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 ...

For about 30 years, the Canadian electronics firm Bryston has been the darling of the professional sound set. Its electronics are unconditionally stable—you never heard of a Bryston blowing up, did you, even when heavily ...

Gradient designer Jorma Salmi is one of the most inventive of all speaker designers in the modern era. His first speaker, the Gradient 1.1/1.3 (the two models were essentially the same design), appearing in the ...

Most audio products designed for professional use are sonically inferior compared to the best high-end “consumer” components. That’s because, in the pro world, features, functionality, and reliability under harsh conditions take precedence over sound quality. ...

Durob Audio, the Dutch design and marketing team that has already brought us the well-known and hugely successful PrimaLuna brand, has expanded its product offering in 2007 with the Mystère line. Comprising two integrated tube ...

Whether you believe the economy is “fundamentally sound” or in free fall, a bargain hunter—or cheapskate?—lurks within most of us. Being a wine lover, and also a writer on the subject, I delight in discovering ...

Sonus Faber’s reverence for the Old Master violinmakers of Cremona is well known. Their craftsmanship has been the guiding light for the Italian loudspeaker manufacturer providing insights and inspiration for every model—particularly its exquisite Homage ...