Note: measurements taken in the anechoic chamber at Canada's National Research Council can be found through this link.
For readers who aren’t familiar with Living Sounds Audio (LSA), the brand is owned by Underwood HiFi, a Hawaii-based, internet-only provider of home audio equipment. Its owner, Walter Liederman, was a longtime executive with HiFi Buys, an Atlanta-based audio chain. When HiFi Buys was sold in the late 1990s, Liederman struck out on his own, working as a consultant for brands such as Infinity and Acoustic Research. Later, he began selling closeouts, B-stock, and discontinued audio gear for companies that did not want to market such products through their normal distribution systems.
It’s getting a little difficult these days to sort out a piece of Marantz gear’s place in the overall product family by designation alone, but that’s where my complaints with the company’s current lineup begin and end. Its latest integrated amplifier, for example, is simply called the Model 50 ($1800, all prices USD). Is there anything in that title that indicates a sort of little sibling to the Model 30 ($2999) released in 2020?
Read more: Unboxing the Marantz Model 50 Integrated Amplifier
It seems that I’ve been misunderstood. That’s always a danger when you’re monologuing, but thankfully the SoundStage! Network is more of a slow, ongoing dialog between an incredibly motley crew. To wit: the most recent volley in my ongoing parley with SoundStage! Ultra editor Jason Thorpe is a piece titled “I’m Not an Oligarch!”—which is a response to my January editorial, “The Needs of the Many versus the Needs of the Reviewer.”
Read more: On the Nature of Stoics, Straw Men, and Solved Problems
Note: for the full suite of measurements from the SoundStage! Audio-Electronics Lab, click this link.
It’s a funny old thing, seeing legitimate buzz about any piece of hi-fi gear these days, but in the past year we’ve seen oodles of noise about not one, but two very different stereo integrated amplifiers—and for very different reasons. The NAD C 3050 ($1399, all prices in USD) I’ve discussed to death already, and I’m going to be discussing it more soon since I’m buying one and plan on doing a comparison with the LE version I reviewed last year. The other, as you’ve likely already guessed from the headline, is Dayton Audio’s HTA200 ($349.98), which—along with its little sibling, the HTA100—is garnering a lot of noise for its hybrid tube design, its ample power, its connectivity, and its ridiculously low price.
Back in July 2017, I reviewed the Fluance RT81 turntable, which I thought was a really good choice for its price ($249.99, all prices in USD). Amazingly, in 2024, it still sells for the same amount. Recently, Fluance introduced a tricked-out version of the RT81 called the RT-81+, which retails for $299.99.
Read more: Fluance RT81+ Turntable and Audio-Technica AT-VM95E Cartridge
Kicking off a relationship with openness and honesty is always a good policy, so I love it when manufacturers don’t try to hide (often economically necessary) offshore manufacturing with “Designed in _____” badging. And to be sure, there is a “Designed and Engineered in Canada” label on the packaging for PSB’s new Imagine B50 bookshelf speakers ($699/pair, all prices USD). But that’s just as quickly followed by a transparent and prominent “Made in China.”
Some years back, my dad and I found ourselves in a bit of a street race: our C7 Corvette versus a Ferrari F12berlinetta. $83,000 of automated-factory-line American plastic against $320,000 of hand-crafted Italian swank. V8 versus V12. Two of the finest front-engine GT cars ever developed going head-to-head. And we won. The F12berlinetta simply couldn’t keep up in the corners.
Read more: Price Categories for Hi-Fi Don’t Make (Much) Sense
Note: for the full suite of measurements from the SoundStage! Audio-Electronics Lab, click this link.
First impressions carry a lot of weight, but they’re not everything. And thank goodness for that, because I didn’t get off on the right foot with Technics’ new Grand Class SU-GX70—an amp I now positively adore. To be fair, most of my quibbles could be filed under the category of “vibes.” As I mentioned in my unboxing blog post, I want a Technics integrated amp to look like a swanky retro throwback, and the SU-GX70 ($1999.95, all prices USD) just evokes any number of nondescript black boxes that have cycled through my system over the years. Worse still, one of my first tactile interactions with the unit was when I gave the volume control a twist only to find that it felt like dragging a wooden spoon through half-crystalized honey.
Read more: Technics Grand Class SU-GX70 Streaming Stereo Receiver
My introduction to the Fluance brand occurred over ten years ago, when I reviewed their XL7F tower, a three-way speaker with an 8″ woofer, two 6.5″ midrange drivers, and a 1″ silk-dome tweeter. At $469.95 per pair (all prices USD), I thought it was an incredible bargain.
Remember those old commercials where two people walking down the street in opposite directions—one obliviously carrying an open jar of peanut butter; the other mindlessly nomming a whole chocolate bar—slam into each other as absentminded people will do and invent Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups? Swap the peanut butter for a Bob Carver tube amp and the chocolate for something like a solid-state ChiFi amp from the likes of SoundArtist, and I have to think that meet-cute collision would result in something that looks like the Dayton Audio HTA200 hybrid integrated amplifier ($349.98, all prices USD).
Read more: Unboxing the Dayton Audio HTA200 Integrated Amplifier-DAC