DOWNLOAD NOW The Absolute Sound/Hi-Fi+ Guide to High-Performance Loudspeakers is a comprehensive online buyer’s guide that helps audiophiles and music lovers choose among the latest high-performance loudspeakers, from modestly priced to cost-no-object models. It includes: ...

Judging by its name, you would expect Ron Sutherland’s latest battery-powered phonostage—the newest in a long line of highly praised battery-powered units from Sutherland Engineering—to give you a clearer view of the vinyl universe, freed ...

It is hard to put this review in perspective. It covers two very different components—an extremely sophisticated digital unit, the Behold Gentle G192 media player, and a more conventional loudspeaker, the Ascendo C8. Both stand ...

I’ve lived with quite a few of the most ambitious digital-playback products in my twenty-one years as a full-time reviewer, but somehow never managed to audition a unit from England’s Data Conversion Systems (dCS) until ...

My colleague, the estimable Robert E. Greene, implies in this issue that the heyday of analog is finally over thanks to CD DACs like the Benchmark he reviews. For a guy who used to extol ...

Am I alone in being puzzled or amused by what has long seemed a curious contradiction in high-end audio? On the one hand, components are made for long use, the prominent buzzword when it comes ...

Esoteric’s new SA-50 CD player offers a host of features and capabilities unimaginable to the original designers of the CD format. Not just a CD player, the SA-50 will spin SACDs, decode other digital sources ...

The Absolute Sound/Hi-Fi+ Guide to Vinyl Playback has 91 pages of expert reviews, commentary, and product highlights. It is available as a FREE download in PDF format. This new Buyer’s Guide provides authoritative advice to ...

Many people equate the size of a loudspeaker with a commitment to high-end values. Nothing could be further from the truth. Most of us live in a world of limits. We don’t have a Gulfstream ...

For almost ten years, every time I’ve listened to LPs I’ve listened through some version of the Walker Proscenium belt-driven record player with integral air-bearing, straight-line-tracking arm, air-bearing platter, and air-suspension feet. No matter what ...

The Magico V2 sells for $18,000 a pair—not an insubstantial amount by any means. But that’s not really the news—there are already a surprising number of components that bump up against the $20k level. The ...

The Absolute Sound and Hi-Fi+ Guide to Preamplifiers and Power Amplifiers has over 100 pages of expert reviews, commentary, and product highlights. It is available as a FREE download in PDF format. This new Buyer’s ...

The Absolute Sound and Hi-Fi+ have released their first online Guide to Disc Players, DACs, and Music Servers with over 100 pages of expert commentary. It is available as a FREE download in PDF format. ...

If we are living in the twilight of vinyl, it has to be the longest lasting twilight since mechanical watches and fountain pens.1 LPs and equipment to play them are undoubtedly a niche market, but ...

The BC-1 Mk-II linestage preamplifier and the BP-1 Mk-II 500Wpc stereo amplifier from celebrated Japanese audio engineer Fumio Ohashi of Bridge Audio Laboratory (BAlabo) are the most exquisitely beautiful sounding audio components I’ve yet heard—tube ...