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How Going Half Deaf Made Me Stop Worrying and Love the Beatles in Mono

Perhaps the scariest thing that can happen to an audio enthusiast and journalist is sudden and near-complete hearing loss.

Ask me how I know.

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SME Model 60 Flagship Turntable Launch!

Steyning, West Sussex, England, 26th March 2022

On the weekend of the 26th of March, 2022, a small contingent of the world’s top audio journalists and distributors were invited to witness the launch of a new SME flagship turntable, the first such launch in over 30 years. As if that weren’t enough to warm the cockles of even the most jaded hi-fi hack, we would be hearing the turntable in perhaps the most famous listening room in the world—the room custom-built by Alastair Robertson-Aikman, the legendary founder of SME, as an extension to his delightful Sussex home. Make no mistake: this is holy ground, the audio equivalent of being invited to Balmoral for a weekend of grouse-shooting with the Queen. Since his passing in 2006, even SME hasn’t used the room for listening tests, so its re-opening really was a once-in-a-lifetime event. Alastair, or A-RA as he was affectionately known, was not a man to settle for second best, and his pursuit of audio excellence led to the creation of a hi-fi dynasty revered the world over.

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New Noise #4: Little Box #2

Sometime after the last Leo’s Stereo closed, my father would take me to The Wherehouse on Saturday mornings to shop for CDs. When that chain of stores folded, he moved on to Target or Best Buy or Sam Goody at the local shopping mall. That one could own music, a tangible thing for personal enjoyment, shaped my upbringing. What we didn’t know then was that store shopping—seeing the newest displays, rifling through plastic letter dividers and name placards—was an endangered endeavor.

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Montreal Audiofest 2022: Product Coverage 3 (Mini Analog Round-up)

I’m going to begin this part of the coverage with a confession: I almost didn’t write this article. That’s because, although I got my feet under me to do the second part of the coverage more efficiently, I’ve seen so many products and talked to so many people at Montreal Audiofest 2022 that, as I’m typing this, I don’t feel like writing more—I’m spent.

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Montreal Audiofest 2022: Product Coverage 2

As I mentioned in the first round of show coverage, I was feeling a little overwhelmed by being the only SoundStager here covering the show. But by staying up late on the first show-day night and sorting through my photos and notes, I got my feet under me and was better prepared for the next day of coverage. Below you’ll find more of what I witnessed at Montreal Audiofest 2022, with all prices in Canadian dollars, except for the product described at the very end.

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Montreal Audiofest 2022: Product Coverage 1

For the first time in a very long time, the first day of Montreal Audiofest 2022 had me feeling a bit overwhelmed. Not long after I got off the escalator that took me to the lower level, which had the largest rooms and the most exhibitors, I knew that there would be more new and/or interesting products than I originally thought might be at the show. This was just like Florida Audio Expo 2022, which I’d covered in February—it wound up exceeding my expectations. But unlike at Florida Audio Expo 2022, where I had Jason Davis to help me cover it, I decided to go to the first Montreal Audiofest since 2019 alone—we usually have two or three people at this event.

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Montreal Audiofest 2022: PS Audio’s Aspen Aspirations

I was initially going to include the PS Audio Aspen FR30 loudspeaker in the regular product coverage, but when I realized that I wanted to write far more than a regular show-coverage caption, I thought it deserved to stand as a story on its own. The speaker was, without question, one of the most interesting new products at Montreal Audiofest 2022—and it was something I really wanted to hear because I’ve been wondering about it since about the beginning of this year.

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Montreal Audiofest 2022: KLH and Motet Distribution Kick Off the Show Talking about Acoustic-Suspension Speaker Designs

I always arrive at shows at least a day early to get going on our coverage, but I get disappointed if no company is set up or there’s no one to talk to, because there ends up being nothing to do. But when I walked into the Hotel Bonaventure Montréal, which is home to Montreal Audiofest 2022, at about 6 p.m. on Thursday, March 24, I immediately ran into Lily Luo, owner of Motet Distribution, who said, “The guys from KLH just arrived. We hope you can make it to our dinner in fifteen minutes. It’s a casual thing.”

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The Reavon UBR-X200: One of the Few Available High-End Universal Disc Players

If you’re like me and use your audio system to both enjoy stereo music and watch films with multichannel audio, you’ll appreciate a high-quality, universal disc player. Optical disc players are still the best way to watch movies with 4K Ultra HD video and uncompressed Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD Master Audio soundtracks, and there are also some audio enthusiasts who still like to play SACDs, CDs, and even DVD-As. Granted, there aren’t many audiophiles whose main systems do double duty like mine, and with the proliferation of streaming services for both music and movies, optical disc players in general, let alone universal disc players, aren’t as highly sought after as they once were.

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Going Places with Harley-Davidson and Rockford Fosgate

SoundStage! isn’t my only side hustle. Through the spring, summer, and fall here in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, I also moonlight as senior editor of Inside Motorcycles, a Canadian print magazine. My duties at IM mirror those here at SoundStage!—I test stuff and write about it. I test motorcycles, helmets, clothing, and parts, and I write touring travel articles. But mostly I test motorcycles.

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What’s Fresh at the Florida Audio Expo? Loose Ends . . .

Alex Sound Technology

The room hosted by Alex Sound Technology—a newcomer on the Florida distributor scene—was packed all weekend. From the hallway, on multiple visit attempts, I glimpsed a handsome pair of Blumenhofer Acoustics Genuin FS MK 2 loudspeakers (starting at $21,050 per pair, all prices USD) wrapped in a striking Makassar ebony veneer. I’m a sucker for big-cone two-ways, and the Genuin FS MK 2 filled the bill: high-efficiency, 12″ paper woofer, floor-ported bass-reflex design, and a horn-loaded compression driver mounted atop the cabinet.

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Florida Audio Expo 2022: Product Coverage, Part 3

In my previous product-coverage articles, I tried to include a broad range of product categories. For this third and final installment, I’m keeping it mostly to loudspeakers, since I came across several interesting ones. But I also added one amplifier into the mix because I felt that it was important to include in the coverage. All prices are in US dollars.

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What’s Fresh at the Florida Audio Expo? Acora Acoustics . . .

It’s easy to fall in love at an audio show.

It’s easy to fall out of love at an audio show.

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What’s Fresh at the Florida Audio Expo? RJS Acoustics . . .

Depending on whom you ask, there is uncertainty in the audio show business. Some forecast gloom and doom, suggesting that the show model has run its course, and that the COVID-19 pandemic has only heightened its irrelevance. Others (extroverts, I’m sure) have been dying to corner press contacts in person for the first time in two years in the show’s hallways—or over coffee at the restaurant’s breakfast bar or over drinks after hours—exuberant to share in the spectacle of the hotel audio experience.

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Florida Audio Expo 2022: Product Coverage, Part 2

The speed with which my first round of coverage showed up online was because the manufacturers whose products it featured sent out detailed preshow press releases about what they’d be displaying at Florida Audio Expo 2022. Having that information ahead of time let me know that those products would be there and provided details that I didn’t have to waste time getting in the display rooms. Instead, I went straight for the rooms the products were in, photographed them, got out, wrote them all up, and then uploaded the completed coverage online. I am bringing this up as a less-than-subtle hint for those manufacturers still wondering about the best way to get covered in a show report quickly.

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What's Fresh at the Florida Audio Expo? Geshelli Labs . . .

The third annual Florida Audio Expo (FAE) kicked off on Friday, February 18, around the time that the Omicron variant of the COVID-19 pandemic began to decline nationally. After an underwhelming CES, the question on everyone’s mind was whether manufacturers, dealers, and showgoers would actually show up.

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Florida Audio Expo 2022: Product Coverage, Part 1

It’s fitting that Florida Audio Expo 2022 is the first hi-fi show I’ve attended since the COVID-19 pandemic began. That’s because the last show I attended prior to the pandemic shutting everything down was Florida Audio Expo 2020. It was held then at the same site of its inaugural year, 2019: the Embassy Suites by Hilton Tampa Airport Westshore, located in Tampa, Florida.  And it’s back there again this year. It’s a great place to hold a hi-fi show—if only to get so many of us out of the snow for a few days.

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Garrett Hongo's "The Perfect Sound: A Memoir in Stereo"

My book, The Perfect Sound: A Memoir in Stereo, tells the story of three journeys—my own audio quest for the past 15 years, my love of all kinds of music since I was a kid in Hawaiʻi back in the 1950s, and the story of amplification itself from early acoustic instruments and classical amphitheaters to modern electronics and speakers. It’s part memoir, part personal audio chronicle, and part essayistic history of audio itself told through selected highlights. It took me a long time to write.

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New Noise #3: A Little Box

The term format agnostic has been showing up lately in certain hi-fi circles. I’m no linguist, but I am a fan of words and the creative ways we use them. These two words, in combination, caught my attention.

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Magico's Impressive Quality Control

Most high-end speaker manufacturers practice some form of quality control (QC) measures to ensure that their products leave the factory performing and looking exactly as they intend them to. These QC methods typically involve visual inspections—sometimes with special lighting or other tools that make obvious the smallest cosmetic flaws—and listening tests. The best manufacturers add acoustical testing to these QC steps.

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