Michael Fremer

Bob George The Archive of Contemporary Music's founder and director was scheduled to participate in a "Making Vinyl Hollywood" panel discussion I moderated last fall, so to prep for it I called Mr. George and proposed a visit to the Archive during which we'd discuss his participation. As you'll see in the video, by the time I visited last September I'd forgotten the reason for the visit!

Germany-based Clearaudio displays bi-annually at High End Munich. Last year was their "off" year.

Back in 1999 I reviewed in Stereophile the KR Audio VT 8000 monoblock vacuum tube amplifier. I wrote in the review: "Virtually every part in the amplifier is custom-made in-house or sourced from associated facilities, including the metal fabrication, the transformers, and the circuit boards. The internal wiring is Swiss in origin. And, of course, the vacuum transducers themselves are made in-house by hand, and that includes all of the tiny internal components, which are stamped out one at a time by hand on dies custom-machined in-house. Even the glass for the tubes is turned and formed by hand. If I hadn't seen all of this with my own eyes, I wouldn't have believed it."

I reviewed the Transfiguration Phoenix for Stereophile five years ago. This is not really the same cartridge though it retains the same name. In 2012 the low output moving coil cartridge was updated to include larger gauge pure silver coil wire wound on the square permalloy core used on the now discontinued top of the line Transfiguration Orpheus. The revised Phoenix also shares the Orpheus's damping system and uses a variant of the Orpheus's yoke less, double ring magnet technology featuring a powerful neodymium ring in the rear and a samarium cobalt one in front.