The Absolute Sound November 2021 - 2022 Buyer's Guide

Now, More Than Ever Unlike many TAS readers, who upon receipt of their new issue go right to the $500k speaker reviews or $100k amp reviews (ha!), I immediately turn to the music section. In the last few months TAS has introduced me to many wonderful artists, Sass Jordan and Alecia Nugent to name two. Might I suggest an addition to TAS—a section that introduces the readers to artists whom the writers like? Just a brief overview with a suggestion of a couple of albums that might be a good starting place. We can do the rest of the research. Thank you TAS for bringing so much great music into my life! Everything you do to help us can make a difference. Please reach out now, more than ever. Rick Rubenstein Contradictory Speaker Designs It appears…

Virtually all the high-end audio companies we now think of as “the establishment” were once nothing more than one person with an idea. That idea was to create a component for reproducing music in a new and better way than was possible at the time. Most of these company founders had absolutely no intention of creating a business; they simply wanted to build a device, for their own use, that would take them closer to the music. The number of now-iconic companies that were founded in this way is astounding. The young Arnie Nudell had a successful career as a laser physicist when he built a servo-driven woofer and mated it to an electrostatic panel, simply because he wanted to hear bass reproduction in his home that was a closer representation…

Venerable British loudspeaker company Bowers & Wilkins has spent the past six years researching and developing technologies to improve the performance of its already outstanding 800 Series speakers. The result is the new Diamond D4 line, which consists of five stereo models, ranging from the two-way stand-mount 805 D4 at $8000 to the flagship 801 D4 at $35,000 (all prices per pair). The company has reintroduced the iconic 801 moniker for the top model, replacing the 800 D3. Two center-channel speakers are also included in the new series, for a total of seven new products. The line has been substantially re-engineered, starting with a new cabinet design that is reportedly stiffer and quieter than those in the previous generation. Controlling enclosure resonances has always been an important design goal in the…

THIS December 14 will mark 90 years since Alan Blumlein submitted his patent application in England for much of what would turn out to be the future of stereo sound reproduction in the home. The patent application is a startling document in the variety and depth of the ideas presented. It would not be outrageous to call it a work of genius. But Blumlein was not alone. At about the same time, a group at Bell Telephone Laboratories was developing an alternative approach to how to use two channels to create musical realism. The historically minded can find copies of the recordings that Blumlein made to demonstrate his methods (youtube.com/watch?v=KD3HBbtN9ak, youtube.com/watch?v=gfWuIEgGU). And they can also find the Bell Labs recordings (youtube.com/watch?v=e0qzIZaiPFs; youtube.com/watch?v=0ZtQuqtCpv0). History was being made, and it was also…

IT HAS OFTEN SEEMED to me that high-end audiophiles only engage in half of the search for the absolute sound: the home-playback half. Most of the time, they never examine the high-end character of the recordings they use—a given recording’s audio “provenance.” We can focus in incredible detail on tweaks to our home systems—like elevating audio cables or adjusting our turntables—but we normally ignore every step in the audio chain from the original performance to the moment the recording arrives in our system. Few of us would buy a bottle of wine, a picture, or an antique on that basis. We would want to know its source, how it was prepared, its style, and its history. Yet most of us are willing to ignore the fact that virtually every recording involves…

Magnepan Mini Maggie System $1490 The Mini-Maggie system is a three-piece, ribbon-tweeter-equipped, planar-magnetic, dipole speaker system intended primarily for desktop use. Featuring small tweeter/midrange panels that sit atop the desk and a stereo mid/bass panel that sits in the footwell below, it is arguably the finest desktop speaker ever made. In fact, in detail, resolution, purity, freedom from grain, soundstage width and depth, and, above all, coherence, the Mini-Maggie rig sounds for all the world like a pair of Magnepan’s exceptional 3.7i’s on a smaller scale. (223) Audience The One V3/1+1 V3 $1695/$2960 The One is a single full-range driver shoehorned into a small box. The driver itself is the same unit, the A3A, that Audience uses in its $2960 1 + 1 V3. According to Audience, the A3A has exceptionally flat response, claimed to…