The Gearhead

There is a moment every audiophile looks for: when the gear recedes and the music takes over. For our latest review, that moment happened during Roger Waters' Dark Side of the Moon Redux. By swapping a mix of high-end cables for a full Synergistic Research Foundation XL loom, we heard bass extension and soundstage scale that we didn't think our speakers were capable of. Here is why "speaking the same language" across your entire cable chain changes everything.

Think of your audio system as a chain where the signal is most vulnerable at the start. In this guide, we explore why the power cable to your source is the most critical upgrade you can make and how following a sequential "Wall Forward" path leads to a more authoritative, detailed, and coherent musical presentation.

Among audiophiles, few topics spark a debate quite like cables. I grew up in the middle of it; my Dad was a staunch skeptic who never really bought into their transformative power. For a long time, I followed suit. But...

It's easy to be skeptical of claims from a cable maker about the importance of cables for better sound in your HiFi system. On the one hand, their solutions seem to center around the product they offer. On the other...

Time and exposure in the audiophile hobby teaches the listener that cables are simply an integral part of the refined HiFi experience. The practice of enjoying stereo music in high definition isn't new, but it took years of exploration and...

Those of us bitten by the audiophile bug in the digital age tend to follow different paths to becoming and growing as an audiophile. Due in part to the now ridiculous volume of information and opinion available online, one of the...

When most folks think about power conditioning for the first time, it tends to be early-ish in their audiophile experience — the kind of time when it stretches the imagination and requires perhaps a little suspension of disbelief to see...

AudioQuest Columbia XLR Balanced Interconnects Some of the things people talk about in high-end audio are actually very subtle and hard to even experience unless everything in your system is set up right. Things like P.R.A.T. (Pace, Rhythm, and Timing),...

Cardas Golden Reference and Cross Interconnects It’s weird to want to start a blog post by talking enthusiastically about the sound of metal, but then again, this is to be a blog post about cables. But when I say metal,...