KEF LS50 $1500 With its pink-gold Uni-Q coincident midrange/tweeter mounted in bulls-eye fashion atop the uniquely arched baffle of its beautifully crafted high-density enclosure, the LS50 is as visually arresting as it is sonically satisfying. ...

When you think of almost anything made in Switzerland, what comes to mind? Extreme precision, pristine aesthetics, painstaking research, and exemplary quality. (And yes, as you’d expect, this all comes at a considerable cost.) Enter ...

What ignited your interest in the high end? Did it come from the music side, family, or the electronics side? I was fascinated by music and sound reproduction from an early age. At age two ...

This is soulful music played by gifted artists who bring vision and virtuoso chops to their work. The contemporary-folk group Ranagri enchants while living up to the promise of the SACD stereo format, putting the ...

In 2016 the Chinese high-end audio specialist Cayin Audio introduced two impressive personal audio components: the fully balanced iHA-6 solid-state headphone amplifier and its sibling, the fully balanced iDAC-6 hybrid solid-state/tube high-resolution DAC. In the ...

John Williams composed the music for the first three Harry Potter films (The Sorcerer’s Stone, The Chamber of Secrets, and The Prisoner of Azkaban), and now the complete scores have been released for the first ...

LONDON/HANGZHOU | JULY 16th, 2019 - Xiami Music, a wholly-owned entity of the Alibaba Group, will be the first music streaming service in China to adopt MQA. With the implementation of MQA, Xiami Music will ...

EarsSonics’ EM10 is the French firm’s flagship custom-fit in-ear monitor. Unlike the EM9, the EM10 is offered only as a CIEM, but not as a universal-fit earphone. The EM10 and EM9 share many similarities but ...

Since I first heard William Zane Johnson’s D76 stereo amplifier and SP3 full-function preamp back in the early 1970s, I’ve been a fan of Audio Research electronics. Indeed, I’ve owned and reviewed more gear from ...

Jazz as dance music? There was a time when that wasn’t even a question. Has the time come again for upbeat, swinging, danceable jazz? Rob Reich answers that question in the affirmative on this album ...

Of the many articles and reviews that Harry Pearson wrote for The Absolute Sound, his annual Super LP List (aka SuperDisc List) may have been the most eagerly anticipated. The issue in which it was ...

Aesthetix Audio Corporation is the Southern California-based high-end electronics company revered for its bespoke tube and tube/hybrid electronics, many of which have been reviewed in these pages. Built to uncompromising standards, its components fall squarely ...

The following is a press release issued by AudioQuest. In 2012, the original AudioQuest DragonFly thoroughly disrupted the DAC market. For so many casual enthusiasts who had never previously considered the possibility of improving their ...

I have fallen in love—again—with quadraphonic sound. In 1972, I purchased a state-of-the-art Sylvania CR2743W stereo amp with built-in Phase Q4 Matrix four-channel circuitry. In stereo quadraphonic systems (SQ), four sound channels were converted down ...

Constellation Audio burst onto the high-end audio scene in 2010 with the highly acclaimed, ultra-expensive Altair linestage and Hercules mono amplifier (reviewed in Issue 215). The company followed up with the equally well-received but lower-priced ...