NAD Masters Series M50.2

Back in May 2014, I reviewed NAD’s Masters Series M50 Digital Music Player ($2499) and M52 Digital Music Vault ($1999 with 2TB storage). 1 At the 2017 Consumer Electronics Show, NAD announced the M50.2, which is almost identical to the original M50 but now incorporates two 2TB hard disks, arranged as a 2TB RAID array, to ensure data integrity, and adds TosLink and coaxial digital inputs, Bluetooth with aptX for streaming music from a smartphone or tablet, and two single-ended analog inputs—all for $3999, or $499 less than the combined cost of the two earlier products.

as we see it

steve guttenberg's 116th dream.

As We See It - Not-So-Giant Steps

I’m a thirty-year-old puppy doing what I’m told And I’m told there’s no more coal for the older engines,” —ANDY PARTRIDGE,

Moon by Simaudio Evolution 780D D/A PROCESSOR.

Moon by Simaudio Evolution 780D D/A PROCESSOR.

Everybody Digs Bill Evans (Again!)

New Audiophile Reissues Burnish a Proud Legacy.

Listening

There was a fight. And when the fight took a turn for the worse and things began being broken and thrown, it was time to leave. Not later. Not soon. Now.

Gramophone Dreams

As much as I delight in pagan dreams of sweetly perfumed garden nymphs, I’m embarrassed to admit that my mind also drifts in pleasant reveries whenever I hear the words research and development in the same sentence.

Auralic Altair

D/A Processor.

Both Sides Now

An Interview With Record Producer Joe Harley, of Audioquest and Music Matters Jazz 

As We See It

THIS ISSUE: Are audiophiles ignoring the most affordable means of achieving true high-end sound?

Listening

THIS ISSUE: A belt-drive turntable with a skeletal plinth, an acrylic platter, and an apparently lowish-torque DC motor. From Serbia.

Record Reviews

The blues, that wonderful basis of so much American popular music, has for many listeners grown a bit stale and old-fashioned. It’s not much of a draw outside bar bands, and other than Alligator Records and APO Records, most of the biggest blues labels have folded or gone dormant. Losing many of the music’s first- and secondgeneration practitioners hasn’t helped.

Analog Corner - Notes From The Road

At audio events held by the Los Angeles and Orange County Audio Society, I’m usually called on to speechify about one thing or another, or to roast an honoree at one of the Society’s December Galas.1 But at last spring’s Los Angeles Audio Show,2 Bob Levi, the Society’s president, quipped, “This is one awards dinner where you won’t have to entertain—so relax and enjoy!”

Listening - Shindo Redux

As with the older Monbrison and Masseto alike, the line stage of the new Monbrison is based on a stereo pair of triode-pentode tubes—in this case, the Telefunken ECL 94S, used in the previous Monbrison.

Mytek Hifi Manhattan II

D/A Preamplifier-Headphone Amplifier

Ortofon Launches The Windfeld Ti Cartridge

Ortofon, which turns 100 next year, launched the original Windfeld cartridge nearly a decade ago. Named for cartridge designer Per Windfeld—who had just retired at age 75, after 30 years with the company—that top-of-the-line cartridge cost $3400 at the time of its introduction. 

Vinyl Apocalypse

Solving the Lp Shelving Dilemma

Rockport Technologies Avior II Loudspeaker

Following my review of the floorstanding Magico S5 Mk.II last February,1 I spent some time with two-way stand-mounted speakers from Aerial Acoustics, Bowers & Wilkins, and Dynaudio. As much as I appreciated the small speakers’ virtues, I found myself missing the big Magico’s bass extension and ability to play loud; my next loudspeaker review, therefore, would be of another floorstander. 

See Me, Feel Me, Touch Me (Again)

Once it was a cherished ritual: come home from the record store, tear off the cellophane, drop the needle, and lose your self in the artwork, the liner notes, the smell of the jacket’s freshly glued seams.

Analog Corner

Do good things come in small packages, or is bigger better? Your call.

aural robert

blues at 45

Master Quality Authenticated

MQA’s Spencer Chrislu on reaching out to the Record Industry.

Inside CH Precision's P1 Phono Preamplifier

Although Swiss-based CH Precision is a relatively young company, its core design team has been involved in high-performance audio for many years.

All Things To All Musicians

An Artistic Incubator Grows In Brooklyn

Bowers & Wilkins 702 S2 LOUDSPEAKER

Bowers & Wilkins 702 S2 LOUDSPEAKER

A New Epoch!

Brooklyn-based Grado Labs has been in business for 64 years, manufacturing moving-iron phono cartridges, headphones, and, for a while, even a unipivot tonearm with a wooden arm wand, as well as the sophisticated, S-shaped Signature Laboratory Standard arm.

Collecting and The Cloud

I’ll inch out on a limb here and say that most audiophiles are also collectors of recordings.

Follow-Up

PEACHTREE AUDIO NOVA300 DAC–INTEGRATED AMPLIFIER Come back, baby. You’ll find a million poems deep in your destitute soul. —Richard Hugo, “Second Chances”