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Cooking Cables with PTFE - a Tour of Straight Wire, Inc. and an AV Cable Factory


Steven Hill, president of Straight Wire, Inc. (photo courtesy of Spencer Burke) "Many of our customers are engineers," says Steven Hill, 63, owner of Straight Wire, Inc., a straight-shooting, cigar-chomping graduate of University of Pennsylvania's Wharton Business School, former CPA, and 37-year veteran in the audio industry. Mr. Hill has no time for nonsense or... Read More »


JCAT Signature USB Cable


Alright, so the JCAT Signature USB cable is one of the better USB cables I have heard, and fits right into my group of favorites in terms of being across the board excellent. And while I have a lot of cables here, I have not heard all that is out there—nor do I have any... Read More »


Bricasti Design MDx Board Update - Keeping Digital Customers Future Ready


Bricasti Design is still keeping their promise of offering future-ready solutions to their existing customers. From my experience, the investment in their award-winning M1 DAC has now paid for itself three times over, thanks to these updates, that are all offered for a reasonable price. The latest update is the most sonically significant in the... Read More »


Ear Wax: Roger Skoff Writes about the Weird, the Wonderful, and the Simply Unknown


Many a long year ago, there was (really; truly; I kid you not!) an audiophile product called EarWax™. Apparently following the same logic that came up with the idea for "board wax" (used on surfboards to make the board and its rider glide more smoothly across the waves), a dab of this stuff was to... Read More »


Impressions:  The Wave Kinetics NVS Turntable, Durand Tosca Tonearm, and DS Audio DS Master 1 Optical Cartridge and EQ/Phono Amp with the DS Audio ION-001


At RMAF, evening cigars, Denver, CO, 2019 (photograph by Scott Hull; image processing by David W. Robinson) When you do a lot of audio reviewing and show-going over several decades, as I have, you get to see and hear a lot of gear and recordings. Some are good; some are bad; some are ugly. Like... Read More »


Latin Jazz Listening Party


If you have the good fortune to have a smart TV connected to your stereo and are a fan of the genre, then I encourage you to participate in this Latin Jazz listening party. These are not cell phone audience recordings, but professional productions with good sound. Grab a favorite beverage, a dance partner hopefully,... Read More »


Live Streaming in the Time of Covid-19 with AudioQuest DragonFly USB DAC


We are now four months into New York State's pandemic lock-down. The days pass, every one feels like a Saturday. There's nothing on my calendar except a couple of repeating Zoom sessions—all our entertainments have been zapped. (I know: if that's the worst of it, I shouldn't complain.) The free time hangs heavy; you adjust... Read More »


David Elias - The Art of Listening


Bach vs Beck…is it all just Nature's Noise? I am listening to both Bach then Beck on Spotify and noticed they had a similar 5 million listening audience for the month. What else do these guys have in common? To start they both wrote music for infinite audiences. This is something Beck no doubt always... Read More »


Sexy Blue Tubes, Part 2, The Sophia Electric EL34-ST and KT88-ST Vacuum Tubes!


It has been quite some time since my last article for Positive Feedback about the Sophia Electric vacuum tubes developed and offered by Sue and Richard in McLean, Virginia. It was all the way back in August of 2017 that I wrote about the Sophia Electric EL34-ST (photo below) and Aqua 274B vacuum tubes (HERE),... Read More »


RADIO FREE CHIP: The Sounds of Silence


Do You Believe In Ghosts? A boy hears a sound. He hears sound before he has a name. He hears gurgling, pounding underwater. He hears an ocean of blood swimming around him. Through his veins. Through his mother. He breaks into the light of day. He's shocked that he has a voice. He finds his... Read More »


Purist Audio Diamond Revision 30th Anniversary USB Cable and the Fern & Roby Maverick Phono Preamplifier


A few things on my mind here. Make that two things; digital and analog. Digital as in getting the bits from A to B (in this respect the Diamond Revision 30th Anniversary USB cable from Purist Audio Design - $2100 for the 1.5 meter I have here) and analog in getting the signal from A... Read More »


Cai Thomas and the Bourne Ensemble: "Lascia ch'io pianga" (Handel)


Herein the latest from our goodly colleague, John Marks, editor of The Tannhauser Gate, his worthy and informative blog site. He points us to a male soprano whose voice would delight the angels. O! Can he sing! Dr. David W. Robinson, Ye Olde Editor "Well, the Welsh do sing, do they not?" I murmured to myself, upon... Read More »


A Missive from the Recording Industry Regarding Covid-19


While he was in quarantine from the terrible plague that was raging in London, Shakespeare wrote King Lear. That is a hard act to follow. I don't think I am going to manage writing anything nearly so significant while stuck here in quarantine. I have spent a lot of time talking to friends in the... Read More »


Albert Von Schweikert: In Memoriam


Albert Von Schweikert, March 13, 1945 – May 29, 2020. Founder and Chief Designer: Von Schweikert Research/Von Schweikert Audio Though born in South America in 1945 to a US military officer and the daughter of one of the principal engineers of the Panama Canal, the Von Schweikert family moved to Heidelberg, Germany while he was still... Read More »


A Fern & Roby Rack and a Bevy of Olympia Record Crates


So how many of you reading this are getting so tired of the same old "staying at home, and man do I need to mix things up?" state of mind? Well, count us in. As I write this Carol and I have been staying home and not going out, other than around the neighborhood for... Read More »


The Square and Exponential Laws


Nelson Pass:  a portrait. Sea Ranch, CA, 2018. (Photograph and image processing by David W. Robinson) This piece was originally presented at the 2019 Burning Amp Festival but was hampered by problems with the projection system. It has been rewritten for Positive Feedback.... Introduction I don't need to tell you that audiophiles tend to be... Read More »


More Fun in the New World of High Fidelity


The very first time as a teenager I laid eyes on my brother's new DynaKit amp, I knew inside that I'd found one of my life's true callings. I've always loved everything about audio gear; the look, the feel, the smell—but ultimately, the sound it's capable of producing. And I can honestly say, for the... Read More »


Martin DeWulf of Bound for Sound Magazine Has Passed Away


Yet more sad news: I've received the belated word today that Marty DeWulf, editor and publisher of Bound for Sound, another well-known high-end audio journal from the late 1980s until the early 2000s, passed away at the relatively young age of 65 on March 22, 2020. Marty's health had apparently not been good for a... Read More »


Ella Fitzgerald: Always True to You (In My Fashion) (Cole Porter)


Personally, I consider this to be one of the more memorable musico-poetic explorations that John Marks has done. He of  The Tannhauser Gate ambushes us with not one, but two allusions, both of which left me bemused. May they do you as well as they did me! Dr. David W. Robinson, Ye Olde Editor An... Read More »


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