Recommended Reference Component: Fostex TH909 Headphones
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- Written by SoundStage! Hi-Fi Editors SoundStage! Hi-Fi Editors
- Category: Components Components
- Created: 01 December 2018 01 December 2018
In his review of the Fostex TH909 headphones last month on SoundStage! Solo, Brent Butterworth remarked that “Fostex has one of the most unusual product lines in the headphone biz. They mostly split between pro ’phones priced under $200, and high-end consumer models priced at $599 or more.” Brent, who’s “been a Fostex fan since 1997,” wrote that “I had yet to hear a set of Fostex headphones I didn’t like” -- including the TH909s ($1799.99 USD).
Recommended Reference Component: Muraudio SP1 Loudspeakers
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- Written by SoundStage! Hi-Fi Editors SoundStage! Hi-Fi Editors
- Category: Components Components
- Created: 01 October 2018 01 October 2018
The Muraudio SP1’s 42”-tall cabinet looks like a cylinder cut in half lengthwise, set atop a 15”-high integral stand bolted to the cabinet’s bottom panel. There are two 6” midrange-woofers at the bottom of the front panel and two more at the top, the two drivers of each pair positioned side by side. Between these pairs is an electrostatic panel about 21”H by 11”W, inset a little and looking like a window with a shallow sill. Most will agree that, even in one of Muraudio’s many nice finishes, the SP1 is an unusual-looking loudspeaker.
Recommended Reference Component: Simaudio Moon 888 Mono Amplifiers
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- Written by SoundStage! Hi-Fi Editors SoundStage! Hi-Fi Editors
- Category: Components Components
- Created: 01 September 2018 01 September 2018
Each measuring 22”W x 14”H x 27”D and weighing 230 pounds, and priced at $118,888 USD per pair, the Simaudio Moon 888 mono amplifier is as big and heavy as it is expensive and powerful. Simaudio says it can deliver at least 888W into 8 ohms or 1776W into 4 ohms from a typical 120V, 15A power source. But it wasn’t all that power, size, weight, or cost that most impressed Aron Garrecht, who reviewed the Moon 888 this month on SoundStage! Ultra -- it was that “Their sound quality is beyond anything else I have heard.”
Recommended Reference Component: Audio-Technica ATH-ADX5000 Headphones
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- Written by SoundStage! Hi-Fi Editors SoundStage! Hi-Fi Editors
- Category: Components Components
- Created: 01 August 2018 01 August 2018
When Brent Butterworth began listening to the Audio-Technica ATH-ADX5000 headphones for SoundStage! Solo (the review was published July 10), he was “skeptical” about them: “At first glance, they don’t really seem all that different from their stablemates,” he wrote -- and while he’d liked the sound of A-T’s previous open-back headphones, he hadn’t thought any were “world-class.” Also, at $1999 USD, the ATH-ADX5000s are more than three times the price of A-T’s next-most-expensive open-back headphones, the ATH-AD1000s, which “seems a stretch.” By the end of his review, Brent’s skepticism had vanished.
Recommended Reference Component: Anthem STR Integrated Amplifier-DAC
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- Written by SoundStage! Hi-Fi Editors SoundStage! Hi-Fi Editors
- Category: Components Components
- Created: 01 July 2018 01 July 2018
Vinyl isn’t the only audio sector that’s resurging these days -- integrated amplifiers, too, are back in style. But today, those who demand integrateds want much more than a preamp and power amp in a single box. They want not only the high power and sound quality of separate components, but also lots of features, digital and analog.
Recommended Reference Component: T+A Elektroakustik PA 3100 HV Integrated Amplifier
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- Written by SoundStage! Hi-Fi Editors SoundStage! Hi-Fi Editors
- Category: Components Components
- Created: 01 June 2018 01 June 2018
As Jeff Fritz pointed out in in his May 2018 review of T+A Elektroakustik’s PA 3100 HV for SoundStage! Ultra, it bucks the current trend of including in an integrated amplifier such features as digital-to-analog conversion, network connectivity, and streaming. The stock PA 3100 HV ($23,500 USD) doesn’t even have a phono stage -- though you can add an optional internal moving-magnet/moving-coil stage ($1600). As Jeff stated in his review, “The PA 3100 HV focuses on preamplifying and amplifying, period.” And those things it does extraordinarily well.
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.”
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.”
Recommended Reference Component: KEF Q750 Loudspeakers
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- Written by SoundStage! Hi-Fi Editors SoundStage! Hi-Fi Editors
- Category: Components Components
- Created: 01 March 2018 01 March 2018
Until now, the lowest-priced floorstanding speaker in our list of Recommended Reference Components was the KEF R500 ($2599.98 USD/pair), reviewed in August 2012, and added to the list the following month. Hans Wetzel’s review of the KEF Q750 loudspeaker ($1499.98/pair), published in February 2018 on SoundStage! Access, changes that. In his review, Hans wrote of the Q750: “It’s one of the most neutral transducers I’ve ever heard, and for the money offers staggeringly transparent sound.” The Q750 is the middle of three floorstanding models in KEF’s newest range, the Q Series, now in its eighth generation -- above it is the larger Q950 ($1799.98/pair), below it the smaller Q550 ($1099.98/pair).
Recommended Reference Component: Acoustic Research AR-H1 Headphones
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- Written by SoundStage! Hi-Fi Editors SoundStage! Hi-Fi Editors
- Category: Components Components
- Created: 01 February 2018 01 February 2018
The Acoustic Research name is a legend in hi-fi circles. As Brent Butterworth pointed out in his January 2018 review of the AR-H1 headphones ($599.99 USD) on SoundStage! Xperience, “Audiophiles know AR as the pioneer of the acoustic-suspension loudspeaker, in 1952.” That’s a big deal. Today, however, AR’s name lacks cachet among audiophiles, as Brent pointed out: “[F]or the last 15 years or so the AR brand has been applied mostly to accessories, such as inexpensive cables and Bluetooth speakers.” He never expected to see from AR headphones of such high sound quality as the AR-H1s.
