When I first set eyes on the Koss KTX Pro 1 headphones I wasn’t expecting much. The silver plastic on-ear has an all-too-generic look, but as soon as I started listening the sound had my full attention; they were very decent! Most cheap on-ears sound claustrophobic and pinched, but the KTX Pro 1’s sound was …

William Kentridge‘s “The Refusal of Time” (2012) creates its own environment through the ever-morphing, large-format videos depicting the collision of technology, social upheaval, and industry. The five videos display a series of scenes, texts, shifting diagrams and papers, and laborers shown in silhouette marching across the screens. Music and voices come from eight speakers — four large JBL studio monitors …

I’m a big fan of music documentaries, but “The Wrecking Crew: The Untold Story of Rock & Roll Heroes” is easily the best I’ve seen in years. The band was made up of LA studio pros who would show up for a 3- or 4-hour session, and produce hit after hit. Their biggest successes came in the 1960s and 1970s, …

I go way back with NAD amplifiers; I sold dozens of NAD’s 3020 amps in the late 1970s and early 1980s when I was working as a high-end audio salesman. The 3020 lacked the visual pizzazz of the Sony, Onkyo, Pioneer, and Yamaha amps of the time, but the 3020 was hailed by critics and consumers as the best-sounding budget …

My advice to speaker shoppers who prioritize sound quality is go for a good set of big speakers. They conjure the sound of music more realistically than tiny ones. I know all too well that most folks settle for something smaller, and usually it’s a case of the smaller, the better. That’s why designers are always trying to get bigger …

I was smitten with the Coffman Labs G1-A stereo preamplifier, even before I heard it make a sound. I’d seen pictures of the preamp online and it looked fine, but once I saw it in person I knew it was one of the most beautiful audio components on the market. The feel of the control knobs and the metalwork’s fit …

When I first spotted the Sony MDR SA5000 headphones at a local Head-Fi meeting in Bayside, Queens, my first impression was that it was eerily similar to Sennheiser’s HD 800 headphones. The MDR SA5000 is clearly derived from Sony’s old flagship $3,000 Qualia Q10 headphones; both Sonys were first announced in 2004. The HD 800 was introduced in 2009. The …

I’ve always had a lot of audiophile friends, based in part on our shared common fascination with the sound of music. Sound appreciation and owning a great hi-fi definitely aren’t essential to enjoy tunes, but the connection to music can feel stronger when you focus on the sound, the sound the musicians worked on for weeks or months to get …

It wasn’t that long ago that desktop “computer” audio was synonymous with awful-sounding, cheap ‘n’ cheerful plastic speakers, but over the last few years Audioengine, Emotiva, Adam Audio, and many others started making seriously good high-quality monitors, with prices starting around $200 a pair. I mostly focus on desktop speakers a la carte, but this time out I’m checking out …

Last weekend in NYC John La Grou was a keynote speaker at the Audio Engineering Society convention. He based some of his assumptions about how recorded music will evolve on Moore’s Law, which states that the number of transistors squeezed onto integrated circuits doubles approximately every two years. That prediction was made in 1965, and if anything, Moore underestimated the …