SoundStage! Ultra | SoundStageUltra.com
Network Hub Buying Guides Newsletter Signup Advertisers' Index
Shunyata Research
Shunyata Research
Thursday, May 08, 2025
  • Equipment
  • Features
      • Back
      • Opinion
      • For the Record
      • In Good Company
      • Recording of the Month
      • General Interest & Interviews
      • Off the Cuff
      • Richard Freed's Keepers
          • Back
          • UltraAudio.com Articles (Archived)
          • SoundStageHiFi.com (Current)
  • TWBAS
  • Videos
  • Our Sites
      • Back
      • SoundStage! Network (portal)
      • SoundStage! Access
      • SoundStage! Australia
      • SoundStage! Global
      • SoundStage! Hi-Fi
      • SoundStage! Life (podcast)
      • SoundStage! Simplifi
      • SoundStage! Solo
      • SoundStage! TV
      • SoundStage! Ultra (here)
      • SoundStage! Xperience
Vitus Audio
IsoAcoustics Reveal Every Detail
Dutch&Dutch - Hear Everything
Hegel

Legacy link:
legacy_200w
This new site was launched in July 2010. Visit the older site to access previous articles by clicking above.

Dutch&Dutch - Unsurpassed
Gryphon Audio Essence
Wilson
Gryphon Audio StandArt
Wilson

Feature Articles

Many Boxes of Luxury: Siltech’s Royal Single Crown Cables

Written by: Jason Thorpe
Category: Opinion
Created: 01 May 2025

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?

Read more …

The Best (and Worst) of Florida International Audio Expo 2025

Written by: Jason Thorpe
Category: Opinion
Created: 01 April 2025

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.

Read more …

Nice Guy Jason and the Bowers & Wilkins DB2D Subwoofers

Written by: Jason Thorpe
Category: Opinion
Created: 01 March 2025

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.

Read more …

Magnificence on a Budget

Written by: Jason Thorpe
Category: Opinion
Created: 01 February 2025

Tastes differ, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, et cetera, et cetera—but there are some constants in every hobby and in every aspect of life. Take cars, for instance, since most of us can coalesce around this subject, and also because I’m too lazy to think of something more subtle.

Read more …

Spooky Action at a Distance and Matt’s Headphone Amp

Written by: Jason Thorpe
Category: Opinion
Created: 01 January 2025

I think it’s fairly common to associate certain songs—albums even—with specific times in one’s life. Being a just-barely boomer, many of my musical associations involve classic rock from my youth. Things like Pink Floyd’s “Echoes” immediately bring back memories of the sun rising as the acid wears off.

Read more …

King Crimson Across Two Continents

Written by: Jason Thorpe
Category: Opinion
Created: 01 December 2024

I don’t get out much these days. COVID did a bit of a number on me, forcing me inward, making me reclusive. Used to be I’d ride my motorcycle to work 25 miles each way, dicing with traffic, then go out for lunch, and out for beers afterward. I had a social life, a social circle. Working from home did away with all of that.

Read more …

Speaker Scenarios and Preparing for Warsaw

Written by: Jason Thorpe
Category: Opinion
Created: 01 November 2024

It’s getting tense here at Thorpe Manor. As I begin writing this editorial on October 15, I’m getting set to cover Audio Video Show 2024, which starts on October 25, on location in Warsaw. It seems like just yesterday I was counting down three weeks until departure, which felt like plenty of time to get my editorial finished, wrap up a review, and pack at my leisure.

Read more …

Goodbye to an Old Friend

Written by: Jason Thorpe
Category: Opinion
Created: 01 October 2024

I’ve lived in the same house for 25 years. I’ve owned my motorcycle from new in 2007, and I bought the one before that new in 1990. Once I find something I like, I keep it longer than I should. Perhaps it’s inertia, or maybe it’s because I make shrewd buying decisions. Either way, I don’t let go easily.

Read more …

Teaching Turntable Setup to an Analog Lightweight and the Next Generation

Written by: Jason Thorpe
Category: Opinion
Created: 01 September 2024

My family loves Ottawa, Ontario, which is about a four-hour drive from our home in Toronto. Marcia has had a long love affair with Ottawa, stemming back to her late-teenage years when she had friends who went to the city’s Carleton University. Ottawa is Canada’s capital city, and as such it’s loaded with huge stone buildings, both brutal and elegant in equal measure. There are tons of museums and galleries, most notably the National Gallery, which we often visit when we’re there.

Read more …

Hard Work or Humble Brag?

Written by: Jason Thorpe
Category: Opinion
Created: 01 August 2024

For me, sitting down and writing a formal article requires a generalized sense of structure and a setting of stability. I’ve had neither for the past couple of months and it’s harshing my mellow.

Read more …

  1. What Happens When the Magic Smoke Escapes?
  2. Munich Exhaustion and EAT’s New Products
  3. Read the Instructions! The Perils of Cartridge Setup
  4. The Hardest-Rocking Album Ever—“Van Halen” on Vinyl
  5. Old Man Yells at Clouds
  6. I’m Not an Oligarch!
  7. Analog versus Digital: We Have a Winner!
  8. Roon in the House—the Future Is Now
  9. Jason Does Digital
  10. Go East, Old Man

Page 1 of 42

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • 6
  • 7
  • 8
  • 9
  • 10
210x600 T+A R Criterion S (20240601)
Dynaudio Contour 20BE
 Electrocompaniet - AW300M
767x500 T+A Criterion S (20240601)
Vitus Audio
Vitus Audio

SoundStage! Ultra is part of
SoundStage!

All contents available on this website are copyrighted by SoundStage!® and Schneider Publishing Inc., unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved.

This site was designed by Rocket Theme, Karen Fanas, and The SoundStage! Network.
To contact us, please e-mail info@soundstagenetwork.com

To Top