It’s been nearly six years since a tall, dark, and handsomely slim pair of Coincident Total Eclipses first cast their spell on me at the 2000 Consumer Electronics Show. I couldn’t believe such fabulously fast, ...

My soap-box speech begins with a reminder that all designed (as opposed to formula) audio equipment is a dance of compromises, and any unit’s strengths and weaknesses are the product of the designer’s sonic priorities ...

Once I had the opportunity to explore the Great Organ at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City. This Aeolian- Skinner's 8000 or so pipes live in two huge "attics" above ...

Never underestimate the modest two-way loudspeaker. For decades it has embodied the high-end credo that less is more—that design minimalism, impeccably executed, can draw a listener ever closer to musical reality. Even in an era ...

Each loudspeaker I hear introduces me to a new experience with music I know well, which in turn often leads me into entirely new music with refreshed, reeducated ears. In today’s high end, you can ...

For as long as I can remember serious music lovers have been fascinated with electrostatic speakers. The reasons are obvious— instead of woofers and tweeters, electrostatic speakers use a light, responsive, super-thin electrically conductive diaphragm ...

The Ascendo M-S MKII loudspeaker from German y is one of the most unlikely sucess stories in high -end audio. When I first heard the M-S at last year’s CES I was impressed enough to ...

A friend recently complained that I get so excited about every new component to come along that it’s almost as if I’ve never heard a decent stereo before. My first thought was to suggest that ...

I’ve recently found a number of moderately priced loudspeakers that qualify as bargains—ones that allow you to grow a system around them, upgrading other components before you reach the speakers’ limits. The reference in my ...

In the months following my review of the Triangle Esprit Altea Es (Issue 156), Triangle Electroacoustique announced some key revisions to its popular mid-line offering. Given that the Altea was already very good, I seized ...

Paradigm enjoys a solid reputation for building modestly priced loudspeakers that deliver strong performance for the money, but that fact raises an important question. What would happen if a traditionally value-oriented, price-conscious firm such as ...

Throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s, the MartinLogan Curvilinear Line Source (CLS) full-range electrostatic was my reference loudspeaker, and although I’ve since gone on to other things, the CLS remains one of the purest ...

Magico founder Alon Wolf made an off-hand comment to me that cut to the core of how he approaches loudspeaker design. We were setting up the V3 in my listening room when he remarked that ...

Epos M16 It’s hard to not be excited by the Epos M16. For fifteen-hundredninety- five bucks you get an English-designed, Chinese-built speaker possessing truly special performance qualities. The M16 can whisper yet still be clearly ...

Most reports of a great-sounding demonstration at CES or CEDIA are followed by the qualifier “… for a show,” as in: “The XYZ sounded fabulous… for a show.” That’s because it’s rare to hear truly ...