Being an audiophile isn’t quite as simple as it used to be. It’s not just about slapping on a record or slipping a disc into a CD player anymore. We boot up, we download, we ...

I caught my first glimpse of the all-new Amerigo from Sonics by Joachim Gerhard at last years Rocky Mountain Audio Fest and was able to have a further listen at CES. I liked what I ...

Gradient designer Jorma Salmi is one of the most inventive of all speaker designers in the modern era. His first speaker, the Gradient 1.1/1.3 (the two models were essentially the same design), appearing in the ...

Whether you believe the economy is “fundamentally sound” or in free fall, a bargain hunter—or cheapskate?—lurks within most of us. Being a wine lover, and also a writer on the subject, I delight in discovering ...

Sonus Faber’s reverence for the Old Master violinmakers of Cremona is well known. Their craftsmanship has been the guiding light for the Italian loudspeaker manufacturer providing insights and inspiration for every model—particularly its exquisite Homage ...

For Magico lovers and the just plain curious, here's a little photo journal covering the delivery of the fabulous Magico M5 loudspeakers. 1) Here they are in their cartons on the delivery truck--about five hundred ...

It was just a few months ago (in Issue 186) that I reviewed the $13k Quad ESL-2905 electrostatic loudspeaker—the best ’stat I’d yet heard, the highest resolution transducer I’d heard, and the speaker that I ...

The $30k Magico Mini II was being showed in the Soulution room with, uh, Soulution electronics. The sound was darker than I’m used to from Minis (and from the ARC amplification I used with them), ...

I returned to the Sumiko suite in the Venetian on two different days this year and was rewarded with the opportunity to hear two speakers that this well-regarded distributor/importer will be pinning much of its ...

(Editor's Note: JV has already commented on the Magico M5, Vandersteen Model Seven, and Wilson Audio MAXX Series 3 loudspeakers in other blogs. However, in his upcoming CES Report in The Absolute Sound, JV comments ...

For no other reason than word count, there were a couple of loudspeakers that didn’t make my upcoming CES report in TAS but grabbed my attention nonetheless. Lafleur Audio of Canada demonstrated the robust X2, ...

Contrary to what some people may think (see my Magico M5 blog), I did listen to other ultra-high-end speakers besides the Magico M5 at this year's CES, and after the M5 the two I thought ...

One of the odder and more unexpected surprises at this year's CES was a trio of loudspeakers that used thick sculpted sheets of tempered glass for their cabinets or, in one very expensive and remarkable ...

Vandersteen Model 7 Loudspeaker Preview Robert Harley One of the “must-hear” systems at CES was Richard Vandersteen’s all-new Model 7 loudspeaker. The buzz surrounded not just the exceptional sound the system produced, but the radical ...

The McIntosh XR200 is a more approachable “real” room speaker that takes it’s cues from big Mac’s flagship XRT towers. With a trio of 8** woofers per side, subsonic bass is and was a bone-crushing ...