The resurgent market for CDreceivers suggests a couple of things to me. People want greatsounding audio in rooms other than dedicated listening environments. They also want small-footprint audiophilequality gear that is proportional to the space ...

Many years ago, I purchased a Creek integrated amplifier as a birthday present for my wife to use as the centerpiece in an affordable, easy-to-use, yet engaging second system for our house. Although she’d complained ...

Polk Audio ’s new I-Sonic brings a wide range of music sources to a desktop or bedrom audio System —and does so with surprising sound quality. The curvaceous, nine-pound I-Sonic might look like a “table ...

High quality digital replay is a mess. Conflicting formats and their competing claims have created a complex and confusing field in which the all too prosaic realities of everyday digital performance have been obscured and ...

Removing the Sword in the Stone: MSB Technology's iLink iPod Station The "sword in the stone"âan apparently insurmountable problemâof the iPod for audiophiles is the inability to access the digital bitstream so that we can ...

Denon A/V receivers are known for delivering genuine technological advancements, not whoopee-cushion gimmickry, and the mid-priced AVR-3806 is no exception. With the addition of XM capability, HDMI v.1.1 switching with analog source/video upconversion and HDCD ...

In the process of overhauling and upgrading my system, I discovered some cool new high-def programs, products, and technologies that have transformed my home theater experience. The best of these is undoubtedly Dish Network’s new ...

One of the great chalenges in the ne xt few years wil be the streaming of high -resolution audio and video signals over a home wireles network . Even now, in wi-fi’s nascent stage, the ...

Esoteric P-03 Universal Disc Transport & D-03 Digital-to-Analog Converter I've just returned from a visit to the U.S. headquarters of TEAC, parent company of the Esoteric brand of high-end disc players. I was there researching ...

Is the $149 Oppo DV-970 Universal Disc Player a Giant-Killer? Dec 12 - There's been much buzz about Oppo's bargain disc player being competitive with much more expensive units. There's no question regarding the DV-970's ...

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 ...

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 ...

May 31 - The 25th anniversary of the Compact Disc is approaching and The Absolute Sound is commemorating this milestone with a special issue focused on digital. The September issue of TAS includes reviews of ...

July 5 - Our special feature on the state of digital audio (Issue 174) includes a retrospective in honor of the 25th anniversary of the Compact Disc's US launch. My editorial in that issue laments ...