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Ye Olde Editor lighting one up, Happy Valley, OR, 2021 (Photograph and image processing by John Robinson) I've said it before, and I'll say it again:  Very few high-end audio products require (or deserve!) a The Brothers Karamazov treatment. Or Melville. Or Proust. Or Solzhenitsyn. Very few. And logorrhea is no virtue. Piles of hyperbole,... Read More »

Ye Olde Editor with pipe:  a portrait by John Robinson Hold the phone! Every now and then I run across a new audio design whose virtues are so obvious that I need to make our readers aware of it as quickly as possible. In this case, the discovery came immediately after PAF 2022. Having been... Read More »

Do you know what a "bad hair day" is? No, it's not just something for women to worry about; anybody can have one, even—at least figuratively—your system. And it's not just bad days, either; less than optimal times can happen at night, too. As with hair, one of the things that can start matters going... Read More »

Norman Varney of AV RoomService Ltd. has joined Positive Feedback as a Senior Technical Editor as of Issue 113. His expertise in his field of audio acoustics and experience in the field makes him a helpful voice in our creative community for the audio arts. As has been our wont from the beginning of PF,... Read More »

I have been publishing periodic updates from Gold Note, an Italian high-end company whose products have really caught my eye and ear. As I've been commenting on the Gold Note PH-1000 reference Phono Stage and their PSU-1250 reference Power Supply in tandem with Dohmann Audio, Phasemation, and Schröder…Part the First of which can be read... Read More »

My Dinner with André MFSL’s Herb Belkin Herb Belkin (second from left), with members of the band Genesis circa 1974. Atlantic Records/ATCO Author's Note: The following autobiographical sketch is for the purpose of setting the stage (or giving the backstory) about how a total "Mr. Nobody from Nowhere" (i.e., John Marks) managed to get his... Read More »

Greg Weaver of the audio analyst and I have been working to extend our readers/viewers understanding of DSD at all levels, including the use of DSD256 in the production of LPs, such as Mobile Fidelity has been doing for a number of years now. Other companies like ABKCO have done the same in projects like... Read More »

We started our downsizing journey four years ago. I've written about that journey in four parts beginning HERE. I thought that after four years of experience with our all-digital, headphones-only listening system, an update might be worth sharing. As we headed into the realm of digital-files-only listening, my heels were dug firmly into the dirt trying... Read More »

Ye Olde Editor contemplating... Tiberias, Sea of Galilee, Israel, 2022. (Photograph by John Robinson; image processing by Ye Olde himself.) We're in the final stretch! Some of the best rooms I've saved for last...and here they are. Daedalus Audio/VAC/Lampizator/WyWires In the Daedalus/VAC/LampizatOr/WyWires room…delicious! Going into this space was a reminder of why I always enjoy... Read More »

Analog is resurgent, what with newbies discovering turntables and seasoned audiophiles revisiting reissued vinyl from their ill-spent youth. Digital music is a much more convenient background for other activities, but playing records better rewards attention with involvement; bitsy will just never replace groovy in the listener's lexicon. Blame the pandemic: one can read similar stories... Read More »

Onwards to Part the Third of my Pacific Audio Fest 2022 Photo Essay and Audio Oasis! Awards report... Genesis/Merrill Audio In the Genesis/Merrill Audio space It's hard to know what to say about Gary Koh's good-sized Genesis room, featuring Merrill Wettasinghe's very special next-generation (MX) amplification from Merrill Audio. There was so much really unique... Read More »

The ocean swells of the recent controversy about Mobile Fidelity and its unannounced (until now) use of DSD256 continue to roil, whether useful or not. Greg Weaver and I had a long conversation about this, provenance, processing, and the (to my mind) vital role that DSD256 has to play in the future of analog LP... Read More »

Ye Olde Editor with some very fine coffee. Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 2015. (Photograph by Lila Ritsema.) Time to continue my Pacific Audio Fest 2022 Audio Oasis! Awards. Part the Second, then...onwards! Parasound/Innuos/Marantz/Dr. Feickert/Norstone/Straight Wire/KEF Here's an eyeful of an earful of a fine-sounding room… The Parasound/Innuos/KEF/etc. room featured some designs from companies that I knew…JC... Read More »

Did you happen to know that one of Planet Earth's great writers, Garrett Hongo is also a music lover and audiophile?  That's right, Garrett Hongo is one of us. Garrett has written over thirty works in over seventy publications, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in poetry in 1988 for The River of Heaven,... Read More »

Robinson reflecting… (portrait by John Robinson; image processing by Ye Olde Editor) Prologue… At long last, after 2.5 years of pandemic interruption and scheduling conflicts, I was finally able to get to an audio show…and not a moment too soon. The Pacific Audio Fest was held from July 29-31 in SeaTac, WA, at the Hilton... Read More »

A special Positive Feedback guest editorial from John Marks, J.D. and James Tuomy, AES John Marks has been a longtime audio friend of mine, and a respected member of audiophile recording and loudspeaker design community. He recently approached me to publish a technical paper that he and James Tuomy had written regarding proposed modifications to the... Read More »

In the early days of our hobby, one reviewer reigned supreme. From his first "test report," in 1957, until his retirement in 1998, Julian Hirsch is said to have written— either as himself, or as Hirsch-Houck Laboratories—some 4000 "laboratory test reports" on the hi-fi equipment of his time. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Hirsch). All of those were, reminiscent of... Read More »

Chris Sommovigo, sharing a beer with me at AXPONA 2019 (Photograph and image processing by David W. Robinson) Chris Sommovigo passed away at his home in Atlanta, Georgia, on Monday, August 15, 2022. Another really good man gone to glory. Apparently, Chris came home an hour early on the day that he died, complaining that... Read More »

Jim Merod: a self-portrait. Sony's LSPX-S3 glass sound speaker can be regarded as a leaner, no less enjoyable sonic anomaly which the paradigm-setting Harmon Kardon three-unit stereo playback device, a decade or so back, brought the convenience of music's joyful digital miniaturization. This inexpensive, highly-compatible audio triumph depends not so much on Bluetooth flexibility, but... Read More »