I honestly can’t remember how I learned about Pratherteam, but I’m glad I did. I looked around its website and really liked its approach so I requested a review sample of its handsome Walnut Record Rack-Model CFM ($95, or £72 and AU$126 roughly converted) LP storage unit, which holds up to 40 LPs. Brit and husband …

SPL stands for Sound Performance Lab, and it’s been making professional recording gear in Germany since the late 1970s, but to be honest I’d never heard of them. No matter — when I spotted their slick-looking Phonitor X headphone amp at the Axpona audio show I just had to get it in for review. I admit I just have a …

There’s no better way to put it, the Koss Porta Pro on-ear headphone is beloved, and now with the new Bluetooth version, I have a feeling a lot more people will fall in love with this little ‘phone. The Koss Porta Pro has been around for 34 years with only minor changes. It’s as iconic as a budget priced headphone …

Where to begin? The PS Audio Sprout 100 is an update of the original Sprout, which was the first affordable amp from a high-end manufacturer. The first model showed a lot of promise, so what’s been changed? With the new one, there’s a doubling of the amp’s Class D power to 100 watts per channel into hard-to-drive 4 ohm speakers, …

The Abyss Diana headphone is a radical performer, but given the company’s history that was to be expected. The original Abyss, the AB-1266, hit me like a ton of bricks when I first heard it in 2013, and it remains the best-sounding headphone I’ve heard. It delivers the biggest, out-of-my-head soundstage, the deepest, best defined bass, and hyper transparency. When …

Tekton Design is an American speaker company that has been making highly original designs for 12 years, but it’s only now with the introduction of the Impact Monitor and Double Impact tower speakers that Tekton is breaking through to a wider audience that might have bought Bowers & Wilkins, Dynaudio, ELAC, Harbeth, or KEF speakers. The Impact Monitors run $2,000 a …

Emotiva is one of those American companies best known for its outstanding price to performance ratio designs. Take their BasX TA-100 stereo integrated amplifier. This handsome low profile design houses a Class AB power section rated at 50 watts per channel for 8 ohm speakers, and 90 watts per for harder to drive 4 ohm speakers. Class A/B amplifier circuitry …

It came as something of a shock to hear Shure is getting out of the phono cartridge business at a time when turntable and LP sales are booming. Shure announced all phono cartridge models will be discontinued, but Shure’s microphone and headphone production is unaffected.   It’s a safe guess to assume most folks have at one time or another …

Magico speakers live in the upper strata of high-end audio, and nearly every time I hear a Magico I’m moved by the experience. The company, founded in 2004, has consistently been in the leading edge of American speaker design, but the last time I reviewed a Magico was in 2011. It was the tiny Q1 bookshelf speaker. Enlarge Image The …

It’s a funny thing, the ongoing turntable sales surge shows no signs of slowing down, but nearly all new music is recorded digitally. It seems like a contradiction, turntables and LPs are purely analog in nature, but nearly all new (not remastered LPs) made over the last 30+ years were recorded, mixed, and mastered from digital sources. Older, pre 1980 …