SoundStage! Ultra | SoundStageUltra.com
Network Hub Buying Guides Newsletter Signup Advertisers' Index
Shunyata Research
Shunyata Research
Sunday, August 17, 2025
  • Equipment
  • Features
      • Back
      • Opinion
      • For the Record
      • In Good Company
      • Recording of the Month
      • General Interest & Interviews
      • Off the Cuff
      • Richard Freed's Keepers
          • Back
          • UltraAudio.com Articles (Archived)
          • SoundStageHiFi.com (Current)
  • TWBAS
  • Videos
  • Our Sites
      • Back
      • SoundStage! Network (portal)
      • SoundStage! Access
      • SoundStage! Australia
      • SoundStage! Global
      • SoundStage! Hi-Fi
      • SoundStage! Life (podcast)
      • SoundStage! Simplifi
      • SoundStage! Solo
      • SoundStage! TV
      • SoundStage! Ultra (here)
      • SoundStage! Xperience

Newest Updates

  • Van Halen Fireworks—More Mobile Fidelity Reissues!
  • Ortofon MC X40 Moving-Coil Phono Cartridge
  • Be Careful What You Wish For
  • Goldring Ethos SE Moving-Coil Phono Cartridge
  • Silver Everywhere: Sliding in More Siltech
  • Bowers & Wilkins 805 D4 Signature Loudspeaker
  • Stunned into Indecision at High End 2025—European Audio Team to the Rescue
  • Tariffs—Stingin’ Like a Sumbitch!

Most Popular Last 120 Days

  • Siltech Royal Single Crown Speaker Cable
  • My Favorite Analog Accessories
  • Many Boxes of Luxury: Siltech’s Royal Single Crown Cables
  • Bowers & Wilkins 805 D4 Signature Loudspeaker
  • Audiovector Trapeze Reimagined Loudspeaker
  • Tariffs—Stingin’ Like a Sumbitch!
  • Goldring Ethos SE Moving-Coil Phono Cartridge
  • Silver Everywhere: Sliding in More Siltech
Vitus Audio
Vinnie Rossi Brama
Bryston BP-19
Hegel

Legacy link:
legacy_200w
This new site was launched in July 2010. Visit the older site to access previous articles by clicking above.

Bryston
Gryphon Audio Essence
Wilson
Treble Clef Audio
Wilson

Luxman D-03X CD Player

Written by: Jeff Sirody
Category: Full-Length Reviews
Created: 15 September 2021

Reviewers' ChoiceI’m an old-school kind of guy when it comes to audio. I like the physical medium, be it analog or digital. I want to see and handle the disc, read the liner notes, and appreciate the artwork or pictures that come with a recording. Luxman is old school, too—literally. Founded in 1925, this Japanese company has been making high-quality audio products ever since.

Read more …

Material Obsession: Sonus Faber's Maxima Amator

Written by: Jeff Fritz
Category: Opinion
Created: 01 September 2021

High-end audio is about the faithful reproduction of music. But high-end audio gear is about other things, too, such as materials and their applications in audio components. If we’re talking about speakers, those materials could consist of anything from wood to composites to fiberglass and carbon fiber, or metals such as aluminum, and even pours such as concrete.

Read more …

Hemingway Audio Cable Z-core Alpha, Beta, and Sigma Power Cords

Written by: Howard Kneller
Category: Full-Length Reviews
Created: 01 September 2021

Hemingway Audio Cable’s website bills the brand’s product as “The best audio cable ever created.” Reminiscent of slogans by companies like YG Acoustics (“The best speaker on earth”), ESS Laboratories (“Sound as clear as light”), and Kyron Audio (“The ultimate music experience”), this audacious assessment reminds us that the marketing claims of many audiophile companies aren’t exactly understated. Still, my friend Dave, an audiophile and cable aficionado, strongly advised me to audition Hemingway’s Z-core power cords.

Read more …

Los Lobos: "Native Sons"

Written by: Joseph Taylor
Category: Recording of the Month
Created: 01 September 2021

New West Records NW5514
Format: LP

Musical Performance: ****
Sound Quality: ***½
Overall Enjoyment: ****

Los Lobos are well respected for the quality of their songwriting, but throughout their career they’ve also excelled at bringing a fresh take to covers of other songwriters’ material. Their discography includes tribute albums to artists as varied as Fats Domino, the Grateful Dead, and Doc Pomus, and their recording of Ritchie Valens’s “La Bamba” was a big hit for them in 1987. Their EP Ride This (2004) comprised covers of seven songs by musicians and songwriters who had appeared on the concurrently released Los Lobos album, The Ride, including Dave Alvin, Elvis Costello, and Richard Thompson.

Read more …

SPL Director Mk2 Preamplifier-DAC

Written by: Aron Garrecht
Category: Full-Length Reviews
Created: 15 August 2021

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

Reviewers' ChoiceWhen I first laid eyes on the Director Mk2 preamplifier-DAC from Sound Performance Lab (aka SPL), it reminded me of a military-spec ham radio. Small yet built like a tank, it sports at the center of its faceplate a large Volume knob. At upper left is a small, red dot-matrix display, and at upper right two needle VU meters and a Standby/On toggle. At lower left is a smaller knob for selecting Mute or one of its 11 inputs, and at lower right are two toggle switches, labeled Tape Monitor Off/On and VU. The Director Mk2 is small—11″W x 4″H x 11.8″D—and weighs just 13 pounds, yet somehow exudes presence. In my many years of reviewing audio equipment, I’ve never seen such a small yet intriguing-looking preamplifier-DAC. It costs $3599 (all prices USD).

Read more …

Edgar Villchur's Place in Hi-Fi History Is Set—for All Time

Written by: Jeff Fritz
Category: Opinion
Created: 01 August 2021

Recently I happened on Herb Reichert’s review of Harbeth’s Monitor 30.2 40th Anniversary Edition loudspeaker, originally published in the April 2018 issue of Stereophile. In it, Reichert states, “Many a day, I think Edgar Villchur, inventor of the acoustic-suspension loudspeaker and the dome tweeter, ruined audio, and that audiophiles will never stop denying how artificially colored the sounds of domes and cones in boxes really are.” I hope Herb’s tongue was planted firmly in his cheek when he wrote those words, but they don’t read that way to me.

Read more …

Helius Designs Viridia Turntable and Phaedra Tonearm

Written by: Garrett Hongo
Category: Full-Length Reviews
Created: 01 August 2021

Every so often something comes along that changes everything. In childhood, the new kid gets a yo-yo, you go to a drive-in and there’s pizza during the intermission, you visit Yosemite National Park for the first time, the Beatles are on Ed Sullivan, and your father finally fires up the Dynakit Stereo 70 he’s been building and the lavish music makes the drab living room disappear. As an adult, transformative moments in audio happen so rarely that you grow used to mere incremental improvements, but then the faded pastel of your listening experience is blasted away by the bold colors of something truly radiant. The Helius Designs Viridia turntable and Phaedra tonearm were just that for me, and I’m still basking in their glories.

Read more …

Curtis Amy & Dupree Bolton: "Katanga!"

Written by: Joseph Taylor
Category: Recording of the Month
Created: 01 August 2021

Pacific Jazz Records/Blue Note Records ST-70/B0032877-01
Format: LP

Musical Performance: ****½
Sound Quality: ****½
Overall Enjoyment: ****½

If you’re a vinyl lover and a jazz fan, this is a great time to be alive. Blue Note Records has its Tone Poet and Classic Vinyl series, while Acoustic Sounds and Verve Records are collaborating to reissue titles from Verve, Impulse! Records, and other labels held by Universal Music Enterprises that don’t fall under the Blue Note umbrella. I’ve covered quite a few releases from all three reissue series here, and I had been planning to look elsewhere this month to mix things up until I played Katanga!, a Tone Poet reissue of a 1963 Pacific Jazz session co-led by Curtis Amy and Dupree Bolton.

Read more …

SPL Performer m1000 Monoblock Amplifiers

Written by: Aron Garrecht
Category: Full-Length Reviews
Created: 15 July 2021

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

Sound Performance Lab (SPL) is based in Niederkrüchten, in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, and has manufactured professional and home audio gear since 1983. With a deep background in studio mastering, SPL founder and chief designer Wolfgang Neumann got the idea of starting his own company while managing a recording studio in rural Germany in the late 1970s. In those days, the US dollar was valued at roughly 3.5 times the deutschmark, and importing US-made studio gear wasn’t cheap. This led Neumann to begin the tinkering that ultimately convinced him he could design and build better-sounding products and sell them at prices significantly below those of imported US equivalents. By 1983, he’d begun selling his products under the SPL brand, but struggled with distribution until, in 1985, he met Hermann Gier.

Read more …

Buying Guide: Your Dream Superspeakers at a Bargain Price

Written by: Jeff Fritz
Category: Opinion
Created: 01 July 2021

All else being equal, newer is generally better—a conclusion I recently came to (and not for the first time) after another round of car shopping. I’d rather have a newer-model car than the outgoing model, if only for the former’s updated infotainment systems: these days, at least for a family such as mine, with two teenagers, Apple’s CarPlay is a necessity. And newer vehicles offer other, more basic advantages: greater fuel efficiency, improved safety features, and better build quality all around.

Read more …

  1. MSB Technology Premier Digital-to-Analog Converter
  2. Ray Charles: "Genius + Soul = Jazz"
  3. Siltech Classic Legend 680L Speaker Cables
  4. Building a Supersystem Around Magico Speakers and MSB Technology Electronics
  5. Magico A5 Loudspeakers
  6. Steve Cropper: "Fire It Up"
  7. Allnic Audio: Humble Excellence
  8. Allnic Audio L-9000 OTL/OCL Preamplifier
  9. What Matters Most in an Audio System: The Loudspeaker Drive Unit
  10. MSB Technology S202 Stereo Amplifier

Page 20 of 49

  • 15
  • 16
  • 17
  • 18
  • 19
  • 20
  • 21
  • 22
  • 23
  • 24
210x600 T+A R Criterion S (20240601)
Dynaudio Confidence 20A
 Electrocompaniet - AW300M
Simaudio

Vitus Audio
Vitus Audio

SoundStage! Ultra is part of
SoundStage!

All contents available on this website are copyrighted by SoundStage!® and Schneider Publishing Inc., unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved.

This site was designed by Rocket Theme, Karen Fanas, and The SoundStage! Network.
To contact us, please e-mail info@soundstagenetwork.com

To Top