The final piece in PS Audio's quartet of innovative planar magnetic loudspeakers has arrived and it's quite the cutest of the range, but is it a wolf in sheep's clothing?
Even if the title isn't familiar, you'll know The March Of Progress by Rudolph Zallinger. Published in a 1965 volume of Life Nature Library and depicting 25 million years of human evolution as a series of side-on illustrations, from the ape-like Pliopithecus to modern man, it popped into my mind when I unboxed PS Audio's Aspen FR5.
Nothing beats the buzz of discovering new bands, especially when they could shape the very future of music. Johnny Sharp on the hot new groups hitting all the right notes
It has been suggested that bands are a dying breed in the modern age. As technology enables individuals to create fuller tapestries of music than ever before without the need to recruit a drummer on the basis of whether or not they own a van, or stick with an annoying keyboard player because his dad lets you use his warehouse for rehearsals, the incentive to go it alone is strong. The costs of touring with five or six people in tow is also pretty prohibitive, and it's a more complicated proposition in the studio. Meanwhile, the relative marginalisation of hard rock and indie pop - genres that traditionally rely on the guitar-bass-drums-vocals formula - hasn't helped.
Steve Harris talks to the founders of a new global jazz Internet radio platform promising to focus on music recorded in the last year or so while 'veering away from the straight and narrow'
Whenever the BBC makes changes to the sacred rituals of Radio 3, howls of protest follow. New scheduling introduced in February did bring the usual cries of 'dumbing down'. Personally, the changes didn't bother me very much because I'd got so much into the habit of time-shifting my radio listening.
Having been stopped in his tracks by the sheer enjoyment of listening to music, Jim Lesurf wonders how long his favourite recordings can continue to resonate with distant generations
Afew days ago I decided to listen to a CD that I'd not played in ages. The impact was almost immediate. I'd intended to have it as pleasing background music while I did some work in the kitchen, but after a few bars of music - time stopped! Totally captured by the sheer beauty of the sound, I just stood and listened, unable to do anything else. And this was in a room where there was no stereo imaging as such, and the acoustics of which would never be accepted as a good listening environment for hi-fi sound.
There are countless different audio products claiming to pursue sonic accuracy, but Barry Willis believes the hi-fi industry would be much better off if it admitted things are not that simple
Early this past summer, I enjoyed dinner with an audiophile friend. While he puttered in the kitchen, I perused his hi-fi publications. Among them was a 2024 equipment guide, an incomplete but aspirational compendium of products currently on the market, and in a couple of cases, no longer produced but still in plentiful supply. The listings included hundreds of items - phono cartridges from US$99 to $20,000 each, and amplifiers and loudspeakers from a few hundred up to the purchase price of an exotic high-performance automobile.
Internet radio promises unrivalled listening choice, but what happens when your favourite station goes missing? Barry Fox gets to grips with tweaking TuneIn and adding third-party hardware
A friend gets cross when I reckon that most IT is designed by engineers who don't think about the people who will use it. He says I shouldn't expect computers to work like hi-fi systems. Which is ironic because many modern hi-fi boxes are disguised computers reliant on networking, and they really need to be connected to a monitor screen because a strip display is only adequate for basic control needs.
The final piece in PS Audio's quartet of innovative planar magnetic loudspeakers has arrived and it's quite the cutest of the range, but is it a wolf in sheep's clothing?
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