When Magico, LLC announced the imminent introduction of the S3 Mk II loudspeaker late last year, it wasn’t exactly shocking news. After all, two other members of Magico’s S Series, the S1 and the S5 ...

Generally speaking, audiophiles like to own their music. Borrowing from a vast and undifferentiated stream with practically limitless choices just doesn’t sit right—at least not as the only option. We tend to grow our music ...

The Fifth Century, a 42-minute work for choir and saxophone quartet by the English composer Gavin Bryars (b.1963), has been described as “music that makes eternity audible.” Bryars sets texts by the lesser-known 17th-century metaphysical ...

Magico loudspeakers have impressed a good number of TAS equipment reviewers. No fewer than seven Magico models are endorsed in the 2017 Buyer’s Guide and the most ambitious designs have served as references for Robert ...

For the 2015 Rocky Mountain Audio Fest, my beat was loudspeakers costing less than $20,000 per pair and, in advance of the trip to Denver, I meticulously studied the show guide and made a list ...

Photo: Jana Dagdagan Marantz “brand ambassador” Ken Ishiwata Late last year, DMGlobal, the corporation that now owns Marantz (also Denon and Boston Acoustics), announced the new Marantz Premium 10 Series and arranged for members of ...

Non-audiophiles watching a member of our tribe move towards the purchase of a costly assault-on-the-art loudspeaker may believe that acquiring that component guarantees sonic nirvana. We members of the tribe know better. That understanding is ...

There’s something to be said for a high-end loudspeaker manufacturer actually making its own drivers. The number of companies that do this is relatively small, though many try to obfuscate the matter by declaring that ...

Due to the incomplete state of the extensive renovations undertaken at the Marriott Denver Tech Center, a number of loudspeaker manufacturers were disadvantaged by rooms that were less than ideal—that is, too small—to demonstrate their ...

Reference Recordings garnered seven nominations for the 2016 Grammy Awards, including two for Woman at the New Piano. The disc premieres six works written in 2013 by four composers, three of whom, like Shpachenko, live ...

We’ve all had the experience of auditioning an audio component of interest at a dealership—with the salesman standing right behind you. Not too much pressure, right? Well, imagine doing it with ten people watching, and ...

In the middle of Saturday afternoon at AXPONA 2016 in Chicago, I witnessed what is surely the most demanding test of an audio system there can be—an A/B showdown with The Real Thing. A crowd ...

The term “heroic” has been employed frequently to describe an approach to designing loudspeaker cabinets that sets out to create an enclosure for dynamic drivers that will be as inert as possible, contributing nothing unwanted ...

Mark Louis Lehman is one of us, and I mean that quite literally. Lehman has long been on the TAS masthead and was this magazine’s music editor from 2008 to 2014; as an audiophile, former ...

The Italian violinist and composer Giuseppe Tartini absorbed the ideals of the Enlightenment, concluding that music was a manifestation of the natural order. Sigurd Imsen’s program of three Tartini chamber works—the Sonata in F Major, ...