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Back in the 1980s or maybe earlier, "transparency" became the buzzword in high-end audio. Harry Pearson of The Absolute Sound was a big proponent of the term, and soon many reviewers and sycophants jumped on the idea, to the point where talking about "transparency" quickly became a tiresome cliché. But what does "transparency" really mean? I think most audiophiles... Read More »

Tierkreis by Bruce Friedman, Jeff Schwartz, and Jim McAuley Tierkreis is a collection of 12 short compositions written by Karlheinz Stockhausen, each originally created to be played on a music box. In 2008, Bruce Friedman, a trumpet player based in Southern California, organized a concert of Stockhausen work, part of a global celebration of his... Read More »

Greetings friends, I hope life is treating you well in 2022. Today I have an impressive Red Book CD player to tell you about, the Audio Note (UK) CD 4.1x Red Book CD player (MSRP $14,331 USD). The Audio Note (UK) CD 4.1x CD player is an expensive high-fidelity Red Book CD player with a... Read More »

How does the analog become digital? In 2019, Roland Dietl reported about the current version of the Audiophile Optimizer and shortly after about the combination of the new optimizer with Windows Server. The playback of audio files benefited greatly from this operating system variant. Does the operating system also influence the sound of the files... Read More »

A very brief note, just before departing on a two-week photographic/church trip to Israel and Jordan: Every now and then I encounter a high-end company that really impresses me with the quality of its work. I could make a pretty long list of such enterprises, but it would go fading off into the sunset, music intermingling... Read More »

Roger Skoff writes about how illusions can sometimes be illusory If I were ever asked what one thing about High-End audio was my greatest turn-on, my answer would have to be "imaging": the ability of a great system playing a great recording in a great room to make you feel as if you could actually... Read More »

Three weeks ago, I had the pleasure of introducing you to the two new KRONOS Resonance Suppression tonearms, the Kronoscope RS and the Discovery RS. In that episode's interview with Louis Desjardins, recorded in his factory in Montreal, he indicated that he would be sending me one of the new Discovery RS arms to install... Read More »

Most of you probably recall that I attended the 2022 Florida Audio Expo (FAE) in February in Tampa; I've covered the last two consecutive shows there for Positive Feedback. And you may also recall that I raved about The Audio Company's room this year, which once again occupied the largest space at the entire show,... Read More »

The Mythical Creatures first appeared among the power cords. Then we spotted them among the speaker cables, and more recently, my colleague Wolfgang Kemper tracked down a few HDMI cable specimens. Now, Richard Drees, Sales Director for Germany, and Rob Hay, Marketing Director for Europe, released the NF cable variants directly into my listening room.... Read More »

Roger Skoff explains… We've all seen them: The LP turntable that's gold-plated, stands four feet tall, weighs hundreds of pounds, and costs as much as a small house before inflation set in. There's also the utterly gorgeous gold-plated or solid solid silver—meaning chassis, wiring, and even the wiring of the hand-wound transformers—electronics that have come... Read More »

Lloyd Walker:  portrait with baseball cap. Happy Valley, OR, 2016 And now my good friend Lloyd Walker, of Walker Audio, has passed away. A great audio designer gone. Another memoriam, like the too-many that I have written over the years. They're always hard, and this one is going to be particularly so. So much so... Read More »

The Thiele TA01 Tonearm If you are a regular reader of Hifistatement, you probably will have come across the name Thiele. But even if you don't, it's most likely that you know or own a product that Helmut Thiele had a hand in creating. But it's only with this very special tonearm that he steps... Read More »

So, you want to build a dedicated audio-visual room, but don't know where to start? We faced that same quandary this past summer after we downsized to a smaller, new construction house with an unfinished basement, where the A/V room would be located. Having profited well from this frenzied real estate market fueled by historically... Read More »

Kraftwerk's influence on today's pop music is so pervasive, the band is so historically important, and so much has been written about them already that doing an introduction here almost seems clichéd. But for those who haven't been plugged in: they more or less invented electronic pop music. As such, they've had an incalculable influence... Read More »

A while back Triode Lab's Frank Ng asked me if I would like to listen to a pair of his very exclusive—only four pairs are scheduled to be made—cost-no-object, limited edition Triode Lab 2A3 parallel single-ended-triode (P-SET) RSR monaural amplifiers, that incorporated all of Frank's design insights for state-of-art high-performance SET amplifiers (HERE, scroll down... Read More »

Lloyd Walker, a portrait. Happy Valley, Oregon, 2014 (photograph and image processing by David W. Robinson) Late last week I was contacted by my good friend Felicia Walker. She told me that her husband Lloyd, who had been battling Leukemia and a major blockage in his carotid artery simultaneously, had suffered a massive stroke. She... Read More »

Roger Skoff gives advice about advice givers I recently came across an internet ad where some guy, who apparently makes his living by telling audiophiles what crooks other people are, was advertising his consulting services to tell you—for a not insubstantial fee—how to spend your money. When I checked further, I found out that he... 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 »

Today I am pleased to introduce what will be a new series of articles, one which will feature closer looks at some of my favorite recordings. I have been posting such "snapshots" of many of my favorite LPs on Facebook for years as abbreviated takes on specific recordings, often digging into the history and significance... Read More »