The Latest Features
Paradigm Prestige 15B Loudspeakers
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- Written by Jeff Stockton Jeff Stockton
- Category: Full-Length Equipment Reviews Full-Length Equipment Reviews
- Created: 15 May 2018 15 May 2018
Note: Measurements taken in the anechoic chamber at Canada's National Research Council can be found through this link.
Paradigm’s Prestige series is near the center of the Canadian company’s wide range of loudspeaker lines, slotted between the Persona models and the new Premier series. In Paradigm’s model-naming system, B stands for bookshelf: The Prestige 15B costs $799 USD each, while the Persona B goes for $3500 each, and the Premier 200B for $599 each.
Muraudio's SP1 Loudspeaker -- Way Outside the Box Again
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- Written by Doug Schneider Doug Schneider
- Category: Monthly Column Monthly Column
- Created: 01 May 2018 01 May 2018
How Muraudio’s new SP1 loudspeaker ($14,700 USD per pair) came to be is probably best summarized by the old adage “Necessity is the mother of invention.” The SP1 was one of the five products I wrote about last month, in “The Best of Montreal Audio Fest 2018.” However, the interesting commercial and technical stories behind it deserve more than the few words I gave it in that editorial, especially when those stories are about a brand I thought wouldn’t last more than a couple of years.
Simaudio Moon 240i Integrated Amplifier-DAC
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- Written by Philip Beaudette Philip Beaudette
- Category: Full-Length Equipment Reviews Full-Length Equipment Reviews
- Created: 01 May 2018 01 May 2018
In 2007, I reviewed Bryston’s B100 SST integrated amplifier. In its base configuration it was simply an integrated amplifier, but it could be outfitted with an onboard digital-to-analog converter and moving-magnet phono stage. At the time, it was easily the best-sounding amplification I’d ever heard, and I admired the fact that with the optional DAC and phono stage it could perform so many functions without the additional cables and space that separates would require. When I finished university and started working, I saved my money, and about a year later purchased a fully equipped B100 SST.
Franco-phile
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- Written by Ken Kessler Ken Kessler
- Category: SoundStage! UK SoundStage! UK
- Created: 01 May 2018 01 May 2018
As one grows older and witnesses the passing of one’s mentors, there’s a sense of deprivation not a million miles removed from the loss of a parent. No mentor, however influential, can provide the same impact as those who brought you up from birth to adulthood, but the specificity of a mentor’s guidance in his or her area of expertise can attain similar importance to, say, your mother teaching you how to roast a chicken, or your father showing you how to get that dimple in your necktie.
Recommended Reference Component: Constellation Audio Revelation Taurus Mono Amplifiers
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- Written by SoundStage! Hi-Fi Editors SoundStage! Hi-Fi Editors
- Category: Components Components
- Created: 01 May 2018 01 May 2018
With its ability to output more than 500W into 8 ohms, and so stable it can be used to drive almost any speaker load, Constellation Audio’s Revelation Taurus Mono amplifier ($39,000 USD per pair) would impress many with its muscle alone. But it wasn’t its prodigious power-output capabilities that most impressed Doug Schneider when he reviewed the Taurus Monos for SoundStage! Hi-Fi in December 2017; instead, it was the superbness of their sound at volume levels of very low to very high, as well as how they “took hold” of each of the three pairs of speakers he used them with -- GoldenEar Technology Triton Reference, Dynaudio Special Forty, and Revel Ultima2 Salon2 -- and “made them sound their best.”
Shunyata Research Denali D6000/S Power Distributor
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- Written by Doug Schneider Doug Schneider
- Category: Full-Length Equipment Reviews Full-Length Equipment Reviews
- Created: 15 April 2018 15 April 2018
Power-line products such as Shunyata Research’s Denali D6000/S distributor pose a conundrum for me. On the one hand, I know from experience that having clean power at the proper voltage makes a difference. I learned this when I lived on the top floor of a 21-story high-rise, where power fluctuations and noise-related problems were really bad. An ExactPower EP15A power regenerator, which I reviewed and purchased in 2003, did a bang-up job of clearing up those problems -- whatever I plugged into it sounded better than when I plugged it directly into the wall outlets.
The Best of Montreal Audio Fest 2018
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- Written by Douglas Schneider Douglas Schneider
- Category: Monthly Column Monthly Column
- Created: 01 April 2018 01 April 2018
From the late 1990s to the early 2000s, Montreal’s annual Salon Son & Image (SSI) was my favorite hi-fi show. There were always plenty of exhibitors and thousands of visitors -- a combination that made the event bristle with excitement. Nor did it hurt that Montreal is a great place to visit. I loved going there each spring.
Totem Acoustic Signature One Loudspeakers
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- Written by Jason Thorpe Jason Thorpe
- Category: Full-Length Equipment Reviews Full-Length Equipment Reviews
- Created: 01 April 2018 01 April 2018
Note: Measurements taken in the anechoic chamber at Canada's National Research Council can be found through this link.
Man, what a run.
I first read about Totem Acoustic’s Model 1 loudspeaker in a 1988 issue of Andrew Marshall’s Audio Ideas Guide. “That sounds like a cool speaker!” I remember thinking. Sure enough, I ended up with a pair about seven years later. The Model 1 was my first real audiophile speaker, and it began an obsession with audio, and a journey that led me on the path to becoming a writer for the SoundStage! Network. (I also still have that issue of AIG, stored in the under-sink cabinet of my upstairs bathroom.)
Long Live FM
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- Written by Ken Kessler Ken Kessler
- Category: SoundStage! UK SoundStage! UK
- Created: 01 April 2018 01 April 2018
As I am long-domiciled in Europe, a geopolitical area almost as bizarrely snowflake-y as Canada (your PM is such a deluded putz), I am never surprised by idiotic decisions. As has always been the case, whenever governments get involved with consumer technology, they usually screw it up.
Recommended Reference Component: Klipsch Heritage HP-3 Headphones
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- Written by SoundStage! Hi-Fi Editors SoundStage! Hi-Fi Editors
- Category: Components Components
- Created: 01 April 2018 01 April 2018
In his review of the Klipsch Heritage HP-3 headphones ($1199 USD), published in March 2018 on SoundStage! Xperience, Brent Butterworth wrote that “The Heritage HP-3s are Klipsch’s best headphones ever, and serious competitors for any headphones in the $1000-$1600 range,” and that they look “like something Paul Klipsch himself might have designed back in the 1950s.”
