Articles
--
Jefferson Airplane: Surrealistic Pillow
|For parents tuning into Top 40 radio in the 60s, hits like “White Rabbit” and “Somebody to Love” probably confirmed their worst fears. The band was the Jefferson Airplane from San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district—the counterculture’s ...read more -
-
Exposure 3010S2D Integrated Amplifier
|A life lesson that we all learn: Looks can be deceiving. It’s also an axiom that applies to the high end—it’s what’s inside that counts. An amp like the Exposure 3010S2D is a case in ...read more -
B&W 805 D3
|What is the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the term “flagship” loudspeaker? Its size, of course. Such speakers tend to be impressive, full-range statements—multi-driver platforms that cast long shadows in the ...read more -
Elac Uni-Fi UB5
|How do you follow an act like the Elac Debut B5? The pint-size, two-way compact simply crushed it with its big, hearty sound and puny $229 price tag (reviewed in Issue 260). In a rare ...read more -
Nordost Frey 2 Speaker Cable and Interconnects
|Recently upgraded, Frey 2 cable is the sweet-spot wire of Nordost’s mid-priced Norse 2 collection. In truth it’s actually only one player in a much larger bloodline that, in its complexity, begins to resemble the ...read more -
REL T7i Subwoofer
|It might be a common perception, but a subwoofer’s role isn’t limited to just adding an octave or so of bass response and going boom. Ideally it should be all about the quantity and quality ...read more -
-
Golden Ear Awards 2016: Neil Gader
|Elac B5/F5 Loudspeakers $229/$560 The two-hundred-buck small speaker category will never be the same again. Just spend a few minutes listening to Elac’s two-way compact and you’ll understand why so many are singing its praises. ...read more -
VooDoo Iso-Pod Isolation System
|Hiding beneath almost every high-end component is one of its most unsung heroes: footers. Their importance to audio performance is well recognized, yet with the exception of a few manufacturers (typically high up in the ...read more -
WyWires Diamond Loudspeaker Cables and Interconnects
|Diamond is the flagship cable in the growing WyWires lineup. Visually, Diamond projects an understated elegance with textured black-mesh jacketing over its silverized underlayer. At each end, its signal conductors are collected in polished carbon-fiber ...read more -
Audience Ohno Speaker Cables and Interconnects
|The slender profile of Audience Ohno interconnects and speaker cables runs counter to perceived audiophile gospel that high-quality wires must be thick and heavy, with dreadlock twists of conductors encased within unyielding jacketing. Audience turns ...read more -
Pass Labs INT-250 Integrated Amplifier
|When Pass Labs introduced its first-ever integrated amplifier, the INT-150 in 2009, the debut was hailed by many, myself included, as a watershed moment for a sector often derided as “down-market.” Reviewing the amp in ...read more -
-
Alex Sventitsky, President, WyWires
|What ignited your interest in the high end? Did it come from the music side or the electronics side? I developed a love of music at about age 7. I had a small radio next ...read more -
AVM Evolution MP 5.2 Media Player
|Don’t count the compact disc player out just yet, folks. The CD format may have lost ground to computer-based audio, but as I’ve been positing for the last few issues, the venerable CD drive will ...read more -
The McIntosh Group Entertains Sardinia-Style
|At The McIntosh Group (TMG) event held on the Italian island of Sardinia, corporate officers and key group managers reported an upbeat outlook for the group’s "four diamonds" collection, i.e. McIntosh Labs, Audio Research Corporation, ...read more -
T.H.E. Show Newport: Neil Gader on Loudspeakers and Electronics Under $15k
|As a first-timer attending the Munich High End Show this year I experienced an audio event as high-spirited and enthusiastic as any in recent or distant memory. Returning home I half expected the 2016 Newport ...read more