Pro-Ject Audio Systems claims to be the world’s largest manufacturer of audio turntables by far, and I have no reason to doubt that claim. In addition to offering a comprehensive lineup of turntables under its own brand, Pro-Ject manufactures ’tables for other brands as well. Their products receive near-unanimous praise for their engineering, materials, and sonic performance.
Read more: Pro-Ject Audio Systems T2 Super Phono Turntable with Sumiko Oyster Rainier cartridge
Note: for the full suite of measurements from the SoundStage! Audio-Electronics Lab, click this link.
As I’ve said any number of times, you’ll never find a completely unbiased audio reviewer. We’re human. We have our preferences. We like what we like. As such, it’s a personal policy of mine to bold, italicize, and underline any inherent bias when I sit down to write a product review. And that’s the only way I can think of to introduce a review of any piece of Arcam gear. The name “Arcam” alone gets me a bit excited, mostly because of my experiences with the company’s higher-end A/V receivers, but that excitement also spills over into two-channel products, such as the new Radia-series A25 integrated amplifier ($1499, all prices USD).
Many of today’s best-known audio manufacturers have histories that date back to the beginnings of high-fidelity reproduction. Brands such as McIntosh (1949), Marantz (1952), and Thorens (1957 for their first turntable) have had long runs. Another company that dates back to the middle of the last century is TEAC, which was founded in 1953 in Tokyo. For the first few decades of its existence, the firm was noted for its excellent reel-to-reel tape recorders, and later, some very fine cassette decks.
Read more: TEAC TN-4D-SE Turntable and Sumiko Oyster Cartridge
Yamaha’s R-N1000A Network Receiver ($1799.95, all prices USD), as I said in my unboxing blog post, represents a trend in audio that I absolutely adore. It is, in a sense, a two-channel A/V receiver, what with its HDMI ARC connection, YPAO room correction, and subwoofer output with legitimate bass management, but it doesn’t compromise on pure two-channel performance to make such accommodations (well, for the most part—more on that in a bit).
Vera-Fi Audio isn’t well known to most audiophiles, but the company sells an interesting range of products, some of them designed in-house, others sourced from outside vendors. A few of these products border on the bizarre. For example, there’s the Meow ($165, all prices in USD) from Tombo Audio in Thailand. The Meow looks like a cartoonish sculpture of a cat. Put a Meow on top of a component, and it “will omni-directionally reflect the sound in good order,” Vera-Fi says on its website. “After the noise is cleared, the frequency bandwidth is easily separated. The micro-detail and harmonic could be instantly perceived.”
Read more: Vera-Fi Audio Vanguard Scout Loudspeaker and Vanguard Caldera 10 Subwoofer
Note: for the full suite of measurements from the SoundStage! Audio-Electronics Lab, click this link.
I promise I’m here to review Marantz’s latest integrated amplifier, the Model 50, and not to relitigate a previous review. Before I get into the specifics of this evaluation, though, let me paint you a picture of what went through my head as I sat down to start writing it. A few years back, when my review of Marantz’s Model 40n network integrated amplifier–DAC went live, someone posted a link to it on Reddit, prompting a response from a Redditor named /u/mourning_wood_again, who thought he caught me slipping:
Parts Express’s Dayton Audio operation is a major supplier of speaker components as well as audio testing and measurement tools, and has recently expanded its offerings of home audio products, many of them at exceptional prices. Their latest offering is the TT-1 manual turntable, which comes with a factory-mounted Audio-Technica AT-VM95E cartridge.
Read more: Dayton Audio TT-1 Turntable with Audio-Technica AT-VM95E Cartridge
Note: measurements taken in the anechoic chamber at Canada's National Research Council can be found through this link.
Going into a product review knowing exactly what you’re in for can be simultaneously comforting and a bit boring. Going into a review feeling confident that you know exactly what you’re in for and being thrown for a bit of a loop, on the other hand, can be thrilling and embarrassing in equal measure. That’s exactly what happened to me during my time with PSB’s new Imagine B50 loudspeakers ($699/pair, all prices USD).
Note: measurements taken in the anechoic chamber at Canada's National Research Council can be found through this link.
For readers who aren’t familiar with Living Sounds Audio (LSA), the brand is owned by Underwood HiFi, a Hawaii-based, internet-only provider of home audio equipment. Its owner, Walter Liederman, was a longtime executive with HiFi Buys, an Atlanta-based audio chain. When HiFi Buys was sold in the late 1990s, Liederman struck out on his own, working as a consultant for brands such as Infinity and Acoustic Research. Later, he began selling closeouts, B-stock, and discontinued audio gear for companies that did not want to market such products through their normal distribution systems.
Note: for the full suite of measurements from the SoundStage! Audio-Electronics Lab, click this link.
It’s a funny old thing, seeing legitimate buzz about any piece of hi-fi gear these days, but in the past year we’ve seen oodles of noise about not one, but two very different stereo integrated amplifiers—and for very different reasons. The NAD C 3050 ($1399, all prices in USD) I’ve discussed to death already, and I’m going to be discussing it more soon since I’m buying one and plan on doing a comparison with the LE version I reviewed last year. The other, as you’ve likely already guessed from the headline, is Dayton Audio’s HTA200 ($349.98), which—along with its little sibling, the HTA100—is garnering a lot of noise for its hybrid tube design, its ample power, its connectivity, and its ridiculously low price.