“The ERGO 2 is the middle model in the range, distinguished from the 1 by neodymium magnets, while the 3 AMT is a more elaborate and expensive Heil driver design that replaces the Jecklin Float electrostatic model. I’ve never been much of a proponent of electrostatic cans, the best in my experience being the short-lived Koss effort of a decade or more ago…”

“A combined CD and DVD player, AM/FM receiver and sound system in a single convenient unit.” So says the introduction to this remarkable little AV system. Remember the aptly named “Boombox”, which was to be seen perching on the shoulders of urban youth? These moulded plastic monstrosities were often played at levels which caused grief to nearby unwilling listeners, as well as causing permanent hearing damage to the carrier…”

“I was intrigued by the listing, and though there are many mats out there, most DJ slip types, this one looked interesting. Its technological hook seemed to be a crochet-like pattern that exposed at least as much air between the LP and platter as rubber, an integral part of the design of the RingMat I have used for close to 20 years. By providing this space, vinyl/stylus resonances and platter/motor noise are dissipated in the air, while the record is firmly supported…”

“Of the myriad accessories now available for portable music players, and specifically iPods, only a tiny fraction have anything to do with improving sound quality. If you want to hear more from your portable it pretty much comes down to headphones and headphone amplifiers. Designed to drive the cheesy white earbuds that come with the thing, the headphone amplifier in an Ipod isn’t quite up to the task of driving the more difficult loads presented by less sensitive, larger, sealed or open-back type cans like the big Sennheisers and AKGs…”

“I discovered this product on eBay a couple of weeks back (late August 07), and was struck by its elegant simplicity. It’s a 4-input switcher, with a high quality potentiometer in a simple box, with long shafts on each rotary control to keep all contacts and point-to-point wiring at the rear near the high quality RCA ins and outs. Internal cabling is done with “24 AWG silver-plated copper wire with Teflon insulation”, according to the web site…”

“This will be a brief review of a small bottle, 2 fluid ounces or 60 milliliters in all, that coats optical discs to increase their readability by filling micro-scratches and improving reflectivity of the pitted surface. According to the white paper seen under the photo, “OPTRIX contains isopropyl alcohol, distilled water and optically optically active nonionic surfactants”, and has “antistatic properties”, is “chemically neutral and will not damage your CDs or Laser discs.”

“If you do a lot of commuting, and/or like to use your computer listen to music at work, the folks at HeadRoom have your number. I myself fall into this group, and while my commute might vary quite a bit job to job (the film business is not for those who prize consistency and predictability) I listen to music at work as often as I can. A couple of years ago I reviewed the Echo Indigo laptop sound card, a device which will fit just about any laptop and offers two 1/8″ mini outputs to drive headphones or powered speakers…”

“If only the other bleary-eyed, white-earbud-using subway riders knew how good I have it with headphones like these. Not only am I being spared the concerto for shrieking brakes and deafening track clatter by the Superfi’s 26 dB of isolation, I’m enjoying fantastic sound; Sound that, until recently, had absolutely no business coming from such tiny headphones…”

“The power conditioner market seems to be quite highly populated these days, and new players, one would hope, will have a real story to tell, rather than just a smoke and mirrors exercise like some players currently out there. We’ve seen the giant parallel bypass inductors that come out of the swamp, defying physics, and other approaches that themselves approach fraud. Close encounters of this kind we don’t need…”

“Eighteen or twenty four months ago a comment to the effect that the Ipod accessory market was significantly larger than the market for the Ipod itself might elicit a laugh. Even a casual survey of the internet these days (just google “Ipod case” to see what I’m talking about) will demonstrate just how massive a product wave Apple has touched off, and just how much larger the accessory market is now…”

“The Max 5510 is Panamax’s most feature-packed power filtration/protection product, designed to handle the power needs of an entire home AV system in one (small) power amp-sized box. Panamax calls the 5510 an “AC regenerator”, adopting a hot catchphrase of the past several years. This, I think, is a case of the marketing department getting a little carried away…”

“Just in case you somehow hadn’t noticed, portable audio is hot. White hot. Ipod white. The Ipod has become the Sony Walkman of the 21st Century and gained a cachet and ubiquity in popular culture unrivalled perhaps by any piece of audio equipment ever invented. Ipods are now the object of enough consumer lust that they can actually be dangerous to their owners…”

“If you’re the kind of audiophile who keeps on top of all things related to reproduced music via the internet, then there’s a pretty good chance you’ve already heard about the Sonic Impact Class T Amp, which has recently become a hot topic of various forums, zines, newsgroups and other online text repositories dealing with audio gear…”

“More than just a headphone jack (the Indigo actually has two 1/8″ gold plated mini jacks) the Echo Audio card is a D to A converter as well as a high quality analog output stage. It supports up to 24 bit, 96 kHz signals, uses a 100 Mhz Motorola DSP chip and has a nice, chunky analog volume control knob right on top. For those looking to use their notebook as a recorder, Echo also makes an Indigo with an analog input as well as a model aimed at DJs, featuring two independent stereo outputs.”

“The Menttor is a plug-and-play 5.1 surround system, but here it is through headphones, and therefore may be of interest to many who like music, movies, or TV at hours when others in the home are sleeping. This quite large, but very light, headphone system, has 6 drivers, and the amplifier/DAC box, which is very small, has a Dolby Digital/DTS chip, and 6 channels of amplification…”

“I’d had one of these gadgets operating when I was called by the Terk PR agency to ask if I wanted to play with the Wavemaster 30. By “these gadgets” I mean a box that sends audio and video wirelessly to a similar receiving box in another room. The original was an RCA that I bought after seeing it at a Thomson dealer show…”

“Uninterruptible Power Supplies (UPSs) have become a part of computer operation over the last few years, and have probably prevented data loss in many instances of power interruptions. Here we have the next stage of evolution, the Audiophile Power Supply, this one the largest and most expensive model in a line of three, with further variations in battery power also available…”

“Like most of the first wave of MP3 players to hit the market, the RCA Lyra is a very compact portable device, smaller than most cell phones, aimed at dethroning the discman style CD player from portable supremacy. Whereas some portables, like Creative Labs’ Nomad, use computer style hard drives for file storage, the Lyra falls into the smaller, less expensive category of players using small, removable chip based memory cards…”

“Over the past few years, the number of video sources has multiplied much more quickly than the number of A/V inputs on most televisions. It’s not uncommon for people to have three or more A/V sources: DVD player, VCR, satellite receiver or cable box, maybe a LaserDisc player and videogame console, and, from time to time, a camcorder…”

“For audiophiles, listening rooms are a bit like the weather. We talk about them, but few of us do much about them. We might experiment with speaker placement and listening-chair position, and some ambitious souls try to tame room problems with products like ASC Tube Traps. But not many of us go beyond that….”