Though it may not rank with true blood sports—such as politics and filmmaking—specialty audio manufacturing is nevertheless one rough game. Knowing this, however, has never discouraged hopeful newcomers, who, despite the high end’s marginalized status ...

At first glance it’s easy to mistake Imagine—PSB’s newest midline collection of loudspeakers—for its more costly premium line, Synchrony. I did. After all, both are visually arresting—curvaceous and seamless. And they represent a fashion shift ...

Remember the commercial showing Rosey Grier, the great football player, the very embodiment of human physical power, doing needlepoint? (This was real. He wrote a book on it, Needlepoint for Men.) This image came to ...

The “S” Series of Benz Micro cartridges made its debut in 2008. Its innovations are embodied in revamped versions of the Wood Body, Glider, ACE, as well as a new version of the LP and ...

The Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas is not just an insider’s peek at what’s new and exciting in the field; it’s also a four-day sprint that challenges even the most intrepid reporter’s endurance and ...

As great a product as the iPod is—and it is truly spectacular—it has an Achilles’ heel for discriminating listeners: its digital-to-analog converter and analog output stage. The iPod’s D/A converter and output amplifier are by ...

A few years ago, I reviewed the HPS-938 from Hyperion Sound Design, a promising young company formed by dedicated audiophiles who, like many of the current luminaries in the business, started out believing they could ...

One of the most remarkable aspects of the Wilson Audio Alexandria X-2 Series 2 loudspeaker—and this is a loudspeaker that is remarkable in many ways—is its sense of musical intimacy. That might seem an odd ...

The more I review speakers, the more cautious I get about calling one a breakthrough. Speaker design has advanced to the point where dramatic qualitative differences are rare, where the personal taste of the audiophile ...

In recent years the sleepy CD-receiver market has not just regained its footing, it’s even, well, become kind of sexy. Like audio Swiss Army knives, the latest CD-receivers have added cool new tools to support ...

It’s serious business striving to be taken seriously. Even when you’ve been producing exceptional electronics for years, as Cambridge Audio has, the moniker “value high-end” is a stigma that tends to stick. But some companies ...

My most lasting memory of the loudspeakers I’ve reviewed is the way each has transformed my listening room in unpredictable, even unimaginable ways. Those with direct, forward personalities have given it the flavor of a ...

Being an audiophile isn’t quite as simple as it used to be. It’s not just about slapping on a record or slipping a disc into a CD player anymore. We boot up, we download, we ...

If someone had told me a year ago that TEAC’s Esoteric Division was about to release a KT-88 tube amplifier I would have dismissed the news out of hand. After all, Esoteric has made its ...

Cable Research Lab may not be as immediately familiar as certain monster-scale wire companies but its designs harken back to the creations of Paul Weitzel and Winston Ma in the late 1990s, when they were ...