The $2995 Lyra Kleos Cartridge was billed back in 2010 as a replacement for the Helikon. The Kleos is a much better sounding cartridge in every way. It maintains and actually ups the Helikon’s detail resolution, while adding the more expensive Skala’s smoothness and midband warmth.
A thousand United Airlines commercials later and Gershwin's "Rhapsody In Blue" still sounds fresh, lavish and grand. It epitomizes New York City in its golden jazz age and with every listen opens the mind's eye to yellow incandescent lit Art Deco granite skyscrapers and the general urban dazzle of pre-WWII America. I never get tired of listening to it, the later at night the better for some reason. It could only have been written in America by an American.
Visual designer and vinyl enthusiast Kate Koeppel offers a collection of wooden laser cut alphabetical record dividers available for both 12" and 7" records stored either vertically or horizontally.
Following up on his success with the Bugle2 solid state phono preamplifier, Hagerman Audio's Jim Hagerman recently commenced a Kickstarter campaign for the Cornet3 a new "third generation" vacuum tube based DIY phono preamp.
Given a choice of great mastering and pressing or packaging true to the original, which would you choose? Yes, I know, why not produce a definitive reissue that offers great mastering and pressing and the original triple gatefold jacket and the original limited edition booklet? But clearly that wasn't in the cards for whoever was in charge in order to bring this project to market within budget so it could be sold at a particular price point, which in this case is $39.00 for the double LP set.
Worldwide distributors, key retailers, representatives of Fine Sounds Group-associated companies McIntosh and Audio Research as well members of the audio press gathered at Sonus Faber’s Vicenza Italy factory March 26th throu the 29th to celebrate in grand Italian style the speaker company’s 30th anniversary.
The celebration’s focal point was the all new X3ma loudspeaker, which was developed over the past year and a half by Sonus Faber’s design team using as its inspiration the original 1991 Extrema, a legendary stand mounted design that extracted maximum and at the time seemingly impossibly performance from a two-way loudspeaker.