The Absolute Sound Podcast

That said, for those of you who have a budget that could accommodate the JCAT XACT S1 Evo Server at $18,600 US or for those of you who are genuinely curious about the state-of-the-art in audio streaming, you’re gonna wanna stick around while I share what I heard when listening to this refined bit of kit.

This video is sponsored by: https://www.devialet.com/en-us/amplifiers/?srsltid=AfmBOopMaf_et8mOEEL6rCtYelUeonyPqFg9RVuBdr2cWi...

Last year I built a new listening room. From the ground up. In part, this is the story of that process, but much more I have tried here to organize what I learned so that it is also instructive for music lovers and audiophiles who want to get more out of their current rooms. So, you don’t have to build a new room or complete a new building like I did to get a lot of value from this. I hope.

This is a long one. Acoustics is a co...

If there's one job for soundbars, it's to deliver deep bass. That's the Achille's Heel of every single big screen TV. In that sense the Devialet Dione does its job admirably, but it does much more than that, delivering a musicality that most other manufacturers surely are envious of... tune in to learn more!

00:00 Devialet Dione

00:57 Overview

02:11 Specs & Design

04:58 Sound Quality

10:59 Dolby Atmos

13:21 Summary

T...

The Boulder 1162 is an amplifier at a price point where you would expect excellence, and indeed you get it. Also, at this price point details matter because there are other excellent amps both below and above this segment of the market. Let’s take a look.

This video i sponsored by: https://www.theabsolutesound.com/articles/the-absolute-sounds-review-methodology-first-principles/

00:00 Boulder 1162

01:29 Overview

04:45 Sou...

Being one of the long established companies in specialist high-end, Audio Research has enjoyed quite a reputation for tube equipment since its founding in 1970. Only a fraction of the models they have produced over the years have been solid-state, though half of the 6 new model introductions are this year. How does the I/70 stack up compared to their other tried-and-true amplifiers? Tune in to find out...

This video is sponsored...

Anyone that’s been to an audio show in the last five years has likely run across a system from Audio Group Denmark, the Scandinavian company founded by former Raidho designers Lars Kristensen and Michael Børresen that is a union of four hifi brands: Ansuz, Aavik, Børresen and Axxess. Audio Group Denmark have marketed themselves heavily as being at the cutting edge of technology across amplification, speaker design, and accessories ...

If you've been following high-end audio for any length of time, you know GoldenEar has carved out this interesting niche. They're not playing the same game as everyone else in regards to what the traditional 2 channel configuration looks like in a number of their designs. While some speaker companies are still arguing about whether you need a subwoofer or not, GoldenEar basically said "what if we just built it into the tower and ca...

So, this review has been a long time coming, ARCAM announced their new flagship streaming integrated amplifier at High End Munich in May of 2024 and released the 5th Generation Class-G amplifier in fall of the same year. This dynamic titan is certainly indicative of a company who focuses on perfecting past products, while simultaneously incorporating new technologies into cost effective packages. Stick around while I share my liste...

From Thomas Tan: When I was asked to review the Pink Faun Scion streamer transport, I felt both excited and a little uneasy. Excited because this is a $20,000 machine. A serious piece of audio engineering. And easy because the science is purely a streamer with no DAC. And I wonder whether it could really sound different from a $200 streamer. After all, in theory, a streamer is just sending ones and zero to the DAC, so how could it ...

Big screen TVs are notorious for having really minuscule or poor sound quality. That's because just the dimensions of them dictate the fact that you can't fit a huge speaker into a thin LCD or OLED big screen TV, so soundbars are supposed to be a convenient solution to that one piece of equipment that can bring expansive sound in that immersive, enveloping quality to the soundtrack of a movie or even a TV show.

KEF, known for t...

Chesky Audio is a relatively new company. Today I’ll be reviewing their second speaker model, the LC2. Like the original LC1, the LC2 features a compact 3D-printed monocoque cabinet, with a 2-way design using dual side-mounted passive radiators. It is priced at $1995per pair, including shipping in the US. That specification seems pretty ho-hum, and this price point might lead to modest expectations. But! Those understandable expect...

A couple of months back, Tom Martin reviewed the Sound Lab G7-7C – the G5-4C’s big brother (although still not the largest speaker Sound Lab makes). In that video, Tom did such a fabulous job getting into the technical minutia of Sound Lab speakers that there’s likely nothing beneficial I could add to that. I would recommend going back to that video to get a clearer overview of Sound Lab’s design principles and processes.

Here,...

Welcome to this edition of Recordings of the Month. Here we recommend recordings that our audio reviewers have enjoyed. They may be new recordings or older recordings that we have recently discovered. Sometimes, they are recordings our reviewers have come to appreciate more and more as they use them in audio review work.

This video is sponsored by: https://www.mofielectronics.com/products/mofi-electronics-masterdeck-turntable

T+A elektroakustic is a venerable German company with extensive engineering and manufacturing capabilities for speakers, amplifiers, D/A converters, turntables and headphones. The Criterion Series S240 which is our review subject, are part of the T+A Criterion range of speakers, each of which uses transmission line loading for the bass drivers. Let’s see what all this experience and technology delivers. 

00:00 T+A Criterion S2...

Grimm is a manufacturer of audio equipment that take a somewhat different path than normal. Eelco Grimm, the CEO, is a fascinating person if you like audio tech because he comes at many problems from a systems perspective, integrating knowledge of the influence of the recording process, acoustics, ear and brain on the sound. This is in addition to knowledge of the component elements necessary for music reproduction. I find some cor...

At times, audiophiles tend to think of innovation in the field as something dramatic – technologically dramatic. In the case of speakers, the mind imagines new driver physics or driver configurations. I get it: plasma drivers or radiastrahlers or large electrostatic panels look dramatically different and sometimes sound quite different too. And yet, such exotic concepts have made limited headway in the market, although they show te...

In this review, Robert Taylor explores the dCS Lina Master Clock, the problem it's trying to solve, and its synchronization with this dCS Bartók APEX Streaming DAC. Does it clock a higher fidelity sound? Tune in to find out.

This video is sponsored by: https://shunyata.com/product/everest-x/

The Absolute Sound’s Review Methodology: https://www.theabsolutesound.com/articles/the-absolute-sounds-review-methodology-first-principl...

This spring, I reviewed the new Dynaudio contour 20 Black Edition bookshelf speakers and I found these speakers to be one of the most highly resolving stand out monitors I've heard in the sub $10,000 price range, but like most stand mounts, they were still bound by the limitations of size and of course, frequency response. But Dynaudio has come prepared for this scenario with the Sub 6. And in this review, we're going to explore wh...

One thing I love about audio reviewing is the element of surprise. Sometimes you get a product in for review and you might expect it to be good and then you start listening and you find out that it is…great! Who knew? And for me, despite best efforts, this often happens with straightforward products that don’t have an obvious “breakthrough” element. This was, indeed, the case with the Magico S2 speakers. Let’s see what impressed me...