Welcome to Audiophilia. We publish honest and accurate reviews of high end audio equipment and music.
As chosen by Audiophilia's Publisher, Anthony Kershaw.
Images link to Audiophilia review for your information.
Available at most online sites. Reviews have to be published in Audiophilia during 2017 and the recording released internationally in 2017. Media and label noted under the image.
Our writers are lucky to intersect with the gear we do. Even luckier to have the kit in our homes and review it for you. There are numerous requests for reviews that we just do not have the manpower to cover. Imagine the hundreds of amazing of pieces we miss?
With that in mind, please take into account our 'winners' and rate accordingly. The equipment chosen is for a list we admire unreservedly. We hope you get a chance to listen to the kit in your system. We loved it in ours.
If you visit the top vinyl sales websites such as Elusive Disc and Acoustic Sounds among others, the quality vinyl lists are fairly similar. All the familiar suspects—RCA, Lyrita, EMI, Mercury, Blue Note, Argo, Decca—populate the must haves. And many fabulous reissues also are cross referenced (Testament, Speakers Corner, Classic Records, etc).
I’ve been reviewing lots of cartridges and phono stages lately and have been deep diving into my vinyl collection to add a little spice to the reviewing process.
I began the subject of this list in Vol 1 and continued with Vol 2 with individual record releases. We’ll continue with box sets that may or may not be famous, but should be in any audiophile’s collection.
I was contacted by the marketing manager of Xavian Loudspeakers (Italian design/manufactured in the Czech Republic) requesting an Audiophilia review of the ‘Perla Esclusiva’, a stand mounted monitor from Xavian’s Natura range of loudspeakers and the recent successor to the original Perla.
We lost contact for some months after the initial request. Later, I was contacted informing me the newest iteration of the Perla was ready for review. The pair was shipped from the Czech Republic to the island in a solid, quality cardboard box (wrapped in cling film) with hard foam around the speakers ensuring safe passage. They arrived in pristine condition.
New York City based Master & Dynamic is a unique company. While not aiming for the highest ‘audiophile’ quality in the universe—together with the very high prices that go along with that—they, instead, produce superb sounding audio products displaying a savvy mix of fashion, art and modern culture. They even partner with legendary companies such as Leica Camera and make a special series of headphones in honour of legendary musicians such as Michael Jackson. The result? Gorgeous products of audiophile quality in both sound and construction that engenders pride of ownership. In their own words, ‘We are a New York City based premium audio brand with a deep passion for building beautifully crafted, richly appointed, technically sophisticated sound tools for creative minds.’. How true, and I would add ‘at reasonable prices’.
While the high-end headphone market is now at the thousands of dollars per pair level, Master & Dynamic’s most expensive headphones (MW60 over-the-ear) are only $549 per pair and can be used wirelessly or with wire, and their flagship over-the-ear model is the MH40 at only $399; I use both as my reference. All come in different colours, too. More recently, they have been making earphones, and here I will cover their newest high-tech pair, the stunning looking MW07 True Wireless Earphones at $299. (Keep in mind that at audio shows, I get to listen to earbuds (yes, earbuds) that cost more than $2000 per pair.) Many thanks to Andrew Gretchko and to Jonathan Levine (Founder and CEO of Master & Dynamic) for sending me a pair for review. In line with their sense of fashion, you can buy them at Bloomingdale’s department store, among others, as well as directly from their website (linked below).
Much smaller (30x50x15mm) than a smart phone! About the same weight (20.9g) as many USB stick drives! Can easily power (250 mW into 32 Ohms) headphones (not just earbuds) without a sweat! It’s the Periodic Audio Nickel, a super-compact $299 headphone amplifier that can be used on the run.
It is essentially the size of a small box of matches. It is made in the USA. I gave it a quick try at the recent RMAF in Denver in early October 2018, was impressed, and the ever so friendly Periodic Audio Co-Founder Daniel Wiggins offered to send me a review sample (and thanks to Sue Toscano for helping).
One day very recently my wife and children were outside in a park socializing with another family. I joined at one point, and the husband told me that my wife had mentioned that I was reviewing some new amplifiers, and that she thought they sounded amazing; she hoped I would keep them. When we came home, I watched as she listened on the couch with our daughters to various pieces of music, and I saw her tapping her foot. I never saw that before, let alone hear her praise a component of my audio system!
What were these amps you might ask? They were a pair of Audio by Van Alstine DVA SET 600 Mono Block Solid State Amplifiers at $2499.00 each ($4998/pr.). In a nutshell, each of these mono blocks is a mono balanced version of Van Alstine’s recently released and very well received Vision SET 400 Stereo amplifier ($1999 − $2199.00, single-ended input (RCA), reviewed by Audiophilia’s Martin Appel who awarded it an Audiophilia Star—and rightly so). This newer DVA SET 600 mono block is Class A/B, rated at 600 watts into 8 ohms and over 700W into 4 ohms; it weighs 36 pounds and is 17” wide, 13” deep, and 7” high. Its power is actually way more than what I just stated (via storing power in capacitors), as according to the Van Alstine specs it offers using burst measurements ‘775W into 8 ohms and 1500W into 4 ohms’.
Some forty or more years ago, the average person who set out to buy a stereo system, typically ended up with a stereo receiver. Things were much simpler then; all you needed was a receiver, a turntable and a pair of speakers. As for ‘audio furniture’, milk crates were the order of the day. A pair of included patch cord interconnects and if you were somewhat sophisticated, a run of heavy gauge lamp cord and you were in business. You didn’t have to give any thought to power cords, because components had captive power cords.
Of course, there were serious hobbyists who bought separates and had furniture grade cabinets made to house their components and speakers. These folks constituted a very small minority of stereo buyers. Once the transistor era took hold, watts per channel was the order of the day; the bigger the box with more knobs and lights, the better.
If you visit the top vinyl sales websites such as Elusive Disc and Acoustic Sounds among others, the quality vinyl lists are fairly similar. All the familiar suspects—RCAs, Lyritas, EMIs, Mercurys, Blue Notes, Argos, Deccas—populate the must haves. And many fabulous reissues also are cross referenced (Testament, Speakers Corner, Classic Records, etc).
I’ve been reviewing lots of cartridges and phono stages lately and have been deep diving into my vinyl collection to add a little spice to the reviewing process.
I began the subject of this list in Vol 1.
Recently, I had the very good fortune to review the Shelter 501 III MC Phono Cartridge. No sooner than the review was published, a Shelter 5000 MC Phono Cartridge dropped into my lap. For my review of Canadian startup Pure Fidelity’s Eclipse Turntable, the designer John Stratton suggested he setup his Shelter 5000 as it had been so successful during the turntable’s beta testing. I killed two birds with one stone for that review and jotted down some thoughts about the 5000 once I got to know the Eclipse’s sound signature. The cart was mounted to an Acoustic Signature TA-1000 tonearm.
At an MSRP of $2245, the 5000 is a couple of steps above the $1295 501 III in Shelter’s ‘Legendary Line’ of cartridges and a couple steps below the top player, the $4195 9000. I’m familiar with the outstanding 9000 and really liked the 501 III. As I began serious listening, I wondered what another grand above the 501 III got you in Shelter rent.
Over the years it’s been my good fortune to have reviewed and/or been exposed to many fine power amplifiers. These ranged from solid state Class A, a variety of tube amplifiers, with and without transformers, to the latest solid state Class D designs. I concluded there is no one right way to achieve excellent sound quality. We all hear differently and we all have our individual preferences. So, it can be difficult to review a product that will make an impact on a field of quality products.
My current reference, a pair of Merrill Audio Veritas Monoblocks, was doing an excellent job and I was happy with them. Michael Levy of Alta Audio called me and was ecstatic in his praise of a relatively inexpensive, new stereo power amplifier by Audio by Van Alstine. Like all passionate audiophiles, Levy is demonstrative in praise and can be equally demonstrative about dislikes. He enthusiastically offered me the amplifier for Audiophilia review.
If the number of phone calls, emails and texts regarding every aspect of a review, equipment setup, discussion and follow up is the benchmark of meticulousness, then Vancouver's John Stratton, head of Canadian analogue startup, Pure Fidelity (PF), is the epitome of it. Never have I experienced a fellow so involved in the details of a particular Hi-Fi subject.
Hey, when you have spent the past few years investing lots of your time and money into perfecting an exacting piece of high end kit, the turntable, you get picky pretty damn quickly. Or, you fail. Stratton has very high standards and analogue is a demanding mistress. She doesn't share, or bestow favours.
Several years ago, I experienced Mike Levy’s original loudspeaker design, the FRM-1s, at a well attended CES. The sound was wonderful but the design was hamstrung somewhat, needing four channels of amplification and DEQX room calibration. Score one for the sound, but zero for the needs of everyday audiophiles.
For more than a few years after the show, Levy received requests to modify the speaker to a standard two channel amplification design so the beautiful sound could be enjoyed by all. Well, maybe not all, at $15,000 (plus stands), but the thoughts were pure.
When Pass Labs comes out with a new piece of gear the audio industry takes notice. Well known for the quality of its products, the longevity of its designs and the seriousness to which it addresses the ever evolving science and art of sound reproduction, the XP-12 Preamplifier arrives. The XP-12 is the replacement for the XP-10, which had been their entry level, reference, one-box line level preamp for nearly a decade. What have they done to improve performance?
The new XP-12 starts with a new power supply. It uses an efficient toroidal design with both an electrostatic and Mu metal shield along vacuum impregnating and epoxy fill. This makes a very quiet transformer both electrically and mechanically. The power supply circuitry is also quieter and has additional filtering. The XP-12 uses a single stage volume control borrowed from the XS line preamp. This gives one hundred 1 dB steps with lower noise and distortion while removing some signal path parts. This redesigned volume control results in greater precision with a more luxurious feel.
I began this review period disliking much of what I heard from the first, casual run through of this new set of Brahms Symphonies by Daniel Barenboim and his Staatskapelle Berlin. My ears were perked, but the style was not what I was used to.
A few weeks later, with many cycles heard under my belt, I felt far more comfortable with Barenboim’s very Romantic and 'urtext' approach.
Some of my initial reservations were clouded by my reverence for the Brahms of Karajan and Joachim—full bodied and played with a Ferrari orchestra, the Berlin Phil.
This July 2018 release is the third of Andris Nelsons' DG Shostakovich Symphony cycle and contains live performances of the 4th [1936, but withdrawn 'till 1961] and 11th [1957] Symphonies. Nelsons is performing his Shostakovich cycle with the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
The first two instalments were remarkable successes, with definitive performances of the 5th and 10th Symphonies. The 5th was paired with the 8th and 9th, the 10th stood alone. To be fair, not much could follow the 10th, what I consider the greatest symphony of the 20th Century. And therein lies the problem with a complete Shostakovich symphony cycle. Of the fifteen symphonies, I think six (1, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10) are masterpieces interspersed with lesser patriotic or dramatic works, and even a couple of jingoistic duds (2 and 3).
Five years ago I began using a music server and DAC in lieu of a compact disc player, thus starting my journey into digital audio streaming. Keeping in mind that music servers are in fact computers, my main motivation came from discovering Mojo Audio, a company which at the time modified Mac mini computers to be serious music servers by (among other changes) replacing their internal power supplies with Mojo's own high-end external linear power supplies. Over the last 5 years I have kept the Mac mini as my reference, only upgrading it by changing player software from JRiver to the revolutionary Roon Labs, subscribing to Tidal, and swapping out its power supply by a series of better ones—all made by Mojo Audio, too; currently I use their Illuminati V2—it is a ‘choke input’ power supply and is my favorite [my review of the V1 may be found here].
But five years is a long time in the digital world. Much has happened. I did see and listen to various new alternatives including NUCs (‘Next Unit of Computing’ mini-computers) which were smaller, lighter, typically less expensive, and more energy efficient than a Mac mini. Like a Mac mini, a NUC is ‘headless’, e.g., you do not need to connect a monitor or keyboard to it except for setting it up with software and such. Once set up, controlling music play is accomplished by using a wirelessly connected app on a mobile device or tablet. I also checked out serious commercial high-end music servers, and I have been impressed at times. Suffice to say it has become clear that the Mac mini is on the way out; there are quite a number of alternatives.
The violinist Erica Morini was born in Vienna and made her debut in 1916 with both the Berlin Philharmonic and Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestras under the baton of the legendary Arthur Nikisch. The critics hailed her as one of the best players before the public and she enjoyed a fifty year career appearing all over the world with every major orchestra and conductor of her day.
Morini retired from playing in 1975 and is reported to have never played the violin again. She died in New York City in 1995 aged ninety one having largely been forgotten by the musical world.
The Belgian-naturalized, French conductor André Cluytens occupies an interesting position in the pantheon of French maestros. He was the first French conductor to sell a million records and was also the first conductor after the war to record a Beethoven cycle with the Berlin Philharmonic. In 1957 when Cluytens commenced his performances, the Berlin orchestra was still very much under the influence of Furtwängler, who had died fours years before. Yet today it is Pierre Monteux and Charles Munch who are remembered as the great French conductors despite Cluytens making some very fine recordings and dominating the opera houses of Bayrueth and Paris for many seasons until his untimely death in 1967 at the age of sixty two.
His reputation suffered not because of his musical qualities but because he had been charged and convicted of being a collaborator during the World War 2 and this derailed him for some years despite being eventually exonerated of this crime and being allowed to continue his career.
Newvelle Records is a relatively new label (started in 2016) devoted to producing top-tier jazz recordings exclusively on 180g translucent blue vinyl, from newly recorded music, and with jazz musicians of the highest caliber. Including beautiful artistic album covers, poetry and stories—these are luxury products.
The founders are jazz pianist and composer Elan Mehler and Parisian business executive Jean-Christophe Morisseau. It is a subscription based model only ($400 per ‘Season’ (year)), delivering 6 records over a year; one every two months—and the number of pressings of each LP is small, only 1000; no digital versions are made available. Importantly, the business part of the model is a collaboration with the musicians themselves: Newvelle gets ownership for the first two years, and then it is handed over to the musicians to do with whatever they please (including making digital versions if they want).
