Many Boxes of Luxury: Siltech’s Royal Single Crown Cables
- Written by: Jason Thorpe
- Category: Opinion
If you’re sitting in front of your system right now, I’d like you to consider how you choose your components. Is it sound quality alone? Is a component’s appearance important? How well one component matches with another? Of course, sound quality is of vital importance—a system that doesn’t sound good is an abject failure, no matter how good it looks. But how do you weight appearance, performance, and opulence on your personal balance sheet?
Siltech Royal Single Crown Speaker Cable
- Written by: Jason Thorpe
- Category: Full-Length Reviews
In this month’s editorial, I spent a fair bit of time relating how I perceive certain products in the world of high-end audio. I didn’t dwell much on sound quality, although that aspect of performance is obviously the most important factor when choosing an audio component. But still, there’s more than sound quality to consider.
Harkness: “Ciao to the Beauty”
- Written by: Jason Thorpe
- Category: Recording of the Month
In my December 2024 review of the Mitmat Foundation Premium turntable mat, I mentioned that I’d received a test pressing of Harkness’s new album, Ciao to the Beauty. As I’ve said before, I’ve known the musician Harkness since public school—age 14, I’d guess—and I’ve watched him in many practices and concerts through the years as he played in various bands. Despite a lifetime of performing, he hadn’t released a record of his own until The Occasion, which I wrote about back in 2022.
The Best (and Worst) of Florida International Audio Expo 2025
- Written by: Jason Thorpe
- Category: Opinion
I guess it’s a yearly thing now. This is the second time I’ve accompanied Doug Schneider to the Florida International Audio Expo, which takes place in late February in Tampa, Florida. Ottawa and Toronto, where Doug and I live, were clobbered in February with huge back-to-back snowstorms, so digging out and heading to sunny Florida had massive appeal. It’s the land of the cartoonishly large fruity drink, after all.
EMM Labs DV2i Streaming DAC-Preamplifier
- Written by: Phil Gold
- Category: Full-Length Reviews
Note: for the full suite of measurements from the SoundStage! Audio-Electronics Lab, click here.
In today’s overcrowded hi-fi market, quality products can sometimes be difficult to identify among the many run-of-the-mill offerings. Every so often, though, an audio component is of such exceptional quality that it stands out. A few such outstanding performers can be found in digital audio, from brands such as Chord Electronics, dCS, MSB Technology, and EMM Labs, which eschew off-the-shelf DAC chips, choosing instead to develop their own DACs. The result? Some of the finest digital playback available today.
IsoAcoustics Delos 2216W1 Turntable Isolation Platform
- Written by: Jason Thorpe
- Category: Full-Length Reviews
The world of fanciful, unlikely, unbelievable audio tweaks is constantly evolving. Over the years, we’ve had such outlandish concepts as the Beltist idea that wrapping your cold-water pipes with solder wire will improve the sound of your system, as will parking your car in the driveway facing out. Next came little dots that you place on your walls to . . . do something, I guess.
Nice Guy Jason and the Bowers & Wilkins DB2D Subwoofers
- Written by: Jason Thorpe
- Category: Opinion
As you may have read last month, I’ve embarked on a project in which I’m trying to replicate a pair of Bowers & Wilkins 801 D4 Signatures on a budget. If, that is, you can call somewhere around half the retail price of $55,000 a budget (all prices in USD). In the next step of this noble pursuit, I busted open the newly arrived pallet containing a pair of B&W 805 D4 Signatures, matching stands, and two DB2D subwoofers. My neighbor Ron helped me with this, while my other regular helper, Rob, was incapacitated by the flu. Ron rarely asks for anything, being more than happy just to help out and involve himself with my high-end audio affliction.
Balanced Audio Technology REX 300 Stereo Amplifier
- Written by: Jason Thorpe
- Category: Full-Length Reviews
Note: for the full suite of measurements from the SoundStage! Audio-Electronics Lab, click here.
The power amplifier is the tough guy of the audio world. A good power amp is quiet, solid, and powerful. There are no moving parts in an amplifier. It does one thing only, and, if it’s a good one, it does that with grace, strength, and purpose. My martial-arts teacher, a quiet, solid, powerful Korean gentleman who’s now in his early 80s, says that while you can’t always tell who is tough by looks alone, it’s pretty damn easy to determine who isn’t tough.
Linn Klimax LP12 Turntable
- Written by: Jonathan Gorse
- Category: Full-Length Reviews
They say it’s best not to meet your heroes, so I thought long and hard about how to approach this review. The Linn Sondek LP12 is arguably the most famous high-end turntable of all time. Its reputation as one of the most engaging and enjoyable high-end vinyl spinners has made it a legend the world over. Back in the late 1980s, when I was just 18 and putting my first system together for university, the LP12 and its archrival, the Michell GyroDec, were the two turntables I coveted most of all. Both were hopelessly beyond the reach of my student budget. So, they joined the Lotus Esprit Turbo and Kate Bush—in a dance leotard, staring wide-eyed at me—on my bedroom wall as examples of the things I most desired in life.
Avant-Garde Jazz vs. Classic Rock
- Written by: Jason Thorpe
- Category: For the Record
It was somewhere around the fall of 1980. I was 17 years old, and I’d begun to hang around with the Harknesses. We lived in the same neighborhood, attended the same middle school, and shared the same tastes in comic books and music. The Harkness house was a hotbed of culture—the kind of house I’d want my own kid to gravitate toward. Music playing in the living room, a band rehearsing in the basement, art always in progress; I recall concert banners drawn on bedsheets being a hot commodity. It was over-the-top wholesome.
- Magnificence on a Budget
- DALI Epikore 9 Loudspeaker
- Børresen X6 Loudspeaker
- Spooky Action at a Distance and Matt’s Headphone Amp
- AVID HiFi Acutus Dark Iron Turntable, Nexus Tonearm, and Ionic Cartridge
- Mitmat Foundation Premium and the Downside of Streaming
- King Crimson Across Two Continents
- Bowers & Wilkins 801 D4 Signature Loudspeaker
- Keith Monks Prodigy Plus Record-Cleaning Machine
- Speaker Scenarios and Preparing for Warsaw
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