Rockport Altair Loudspeaker$97,500 Although it’s been nearly four years since I reviewed the Altair, Rockport’s second-from-top model still sticks in my mind as one of the world’s greatest loudspeakers. My fond memory of how this ...

Many audiophiles think of an audio system from the perspective of The Law of Diminishing Returns. That’s the idea that each successive dollar you add to your hi-fi budget realizes progressively less sonic improvement. To ...

Meridian Audio has leveraged its 23-year history of developing active DSP loudspeakers to create state-of-the-art car audio for Jaguar and Land Rover vehicles. I recently listened to the Meridian system in Jaguar’s XJ luxury sedan ...

After 40 years of designing loudspeakers, Albert Von Schweikert received a dream commission: Build a custom one-off loudspeaker with no cost constraints. If Albert thought of aspects of the design or construction that would improve ...

The high-end audio industry has a remarkable track record of making fundamentally limited technologies sound good. Most of these technologies were created for mass-market consumption where low price is the overriding design mandate. But because ...

We lost Richard L. Hardesty to cancer on August 19th, 2014 at age 70. Dick’s was a life lived in audio, first as a retailer and then as a writer. Dick was a consummate educator ...

Photography by Jonathan Valin After this year’s Munich show Jonathan Valin and I made the short trip to Zurich to visit Swiss loudspeaker manufacturer Piega, and listen to its ambitious new $195k Master Line Source ...

For some audio hobbyists, there’s only one true path to audio nirvana. That path is often exceedingly narrow—loudspeakers with first-order crossovers, or single-ended triode amplifiers, or DACs without an oversampling filter, for examples. These proponents ...

High-resolution digital audio is rapidly approaching a tipping point. No longer a niche format for audiophiles, high-res is poised to become a mainstream alternative to MP3 and CD-quality audio. As I noted in my editorial ...

The 2014 Newport show was another huge success, so much so that it may move to a larger and more deluxe venue next year. The Hilton and Atrium hotels are stretched to their limits by ...

If there was any doubt that Munich is world’s most important audio event, the 2014 show held May 16-19 will put any uncertainty to rest. The MOC convention center was packed with 493 exhibitors (up ...

California-based Aesthetix has carved out an enviable niche producing very-high-performance products that, while not budget-priced, nonetheless offer extraordinary value. The company’s Calypso linestage, Rhea phonostage, Janus full-function preamplifier, and Atlas power amplifiers pack a lot ...

It’s both rewarding and disconcerting to regularly discover fabulous albums that have been around for decades yet remained unknown to you until some chance encounter brought them to your attention. The “rewarding” part of that ...

Meridian Audio has entered the OEM car-audio market with a range of systems offered in Jaguar and Land Rover vehicles. I spent three days sampling a 2014 Range Rover equipped with Meridian’s top-of-the-line, 29-speaker, 1700W ...

After reading Jacob Heilbrunn’s review of the Audio Desk Vinyl Cleaning Machine in Issue 234 I had to try one for myself. I was intrigued by the idea of cleaning LPs with ultrasonic energy rather ...