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Reviews of Attainable Hi-Fi & Home-Theater Equipment

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Details: Written by: Thom Moon; Created: 15 November 2025

Do you have any family members or friends who are wrecking their hearing with earbuds constantly on meltdown volumes, who listen to miserable-sounding Bluetooth speakers, or who just want to get into vinyl? Perhaps this review will point them in the right direction.

Details: Written by: Dennis Burger; Created: 01 November 2025

Reviewers' Choice “What’s in a name?” Juliet Capulet once asked. Far be it from me to argue with the Bard, nor one of his most famous characters, but my answer to that question would be a simple one: “A lot.” Especially when it comes to a product like the WiiM Amp Ultra (US$529, CA$739, £499, €599).

Details: Written by: Thom Moon; Created: 15 October 2025

Founded in 2006, the UK speaker brand Q Acoustics is about to conclude its teenage years. For a while now I’ve wanted to audition one of its speakers, and recently I had that opportunity. Armour Home Electronics, which also owns QED cables and Goldring cartridges, “started Q Acoustics specifically to offer good-value speakers no matter the price category,” PR manager Nick Renshaw told me as we discussed the possibility of a review. He suggested I check out the 3020c, the middle standmount model in the new 3000c series. The 3020c is sold in pairs for US$829, CA$829.99, £399, or €499.

Details: Written by: Dennis Burger; Created: 01 October 2025

Reviewers' Choice Someone needs to invent a word to evoke the specific disappointment that comes from realizing you’ve stolen your own thunder. If the Germans can give us such evocative loanwords as schadenfreude, verschlimmbesserung, and wanderlust, surely they could cook up some delightfully and elegantly convoluted way of encapsulating the emotions running through my brain when I realized, far too late, that the conclusion of my unboxing blog post for Q Acoustics’ lovely new 3050c tower speaker (US$1749, CA$1900, £849, €1099 per pair) really should have been the intro to my full review.

Details: Written by: Dennis Burger; Created: 01 September 2025

Let’s not bury the lede here, because I know the question right at the top of mind for most regular readers of SoundStage! Access: “Do I really need a $1600 4K Blu‑ray player?” The answer to that question is, of course, no. As nice as the Magnetar UDP800 universal disc/media player (US$1599.99, CA$2500, £1399, €1620) may be, it doesn’t change that fact. So the real question is, why might you want this particular player, despite its cost, given that you can purchase a UHD Blu-ray player with literally perfect A/V performance for under $500?

Details: Written by: Dennis Burger; Created: 01 August 2025

I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know here, but the way most people shop for audio products barely resembles the way hi-fi enthusiasts and audiophiles shop for audio products. Imagine you’re in the market for an outdoor audio system centered on passive speakers intended to be driven by an amp. You and I might research the category, do comparisons based on specifications, try to read some reviews, factor in any brand loyalties we might have, and plunk down our credit cards after some careful deliberation. Most people purchasing KEF’s Ventura 6 outdoor speaker (US$599.99, CA$749.99, £459, €599 per pair), on the other hand, probably asked their custom integrator for an outdoor speaker system, and it just so happened that their integrator was a KEF dealer.

Details: Written by: Thom Moon; Created: 15 July 2025

If the name TEAC is unfamiliar to you, here’s a short history. The firm was founded in 1953 as the Tokyo Television Acoustic Company. In 1956, an affiliate, the Tokyo Electro-Acoustic Company, was formed to manufacture reel-to-reel tape recorders. Subsequently, the two companies merged to form TEAC Corporation. From the ’60s to the ’90s, TEAC was best known for its reel-to-reel tape recorders and cassette decks. When those fell out of fashion, the brand withdrew from the North American market.

Details: Written by: Dennis Burger; Created: 01 July 2025

Note: for the full suite of measurements from the SoundStage! Audio-Electronics Lab, click this link.

The recent news that Harman is acquiring Masimo Consumer Audio’s old Sound United brands—Denon, Marantz, Bowers & Wilkins, Polk Audio, Definitive Technology, the Professor and Mary Ann—has me thinking a lot lately about how brands maintain anything resembling a unique identity when they’re all owned and controlled by the same corporate overlords. Interestingly, though, there’s one company that has already figured out how to cater to very different hi-fi enthusiasts at similar price points, and to see what I mean, just consider three different NAD integrated amplifiers all selling for around 2000 USD (at least as I write this in the middle of May 2025).

Details: Written by: Thom Moon; Created: 15 June 2025

Fluance is a direct-to-consumer operation that specializes in high-value speakers and turntables. Over the years, I’ve reviewed a goodly number of the Canadian firm’s products: the Reference XL8F floorstanding speaker and the RT81, RT81+, RT83, and RT85 turntables. I’ve always found Fluance’s equipment to be excellent.

Details: Written by: Dennis Burger; Created: 01 June 2025

As I’ve mentioned several times over the past year, when I strike up conversations with music fans at my local record store and quiz them about their sound systems at home, a significant percentage of them report just plugging their turntables into powered or active speakers—in most cases, something from Edifier. And that’s it. That’s their entire audio setup, aside from their solitary saucer-spinning source device. Which means, like it or not, offerings along the lines of Onkyo’s new GX-30ARC active speaker system ($299 when I started my review, $349 by the time it goes to press, all prices USD) are an important way of keeping hi-fi relevant for modern music listeners.