For those audiophile souls whose hearts beat a little faster when they know there’s a hi-fi show to attend, then either reset your pacemakers, put down that whisky, or throw on a sweatband because – steady on now – there’s two shows this weekend on either side of the pond as our British kin love to call the Atlantic Ocean.
The steady drumbeat of progress out of Binghamton, New York continues as McIntosh Labs trickles down the technical improvements from their top-of-the-line mono and stereo power amplifiers to their midrange offerings with the new $7,000 USD MC312 Power Amplifier, shipping now.
I often get asked what music I use when I’m assessing components for review, so I thought it was time to commit to page space a small fraction of the many albums I call upon or discover in the course of reviewing gear.
Sub·lim·i·nal – /səbˈlimənl/ Adjective (of a stimulus or mental process) below the threshold of sensation or consciousness; perceived by or affecting someone's mind without their being aware of it. This is the definition of subliminal courtesy of Google’s online dictionary and is an apt descriptor for how the Aqua Acoustic Quality La Voce S3 Discrete DAC ($4,750 USD MSRP) ingratiated its way into my mind as I spent extended listening sessions with it over the past couple months.
What do you do if you’re one of the largest, most successful speaker manufacturers on the globe with one of the all-time, best-selling stereo wireless speaker designs currently in production? If you’re KEF you follow up with a new design packed with the latest state-of-the-art streaming, amplification and wireless technology, make it more compact and drop the price.
The LampizatOr Pacific DAC makes you forget completely about the fact that it is reproducing the recorded event and unconsciously allows one to be utterly engaged in the music playing.
I’ve heard the word “Special” used pejoratively or sarcastically in relation to my sense of humour and jokes, but in all seriousness it usually carried a more weighty connotation, or inference when I was a kid. “Special” usually meant distinctive, unique, or rare in some cases. All descriptors I would use in relation to the Audio Note UK DAC5 Special I recently received for review here at AudioStream.
Listening to streamers/servers I’ve heard over the last couple of years has been interesting, because at hi-fi shows it’s pretty much impossible to tell what one is bringing on its own to the mix, but in the context of one’s own system it can be a startling lesson in the importance of how those bits are being delivered to your DAC.
Our introductory interview features none other than the legendary Bob Stuart, of cutting-edge digital hi-fi maker Meridian Audio, Life Fellow in the prestigious Audio Engineering Society (AES) and most recently the creator of the divisive music-codec technology MQA and its very public and continually unfolding story in the music and hi-fi industry.
Walking into a room curated by Wynn Wong of Wynn Audio in Toronto, Canada is always an experience I look forward to because he takes such exquisite care in holistically putting together his sound systems for shows.