Why Phono Stages Still Matter, Maybe More Than Ever Vinyl has never offered more choice. More turntables, more cartridges, more reissues, more boutique pressings. But with that abundance comes a challenge: modern analog systems can achieve far greater resolution than...
Why the Phono Stage Is Where the Truth Shows Up A cartridge is a little generator with a hard job. It’s pulling microscopic information out of a groove and turning it into a signal so small that everything downstream has...
Why High-End Streamers Still Matter In the age of streaming, it’s easy to think the source has become a commodity. After all, music is music, right? Bits are bits. A laptop, a phone, a streamer — they all pull the...
Why Streaming Quality Still Matters It’s easy to assume that streaming is a solved problem. After all, bits are bits, right? But anyone who’s spent real time with different streamers knows that the digital front end still shapes a system...
Cambridge Audio has been on a winning streak for years now, especially in the streaming world with the EXN100 and CXN100. But what often gets overlooked is that Cambridge also makes some of the best integrated amplifiers under $10k, without...
Why Real Power Isn’t About Wattage or Price When people talk about value in amplification, the conversation almost always drifts toward specs and price tags. How many watts? How many inputs? How much does it cost compared to something bigger?...
Totem is a brand that has always impressed those who have had a chance to hear them, myself included. I can honestly say my favorite speakers I heard at Axpona last year were the new Totem Thunderbirds, and Totem has...
Why Serious Sound Isn’t About Cabinet Size Like most audiophiles, when first getting deeper into the hobby, I always assumed that bookshelf speakers, or “StandMount Speakers,” are the lesser little brother of their floorstanding counterparts. After all, it’s easy to...
Why a Reset Matters More Than an Upgrade The difference between improving sound and improving listening Most systems are in some varying stage of completeness. A better way to say that is that very few, if any, audiophiles I know...
