NAD M33
Naim
NAD M33
iFi Audio
iFi Audio

When he visited my home last summer, SoundStage! founder and publisher Doug Schneider asked what I thought was a strange question. Which am I into more, music or sound? Am I first and foremost an audiophile or a music lover?

In no other area do audiophile aspirations collide more forcefully with the laws of physics than in the reproduction of deep bass. That’s especially true with audio systems installed in multipurpose living areas, as opposed to dedicated media rooms. There are two main reasons for this, one quantitative, the other qualitative.

A trick question: What are the most valuable components of your music system? I don’t know about yours, but the most valuable parts of mine are space and time. If that sounds like new-age hokum, stay with me—that insight has a lot to do with how I’ve configured my hi-fi system, how I use it, and the writing I do in this corner of the SoundStage! Network.

Last spring, I added a new component to my audio wish list: a subwoofer. It happened after I’d conducted an experiment in which I compared my Elac Navis ARF-51 active floorstanding speakers ($4599.98/pair, all prices USD) with a pair of Elac Navis ARB-51 active stand-mounted speakers ($2299.98/pair), the latter augmented by an SVS PB-2000 Pro subwoofer ($899.99). I wanted to find out which would give me better sound: a pair of full-range floorstanders, or a pair of minimonitors plus a sub. The Navises employ the same drivers, crossovers, and amplifiers—in short, that minimum of variables made these two models an ideal test bed for my experiment.

Reviewers' ChoiceI didn’t expect to be writing this review -- at least, not now. As I mentioned a month ago, in my feature article “A Perfect Pair,” when I read PSB’s announcement of their new Alpha AM3 and Alpha AM5 powered speakers, I immediately requested for review a pair of AM5s. I was told that samples would be shipped to me that very week -- only to hear, a few days later, that review samples weren’t available, due to robust initial orders and pandemic-related product shortages. When PSB offered to supply the smaller AM3s, I gladly accepted.

At the start of 2020 — it seems an age ago — I’d made some ambitious travel plans for the year: In March, I’d take the train to Montreal for the Audiofest; in April, I’d fly to Chicago for AXPONA. In May, I’d jet off to Munich for the High End show. In October I’d stay in my home city to attend the Toronto Audiofest, and in November it would be off to Warsaw for the Audio Video Show.

Most audiophiles know SV Sound (SVS) as a manufacturer of high-performance, high-value speakers and subwoofers. The Ohio-based company’s catalog also includes one electronic component: the Prime Wireless SoundBase ($499.99, all prices USD), which combines a powerful integrated amplifier and network streamer in one compact case.

One of the best-kept secrets of home audio is the possibility of building a hi-fi system around a pair of professional studio monitors. As I discussed in my July 1 feature, “Turning Pro,” studio monitors offer more bang for the buck than most conventional systems comprising separate electronics and passive speakers.

It sounds like a nice problem for a speaker maker to have: Some hot new models are launched, and the first batch immediately sells out. That’s what happened when PSB announced powered versions of its acclaimed Alpha P3 and Alpha P5 minimonitors.

Reviewers' ChoiceWith apologies to William Shakespeare, there’s something rockin’ in the state of Denmark, audiowise. When it comes to active speakers that include digital signal processing (DSP) -- in my opinion, now the most exciting segment of audio -- the Danes are on the leading edge. During my two-years-plus at SoundStage! Simplifi, I’ve written about active speakers from several Danish brands, including DALI, Dynaudio, and System Audio, and I’ve loved them all.

Is there a speaker brand that does retro as well as Klipsch? I doubt it. Klipsch’s big horn speakers hark back to the middle of the 20th century, and so do their lifestyle products.

In the last decade, recorded music has undergone a sea change -- it has become disembodied. From the late 19th to the early 21st century, music was distributed on physical media. In the early 21st century, digital downloads held sway, then quickly gave way to on-demand streaming.

A year ago this week, Amazon shook up the audio world with its announcement of Amazon Music HD, a streaming service that today offers 60 million tracks in lossless 16-bit/44.1kHz CD resolution, plus “millions” of hi-rez tracks in resolutions up to 24/192. While lossless and hi-rez files were already available from Qobuz and Tidal, the leading streaming services all used lossy codecs, so Amazon’s embrace of hi-rez audio was big news.

For the past couple of decades, the audio industry has been angsting about how to get young listeners interested in hi-fi. It’s not that teens and twentysomethings don’t love music; it’s that their musical lives revolve around smartphones, headphones, maybe a Bluetooth speaker. How can they be introduced to the joys of listening to real stereo from real hi-fi speakers?

Volumio may not be a household name among audiophiles, but it has a huge following among DIY hobbyists. Based in Florence, Italy, Volumio is the developer of an eponymous, open-source Linux distribution designed for music playback that can run on an inexpensive single-board computer (SBC) such as the Raspberry Pi. The company claims to have over 300,000 users, mainly hobbyists who run Volumio on home-built digital music streamers and servers.

Integrating a hi-fi system into a multipurpose living space can be complicated by all the wiring needed to connect the various components. This is particularly true of speaker cables, especially if they have to cross an open area of the room. Even if they aren’t tripping hazards, they’re unsightly.

On a Friday morning, two years ago this month, an unexpected e-mail from SoundStage! publisher Doug Schneider appeared in my inbox. I say “unexpected” because, at the time, I barely knew Doug. We’d met a few times at such audio events as CEDIA and the Consumer Electronics Show, and I knew Doug by reputation, having been a regular reader of SoundStage! publications since the Network’s launch, in 1995. We arranged to chat by phone.

If you want to establish a new audio brand, where do you start? That was the question faced by Andover Audio, a Boston-area company founded in 2012 by ex-employees of Cambridge SoundWorks, when they decided to offer products under their own brand.

The American brand Audio Alchemy was founded in the 1980s and folded a decade later. It re-emerged in the early 2000s, and was purchased by Elac in 2016, where it has undergone a renaissance. Audio Alchemy founder Peter Madnick now acts as a consulting engineer for Elac, and is responsible for developing Elac’s Alchemy series of electronic components, now in their second generation.

In the two years I’ve been writing for SoundStage! Simplifi I’ve reviewed 15 stereo loudspeakers, all of them active or powered models. There’s a practical reason for this. I don’t have a dedicated music room, and our living room isn’t big enough to accommodate a conventional audio system of separate components: sources, amplifiers, and passive speakers. So the music systems in our current home have been built around active speakers -- first, Dynaudio’s Focus 200 XD, which, following a firmware update, is sonically and functionally identical to the newer Focus 20 XD ($5999/pair, all prices USD); and, later, Elac’s Navis ARF-51 ($4599.98/pair).

Reviewers' ChoiceIn the past few years, the French speaker maker Focal has had an amazing run on SoundStage!. Reviewed by Diego Estan on SoundStage! Access, the Chora 806 ($990/pair, all prices USD) received a Reviewers’ Choice award, and was later designated a Recommended Reference Component. The same honors were bestowed on Focal’s Stellia headphones ($2990), reviewed by Brent Butterworth on SoundStage! Solo; and on the Spectral 40th floorstanding speakers ($9990/pair) and Sopra No1 minimonitors ($9990/pair), both reviewed by Diego for SoundStage! Hi-Fi. The Spectral 40th was also named a SoundStage! Network 2019 Product of the Year in the Hall of Fame category. That’s a mighty impressive record.

When I reviewed Elac’s Navis ARF-51 active floorstanding speakers ($4599.96/pair, all prices USD) in September 2019, I rediscovered something I’d been missing for the previous six years: kick-ass bass.

When computer audio took off, a decade ago, many hobbyists opted to use active studio monitors, rather than the usual amplifier and passive speakers. It’s not hard to see why. Especially for desktop audio, where space is at a premium, speakers with built-in amps are convenient.

Do you need a powerhouse computer just to play music? Not everyone does -- I use a nine-year-old, mid-tier Apple Mac Mini, and it does just fine. I’ve modified it for music playback, swapping out its spinning hard-disk drive for a solid-state drive (SSD), and bumping up its RAM from 4 to 16GB, so that music plays from memory rather than storage.

Can an audio component be more than the sum of its parts? Bryston’s new BDA-3.14 streaming DAC-preamp ($4195, all prices USD) invites that question. Essentially, it combines two products on one chassis: the acclaimed BDA-3 DAC ($3795) and a network streamer based on the BDP-Pi ($1495). The BDP-Pi derives its name from the Raspberry Pi single-board computer at its core. Hence the model number of the new integrated product -- 3.14 is an approximation of the mathematical constant pi (π), denoting the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter.

Many of the products I’ve recently reviewed for Simplifi have been DACs with built-in streamers -- most recently, Bryston’s BDA-3.14 ($4195, all prices USD) and iFi Audio’s Pro iDSD ($2749); and, before that, NAD’s Classic C 658 ($1649), Lumin’s T2 ($4500), and Naim Audio’s ND5 XS 2 ($3495).

In my last three columns, I wrote about how streaming is changing the ways people discover and experience music. In my January feature, “The State of Streaming,” I looked at streaming services that deliver lossless CD-resolution and high-resolution music. In “The Name Game,” published February 1, I wrote about how streaming has given rise to whole new classes of audio components, and set out to establish some definitions. And in my March feature, “Rules of the Game,” I discussed the software protocols that enable these new components to talk to one another, and compared their benefits and drawbacks.

A half-century ago, when I got into audio, most amplifiers had front panels that looked like jet cockpits. And the higher a model was in its manufacturer’s product line, the more knobs and switches it had.

Is there a hobby that’s less domesticated than home theater? Ever since people began connecting their TVs to their stereos in the late 1970s, audio manufacturers have been encouraging them to add more and more speakers -- and it’s gotten a bit crazy.

Reviewers' ChoiceLast November in Warsaw, Poland, at the Audio Video Show 2019, I saw several products that fit Simplifi’s mandate to cover “convenient, lifestyle-oriented hi-fi,” many of which I knew I wanted to get in for review. At the top of the list were two new active loudspeakers from Danish Audiophile Loudspeaker Industries (DALI): the Rubicon 2 C stand-mount ($5799/pair, all prices USD) and the Rubicon 6 C floorstander ($7999/pair). DALI’s passive Rubicon models are just one tier below their flagship Epicon series, so the prospect of reviewing these new active versions was mighty appealing.

  1. Rules of the Game
  2. Pro-Ject Audio Systems Pre Box RS2 Digital DAC-Preamp-Headphone Amp
  3. Klipsch RW-51M Wireless Powered Loudspeakers
  4. The Name Game
  5. iFi Audio Aurora Wireless Music System
  6. Naim Audio Mu-so Qb 2nd Generation Wireless Music System
  7. January 1, 2020: The State of Streaming
  8. Cambridge Audio CXA81 Integrated Amplifier-DAC
  9. Warsaw’s Audio Video Show 2019, Simplifi’d
  10. Hegel Music Systems H120 Integrated Amplifier-DAC
  11. DALI Katch One Soundbar
  12. NAD Classic C 658 BluOS Streaming DAC
  13. Toronto Audiofest 2019, Simplifi'd
  14. Kanto Audio Tuk Powered Loudspeakers
  15. Hi-Rez à-Go-Go
  16. Lumin T2 Network Music Player
  17. Naim Audio ND5 XS 2 Network Music Player
  18. Elac Navis ARF-51 Active Loudspeakers
  19. Streaming the Classics
  20. Devialet Phantom Reactor 900 Active Loudspeakers
  21. Play Nice Together -- An Interview with Rob Darling of Roon Labs
  22. PMC result6 Active Loudspeakers
  23. Bowers & Wilkins Formation Duo Active Loudspeakers
  24. Active Voices, Part Three: KEF's Jack Oclee-Brown
  25. Naim Audio Mu-so 2nd Generation Wireless Music System
  26. McIntosh Laboratory MTI100 Integrated Turntable
  27. High End 2019, Simplifi'd
  28. Yamaha WXA-50 MusicCast Streaming Amplifier
  29. NAD Masters M10 BluOS Streaming Integrated Amplifier
  30. Active Voices, Part Two: Axiom Audio's Andrew Welker
  31. Primare SC15 Prisma Streaming DAC-Preamp
  32. Montréal Audio Fest Simplifi'd
  33. Naim Uniti Core CD Ripper/Music Server
  34. Elac Navis ARB-51 Active Loudspeakers
  35. Active Voices, Part One: Elac's Andrew Jones
  36. Bluesound Pulse 2i Wireless Speaker
  37. SVS Prime Wireless Active Speakers
  38. Let's Keep it Simple
  39. Totem Acoustic Kin Play Powered Speakers
  40. A Roon of One's Own
  41. KEF LSX Active Loudspeakers
  42. Bluesound Vault 2i CD Ripper-Server-Streamer
  43. Pro-Ject Stream Box S2 Ultra Music Streamer
  44. How I Simplifi'd My Wi-Fi
  45. Kii Audio Three DSP-Controlled Active Loudspeakers
  46. Aurender S5W Battery-Powered Wireless Active Loudspeakers
  47. Are Downloads Dead?
  48. Cambridge Audio Yoyo (L) Wireless Speaker
  49. Hi-Rez Streaming: Tidal vs. Qobuz
  50. DALI Callisto 2 C Active Speaker System
  51. Toronto Audiofest 2018 Simplifi'd
  52. Kanto SYD Bluetooth Speaker
  53. LG G7 ThinQ Smartphone
  54. How I Simplifi'd My Hi-Fi
  55. Pro-Ject Juke Box E Turntable-Integrated Amplifier
  56. Time to Celebrate: Five Years of Google Chromecast
  57. NAD D 3020 V2 Bluetooth Integrated Amplifier-DAC
  58. How Good Can Voice Recognition Get?
  59. Polk Assist Wi-Fi Smart Speaker
  60. Are Smart Speakers Any Good for Audiophiles?
  61. MartinLogan Unison Wireless Preamplifier
  62. High End 2018, Simplifi'd
  63. Dynaudio Music 7 Wi-Fi Speaker
  64. Musical Fidelity M6 Encore 225 Music System
  65. Cocktail Audio X35 Music System
  66. Is the Smart Speaker a Dumb Idea?
  67. Peachtree Audio decco125 Sky Integrated Amplifier-DAC
  68. Technics Ottava f SC-C70 Music System
  69. What's Up with Apple AirPlay 2?
  70. JBL Link 500 Wi-Fi Speaker
  71. The Spotify Dilemma
  72. Trinnov Amethyst DAC-Preamplifier-Processor
  73. Control4 Triad One Streaming Amplifier
  74. Elac Discovery Z3 Wi-Fi Speaker
  75. CES 2018, Simplifi’d
  76. Klipsch Heritage Wireless Three Wi-Fi Speaker
  77. Farewell, CES
  78. Paradigm PW 300 Wi-Fi Loudspeakers
  79. Thiel Audio Aurora Home Wi-Fi Speaker
  80. Room Tunes
  81. Hegel Music Systems H190 DAC-Integrated Amplifier
  82. Social Streaming
  83. Yamaha R-N803 Network Stereo Receiver
  84. Onkyo TX-8270 Network Stereo Receiver
  85. CEDIA 2017, Simplifi’d
  86. Dynaudio Focus 20 XD Active Loudspeakers
  87. Riva Audio Festival Wi-Fi Speaker
  88. Naim Audio Uniti Atom Wireless Streaming DAC-Integrated Amplifier
  89. Classical Prime Time
  90. NAD Masters Series M50.2 Digital Music Player
  91. Bryston BryFi BW-1 Wi-Fi Speaker
  92. The Röst Reconsidered
  93. Arcam rPlay Music Streamer
  94. Auralic Polaris Wireless Streaming DAC-Integrated Amplifier
  95. High End 2017, Simplifi'd
  96. Simaudio Moon Neo ACE DAC-Streamer-Integrated Amplifier
  97. Vinyl: There's an App for That
  98. Metadata: Life with Roon
  99. NAD C 368 DAC-Integrated Amplifier
  100. The Internet and Audio: The Good, the Bad, and the Impossible
  101. Lumin M1 Integrated Amplifier-Network Music Player
  102. Arcam Solo Music DAC-Integrated Amplifier-Universal Player
  103. McIntosh Laboratory RS100 Wi-Fi Loudspeakers
  104. The State of Streaming
  105. Hegel Music Systems Röst Integrated Amplifier
  106. CES 2017, Simplifi'd
  107. Naim Audio Mu-so Qb Wi-Fi Speaker
  108. Why "Simplifi"
  109. Bang & Olufsen BeoSound 2 Wi-Fi Speaker