his son Maxim’s graduation recital, the Second Piano Concerto is regarded by some as one of Shostakovich’s lesser works. Shostakovich himself said that it had “no redeeming artistic merits.” Nonetheless, he ...

Until a review in this stupid magazine persuaded me to sell it and buy, sight unseen and sound unheard, a Marantz 500—which blew up the moment I plugged it in, before I’d heard a single ...

The $26,000 Soulution 520 full-function preamplifier and $55,000-per-pair 501 monoblock amplifiers are terrific. Sweet in timbre, incredibly fast, and sensationally detailed from top to bottom, they match the superlative Technical Brain EX and Constellation Performance ...

The Sigma DP1 Merrill has all of the same virtues and flaws as the DP2 Merrill that I blogged about back at the beginning of October (http://www.theabsolutesound.com/articles/sigma-dp2-merrill-camera/). Like the DP2M, the DP1M is a relatively ...

Well, I’ve been listening to these tall, thin, exceptionally beautiful loudspeakers for several months now, and they’ve only continued to get better with settling-in time, break-in time, considerable tweaking of their position in my room, ...

Prokofiev’s great Third Piano Concerto has been Martha Argerich’s signature piece since she won competitions with it at the age of 16 in 1957. If you’re used to Bryon Janis’ reading on Mercury or have ...