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 ...

Located directly across the street from the John Wayne Airport, the Newport Audio show would have done the Duke proud. Spirits were high, old hands abounded, and a few greenhorns showed up to sample the ...

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 ...

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 ...

Last year’s CES brought us a slew of new turntables, many of them priced below $3000. Although there were some moderately priced turntables and cartridges introduced at this year’s show, CES 2013 was notable for ...

Confession: Even though I’m a longtime contributor to (and once-upon-a-time editor of) these pages, I still await each issue with the same almost childlike eagerness I had as a “civilian” reader. And having attended many ...

I wrapped up the review period of the new Hanss T‑60 turntable and Graham Phantom II Supreme‑44 tonearm with a clutch of new vinyl releases I’d picked up from the Newport Audio Show, which included ...

Because it is a thing of beauty to witness and because the results make such a huge difference in the sonic presentation, I’d like to take you through the process of mounting, aligning, and optimizing ...

Listening to the superbly recorded track “Gone” from Melody Gardot’s first album Worrisome Heart [UJC] on Werner Roeschlau’s new Analog Manufaktur Germany (AMG) Viella 12 (or V12) record player, I had one of those goosebump-raising ...

The vinyl record came on the market more than sixty years ago and vinyl playback might be expected to be a “mature” technology, with only refinements and small steps ever closer to perfection the only ...

It’s finally time to drop the phrase “the resurgence of analog.” The boom in LPs and the products to play them has long since passed the “resurgence” phase and is now a full-fledged, integral component ...

The forward momentum in high-end design, even during these troublesome times, continues to produce some breathtaking surprises. Nowhere is this more evident than in improving the reproduction of sound from the venerable long-playing record. It ...

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 ...