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Sunday, June 15, 2025

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This new site was launched in July 2010. Visit the older site to access previous articles by clicking above.

Ultra Audio's site platform was changed in August 2010. For equipment reviews previous to that, use this link to transfer to the old site.

: Written by: Jonathan Gorse; Created: 15 November 2024

Reviewers' Choice Origins

The vinyl era dates back to 1948, when Columbia Records issued the very first 33rpm LP, a recording of Felix Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E Minor, with soloist Nathan Milstein and the New York Philharmonic Orchestra under Bruno Walter. But it wasn’t until the mid-1960s that the challenge of keeping records clean was seriously addressed. That happened when Percy Wilson, then technical editor of the UK classical-music magazine Gramophone, wrote a series of papers on the subject for the Audio Engineering Society.

: Written by: Jason Thorpe; Created: 01 November 2024

Reviewers' Choice At Munich’s High End 2024, I spent an inordinate amount of time browsing the European Audio Team display. Their booth was encircled with turntables and tube electronics, two 20th-century technologies with which I’ve had a long-standing love affair. My relationship with EAT goes back eight years, to 2016, when I reviewed the company’s C-Major turntable. I got a real charge out of that ’table, out of its combination of visual low-slung elegance and excellent sound quality.

: Written by: Aron Garrecht; Created: 01 October 2024

Note: for the full suite of measurements from the SoundStage! Audio-Electronics Lab, click here.

Reviewers' Choice The term “integrated product” can mean many things in the audio industry. In browsing through the North Collection of components on Simaudio’s website, you will find several integrated products differentiated by number-based identifiers, each positioned opposite its functional counterpart. The 641 integrated amplifier ($11,000, all prices in USD) and matching 681 streaming DAC ($12,000) are the most wallet-friendly products in the North Collection. The 700 series, comprising the 761 power amplifier ($14,000) and 791 streaming preamplifier ($16,000), delivers a step up in performance and complexity. The flagships are the 861 power amplifier ($22,000) and 891 streaming preamplifier ($25,000), the latter of which is the subject of this review.

: Written by: Phil Gold; Created: 15 September 2024

Note: for the full suite of measurements from the SoundStage! Audio-Electronics Lab, click here.

Scandinavia is home to many highly regarded audio companies, but most are located in Sweden and Denmark. Norway has just a few well-known makes, including Electrocompaniet, Hegel Music Systems, and SEAS. Hegel and Electrocompaniet are both active in electronics, while SEAS makes speaker drivers for speaker manufacturers.

: Written by: Jonathan Gorse; Created: 01 September 2024

Note: measurements taken in the anechoic chamber at Canada's National Research Council can be found through this link.

Founded in 2020, Perlisten Audio is a relatively new entrant on the high-end audio scene. The firm was established by a team of industry veterans with the goal of manufacturing high-performing loudspeaker systems to rival the best at their price points. The first model was the S7t, a tall, four-way loudspeaker which utilizes several relatively small bass drivers to deliver satisfying bass extension in a slender design. Priced at around $20,000 per pair (all prices in USD), the S7t distinguished itself sufficiently well from the surrounding mass of competing designs to win several audio awards. From there, the firm has expanded its range to offer a wider range of options.

: Written by: Jason Thorpe; Created: 01 August 2024

My father and his parents—my grandparents (obviously)—were kind, generous, inoffensive people. They wouldn’t say shit if they had a mouth full of it.

: Written by: Jason Thorpe; Created: 15 July 2024

We’re on an analog roll here at SoundStage! Ultra. In the past couple of months, we’ve reviewed the Thales TTT-Compact II turntable system and the matching X-quisite Voro cartridge, the Musical Fidelity M8xTT and Vertere Acoustics MG-1 turntables, and the Audio-Technica AT-ART20 cartridge. I’ve kept up the pace with the first installment of my VPI Prime Signature tonearm upgrade path and thrown in some analog love from European Audio Team.

: Written by: Jonathan Gorse; Created: 01 July 2024

In 2023 I visited Vertere Acoustics, a small London-based manufacturer of turntables and related products. The company was founded in 2006 by mechanical engineer and turntable designer Touraj Moghaddam after he separated from Roksan, a company he had cofounded some 20 years earlier. Roksan achieved early success with Moghaddam’s first turntable design, the Xerxes, which is still in production, after many iterations, and is still highly regarded.

: Written by: Jason Thorpe; Created: 15 June 2024

The Swiss know how to make high-quality, compact machines. They own the high-end automatic watch market, right? Every year, a Swiss manufacturer like Audemars Piguet brings out a new complication—movement—that contains even more parts, does more crazy computations, that never needs resetting for leap years, the orbit of Neptune, Easter, all that stuff. I own an Omega Speedmaster watch, and it doesn’t do any real tricks. It’s a NASA-approved chronograph, so I can time my steaks superbly to ensure they’re medium rare every time, but other than that, all it does is tell the time with great accuracy. I have seen this watch with the back cover removed, and there’s a whole world in there—gears, levers, springs—all manufactured with insane precision. Switzerland is the land of miniaturization.

: Written by: Jonathan Gorse; Created: 01 June 2024

Note: for the full suite of measurements from the SoundStage! Audio-Electronics Lab, click here.

Reviewers' Choice The NAP 350 is the third and final component of Naim Audio’s 300 series to be evaluated here on SoundStage! Ultra.

Naim has an illustrious history of amplifier manufacture, but the vast majority of its power amplifiers to date have been stereo designs. Perhaps the firm’s most famous mono power amplifier was the legendary NAP 135, which first emerged in 1984 and became established as a more powerful alternative to the stereo NAP 250. In active guise, a sextet of NAP 135s could be assembled into a magnificent “six-pack” active system to drive three-way speakers such as Naim’s cavernous DBL.