Technology
Stereophile
Buzz Me In
If you like 1970s rock music, particularly hard rock music, something you love was recorded or mixed in a Record Plant studio.
3 min |
January 2026
Stereophile
NuPrime MCX-800AD
IMMERSIVE AUDIO PROCESSOR
10+ min |
January 2026
Stereophile
Shanachie Records
The term 'sales' is an anachronism. Today, it's about streaming and ancillary income.\"
3 min |
January 2026
Stereophile
Advance Paris X-CD9
CD PLAYER
10+ min |
January 2026
Stereophile
T+A Symphonia for phono; a new NAD M10
Out of the box, the T+A Symphonia streaming integrated amplifier Rogier van Bakel reviewed in the November 2025 issue¹ has two pairs of single-ended analog line inputs.
10+ min |
January 2026
Stereophile
Why the Music We Love Feels Different Now
There's a scene in the 2002 movie The Pianist in which Adrien Brody's character, the Polish-Jewish pianist Władysław Szpilman, is hiding in the ruins of a Warsaw villa.
3 min |
January 2026
Stereophile
A tale of two Walters
Acommon theme in this space in Stereophile is the need to reach new audiences and generate broader interest in the hi-fi hobby.
3 min |
January 2026
Stereophile
Eversolo Play CD Edition
ALL-IN-ONE STREAMING PLAYER
10+ min |
January 2026
Stereophile
Timeless flights
How many adventurous rock’n’roll bands forged in the late-’60s/early-’70s would have been left by the wayside—or relegated to languish in perpetual cutout-bin purgatory—had it not been for the wide-open programming M.O. of stereo-loving FM radio stations? The Moody Blues could very easily have been one of those sidelined, notched-cover footnotes, but they altered their gameplan when guitarist/vocalist Justin Hayward and bassist/vocalist John Lodge joined the fold a few years after the chart success of “Go Now” in 1964.¹
3 min |
January 2026
Stereophile
You still believe in me
One of my foundational memories of becoming an audiophile was waiting to listen to a pair of speakers at Sound by Singer in Manhattan.
10+ min |
January 2026
Stereophile
Rahsaan Roland Kirk live on two coasts
There's widespread consensus that Shohei Ohtani’s performance in Game 4 of the 2025 National League Championship Series was the greatest in baseball history: at the plate, 3 for 3 with three home runs; on the mound, six innings with 10 strikeouts and only 2 hits allowed.
3 min |
January 2026
Stereophile
MANUFACTURERS' COMMENTS
Rhythm Distribution, the North American distributor for Goldmund, is honored to acknowledge Jim Austin's thoughtful and comprehensive review of the Goldmund Telos 2800 Monoblock Power Amplifier in Stereophile.
3 min |
January 2026
Stereophile
Vintage systems, vintage cartridges, part 1
I do not believe in chance or coincidence. Instead, I put my faith in the divine nature of Luck.
10+ min |
January 2026
Stereophile
Good vibrations
Renowned British turntable manufacturer Rega once defined a turntable as a vibration-measuring machine; that definition became the title of a coffee table book tracing the company’s history and design philosophy.
10 min |
January 2026
Stereophile
Goldmund Telos 2800
MONOBLOCK POWER AMPLIFIER
10+ min |
January 2026
Stereophile
Wilson Audio Specialties Sabrina V
Wilson Audio of Provo, Utah, is executing a multiyear revision of their product line, resulting mostly in a series of “remastered” redesigns that carry in their names the designation “V.
10+ min |
January 2026
Stereophile
Life in the emerald beyond
If you find yourself in Monaco on a Sunday night, make your way to La Note Bleue, a cozy restaurant and music bar on the beach by the Avenue Princesse Grace. There, you're likely to find a legendary world/fusion guitarist sitting in with a group of young jazz musicians eager to cut heads with the acknowledged maestro of inner awareness and otherworldly spirits. Forever known to some as “Mahavishnu,” you can call him by his birth name, John McLaughlin.
3 min |
December 2025
Stereophile
36 sides of late Bowie
I Can't Give Everything Away is the sixth and last of the Bowie box sets that survey specific periods in the artist's career. The first was Five Years 1969–1973, released in September 2015. That was followed by Who Can I Be Now? (1974–1976), A New Career in a New Town (1977–1982), Loving the Alien (1983–1988), Brilliant Adventure (1992–2001), and finally the new set. Together, the six sets are an impressive testament to a musical giant—a heavyweight tribute figuratively and literally. You could use this last installment to pump up your biceps.
3 min |
December 2025
Stereophile
Is this the ultimate old-school analog move?
Dedicated readers know that lately in this space I’ve been on something of an analog kick. Two months ago, in the October issue,¹ I wrote about refurbishing and modding my old McIntosh FM tuner. Last month’s column (November) was on the much-discussed but little-understood topic of the skating force on a phono cartridge stylus.²
4 min |
December 2025
Stereophile
STEREOPHILE'S 34TH ANNUAL PRODUCT OF THE YEAR 2025 AWARDS
Stereophile's Product of the Year Awards were first published in 1992.1 I decided at that time that, in contrast to other publications' awards schemes, we would keep the number of categories to a minimum.
10+ min |
December 2025
Stereophile
DeVore Gibbon Super Nine
LOUDSPEAKER
10+ min |
December 2025
Stereophile
Some marketing claims are true
None of the amps I build are better than the others,” Justin Weber of Ampsandsound told me not long after we met. “They are just different.” I may have smirked inwardly. According to his company’s website, Weber makes no fewer than 23 amplifier models, many capable of driving both headphones and speakers, ranging from the $2700 Kenzie OG to the $38,000 Arch Monos. Are they really all equally good?, I wondered. Surely this was just a clever Buddhist ploy to distract us from some of his amps’ high prices. Doesn't the extra $35k spent on the Arch Monos buy you something more desirable than the performance offered by the little Kenzie? Writing for an audio magazine means I hear a lot of marketing claims, some more risible than others, and I have learned to take them with an entire seabed worth of salt.
10+ min |
December 2025
Stereophile
Lotti Golden
Her life became a whirlwind. Taking the train in from Brooklyn to Manhattan to pitch songs and experience the East Village scene, she landed a song-publishing deal at age 14. In 1968, at 18, after a chance meeting in an elevator, a legendary songwriter/record producer was interested in assisting her in making her debut album. Released on Atlantic Records in 1969, Lotti Golden's Motor-Cycle was wildly experimental and ahead of its time. Seemingly poised for success, the album and her career suddenly vanished.
4 min |
December 2025
Stereophile
Baby you can drive my car(tridge)
While I was coming to grips with this month's review subject, the idler drive Garrard 301 Advanced, I began to think about the various methods that have been used to spin turntable platters over the years. Since the transition a century ago from windup clockwork to electric motors, there have basically been three ways to spin a turntable platter: idler drive, belt drive, and direct drive. True, there have also been a few designs that go their own unique ways, such as the rare, water-driven Oasis made by David Gillespie of Saturn Audio in the late 1970s and the gear-driven H.H. Scott 710 I once owned and foolishly sold. But almost everything made since the 1950s uses one of the three main drive systems. Even the Omega Drive system, which was used by Wilson Benesch on their extraordinary GMT One turntable, is at its core a direct drive design.
10 min |
December 2025
Stereophile
Audio Research Reference 330M
MONOBLOCK POWER AMPLIFIER
10+ min |
December 2025
Stereophile
MANUFACTURERS' COMMENTS
MoFi Distribution would like to thank both Ken Micallef and John Atkinson for their time and effort reviewing the HiFi Rose RA280 integrated amplifier (November 2025, p.93).
2 min |
December 2025
Stereophile
Full circle in Colorado
A hi-fi dealer's son, Matt Alterman has been in or near the business almost all his life. His dealership, Crescendo Audio, is coming full circle as he opens a new location in Boulder, Colorado, the town where he launched his first store 13 years ago.
3 min |
December 2025
Stereophile
Midpriced phonography
My mother Lily Mae was a Lutheran from Norway. She sent me to Jerusalem Evangelical Lutheran School so that I'd become a well-mannered, tea-with-her-friends choirboy, with starched white shirts and a secret penchant for wildness that was nurtured by those freethinking Catholic girls at the elementary school next to ours.
10+ min |
December 2025
Stereophile
Excel Sound/LP Gear The Vessel
MOVING MAGNET CARTRIDGE SYSTEM
10+ min |
December 2025
Stereophile
Musical Fidelity Nu-Vista 600.2
INTEGRATED AMPLIFIER
10+ min |