Entertainment
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 |
December 2025
Stereophile
Arendal Sound 1528 Tower 8
LOUDSPEAKER
10+ min |
December 2025
Stereophile
EAT F-Dur
TURNTABLE WITH EAT F-NOTE TONEARM
10 min |
November 2025
Stereophile
Hi-fi near and far
As the Spin Doctor, I tend to lead an analog life. I'm not just talking about my preferred ways of listening to music, but also my approach to other everyday technology.
10+ min |
November 2025
Stereophile
HiFi Rose RA280
It's been said before, but the essential truth remains as shiny as a new 2A3 tube: A well-made, good-sounding integrated amplifier is a sonic marvel, a triumph of audio engineering. Sound quality is just the beginning.
10+ min |
November 2025
Stereophile
15 FOR 50 1975 IN 15 RECORDS
WAS IT SOMETHING IN THE AIR, SOMETHING IN THE WATER? COSMICALLY INSPIRED BY THE STARS AND THE MOON? OR MAYBE THE DEVIL WAS FINALLY CLAIMING HIS OWN AS ROCK MUSIC IN ALL ITS VARIANTS WAS UNASSAILABLY ASCENDENT.
10+ min |
November 2025
Stereophile
Doing it for themselves—and for us
Women have undeniably become the most dynamic and vital creative force in music today. Without their good energies and ideas, music, which in the digital age has become more background than art, would be much less interesting and inspiring.
3 min |
November 2025
Stereophile
McIntosh DS200 STREAMING D/A PROCESSOR
McIntosh, which is based in my home state of New York, has long been in my audio life.
10+ min |
November 2025
Stereophile
The BEAT Goes On
Adrian Belew had an itch that needed some serious scratching.
7 min |
November 2025
Stereophile
Half a century in hi-fi
Not many hi-fi dealerships can say they've survived half a century of history. Natural Sound, which is based in Framingham, Massachusetts, about 20 miles west of Boston, is one that can.
3 min |
November 2025
Stereophile
The skating force phenomenon
At the beginning of last month's As We See It, I wrote that I've lately been focused on \"analog things.\" I proceeded to write about refurbishing and modding my old McIntosh tuner. That's \"analog thing\" #1.
4 min |
November 2025
Stereophile
Monk's tenor
In Robin D.G. Kelley's definitive, 450-page biography of Thelonious Monk, Monk and tenor saxophonist Charlie Rouse first meet on p.100, in 1944.
4 min |
November 2025
Stereophile
ECM's vinyl essence
In the 1990s into the 2000s, I had the pleasure of interviewing jazz drummer and composer Paul Motian for both Modern Drummer and DownBeat.
3 min |
November 2025
Stereophile
T+A Symphonia STREAMING INTEGRATED AMPLIFIER
German aesthetes are fond of saying “Das Auge isst mit”: “The eye feasts too.” In audio terms, your ears do the listening, but your eyes want their share of pleasure.
10+ min |
November 2025
Stereophile
Umami tunes
If you go to Tokyo, there's a good chance you'll develop a new appreciation for shopping malls. The Japanese know malls. They know just what to do with them. Inside a Tokyo mall, you can peruse the usual handbags and shoes in their unending variety. But you can also stare at Fuji apples as large as a baby's head swaddled in tissue paper, flip through the world's most exquisite stationery, stock up on fabric from the 1920s, and taste things that will haunt you well into retirement.
10+ min |
November 2025
Stereophile
The Meters
That sound: body-scratching grooves, syncopated second-line rhythms, bass, guitar, and keyboard lines so deep they seemed to bubble up from the earth beneath New Orleans.
4 min |
November 2025
Stereophile
Dynaudio Contour 20 Black Edition
Although I have very much appreciated how the best floorstanding loudspeakers have performed in my various listening rooms over the decades, I have always been most comfortable with relatively small two-way standmounts.
10+ min |