Most of today’s bands view recordings as promotional tools for their concerts, they have to stay on the road to make a living. That’s just the way it is, but they make a lot fewer records than bands did before, and since most recordings lose money, studio time is limited and budgets are shrinking. That’s …

Up until recently the classic, five-speaker home theater setup, with three front speakers — left, center, and right, plus two surround speakers, and a subwoofer — was the de facto home theater standard. According to Dolby, surround speakers should be placed to the sides and slightly behind your couch or main listening position. If you want to step up to …

The Magico Ultimate is now in its third revision, and runs close to $600,000 a pair, too bad you didn’t jump on the originals back in 2004, when they were just $229,000! The original and current Ultimate speakers share the same “horns,” the megaphone-like pieces that sit in front of the drivers, but the new speaker has redesigned drivers, crossover …

Take a good look at the picture of the Equator D5 desktop speaker. Do you see anything unusual about its design? Where’s the tweeter? Look closer, there it is — right in the center of the woofer! The D5’s “coaxial” driver combines the tweeter and woofer into a single driver, and that’s really cool. Equator didn’t invent this type of …

It’s got to be the No. 1 audiophile fantasy: someday we’ll have a breakthrough that allows speakers to perfectly reproduce sound. Once the engineers find a new way of moving air — presumably a more accurate method than a vibrating cone, dome, or flat diaphragm — the heavens will part and we’ll suddenly hear the sound of real instruments and …

Steve Guttenberg/CNET Subwoofers are used in most home theater systems, but subs can also radically improve the sound of stereo systems — and not just the ones with small speakers. Subs can provide a foundation to the sound that few speakers can muster on their own. So adding a sub is not just about adding more and deeper bass; rather, …

I met Julie Glick a few months ago with some folks from Ultimate Ears at a Head-Fi meeting in NY. UE was promoting a new set of custom-molded in-ear headphones, the Personal Reference Monitors, which are just now entering full production. In her NYC office, Glick can fully demonstrate these unique headphones, which are not only custom-molded to your ears …

August 29, 2012: This is an update of my subwoofer setup article from 2008. Merely buying a great subwoofer is no guarantee that you’ll wind up with great bass. There are too many ways to squander its performance potential, and that’s why putting in the extra effort to achieve proper subwoofer setup is crucial. This two-part guide will help you …

Moon Audio claims the Signature Titan was designed to outperform any speaker system in the world. It’s a strictly limited edition of three pairs, and each pair is hand-signed by the designer. Each pair will also be named after its buyer and once the third pair is built, the Signature Titan is history. Even by high-end audio standards the pricing …

Merely buying a great subwoofer is no guarantee you’ll wind up with great bass. There are too many ways to squander its performance potential, that’s why putting in the extra effort to achieve proper subwoofer set-up is crucial. This guide will tell you everything you need to know about getting the most from your subwoofer once you bring it home. …