It’s been a long time coming but Woo Audio’s WA8 trans/portable tube amplifier, recently subtitled ‘Eclipse’, is now in production and was shown off by the New York manufacturer at CanJam SoCal 2016. We first saw the WA8 way back in September 2014 when Jack Wu showed off a 3D-printed […]
Being a New York local Jack Wu has brought everything – including the kitchen sink – across the East River and into Brooklyn. His room is a U-bend of benched headphone gear with at least five or six listening stations. I try to ignore the $16k flagship monoblocks and make a beeline […]
The awkwardly named Woo Audio WA7 ‘Fireflies’ looks like it has dropped into Australia earlier than expected. There aren’t too many DAC/head-amp combos that really tickle my fancy but Jack Wu’s (picture above, right) latest is surely one of them. A matched pair of Sovtek 6C45, Class A, single-ended headphone stage […]
Brit restraint alert: I was somewhat taken with the LS6 speakers from Graham Audio. The design principles behind them swim against the tide. It’s simple – the cabinets are supposed to vibrate. Forget Fort Knox solidity, forget 25mm side walls. Say hello to thin cabinet walls that oscillate with the […]
Sometimes we want steak, other times only sushi will do. And so it goes with loudspeakers: we might lust for (full-range) floorstanders but either our room’s acoustics and/or our aesthetic sensibilities say otherwise: only standmounts can be accommodated. Like food, it’s better to have too little than too much. In our latest […]
Over a pork knuckle in January, I enthused to a friend about DJ Hell’s collaborative work with P. Diddy (“The DJ”) and Bryan Ferry (“U Can Dance”) – two standout tracks from the veteran German producer’s 2009 album, Teufelswerk. English translation: Devil’s work. Eight years on, the remainder of that […]
What defines our taste/s in hifi gear? Those of a more platitudinous nature would claim that it’s all about the music. But that implies that we’d be just as content with a $50 Bluetooth speaker as a US$500k system. Being an audiophile is about the being into the gear. No shame in […]
Enjoying its first public showing at Rocky Mountain Audio Fest 2017 this weekend will be PS Audio’s PureStream Power Plant P20: not a power filter but a power regenerator: “Power Plants take your incoming AC power and regenerates new sine-wave-perfect, regulated high current AC power. In the process of regeneration […]
May 2017. Introduced by Dynaudio to celebrate forty years in the loudspeaker business, the Special Forty caught my eye at the Danish company’s Munich High-End exhibit. Not the grey birch but the red. That spark of initial physical attraction – a red veneer married to a high gloss finish – […]
Bluetooth loudspeakers aren’t generally poorer sounding than two loudspeakers and an amplifier because of their lossy transmission protocol. Their weakness is in their deployment: singularly with right and left channels spilling from the same point in the room. DSP is often used to improve the sense of channel separation. However, two loudspeakers offering proper […]
Far easier for the Victor Meldrews of the audiophile world to dismiss the manufacturer aiming beyond the audiophile echo chamber as pandering to hipsters than it is to admit a new product worthy of (their) closer scrutiny. Doubly so when a product dares to challenge established thinking. Offering an alternative […]
Kicking the habit. From the high fructose corn syrup used by cookie companies as a sweetener to the MSG used by fast food joints to boost their dishes’ flavour, the flavour enhancements are artificial. Prolonged exposure to artificial sweeteners makes adapting to a new, more healthy ways of eating exponentially […]
John H. Darko 
Phil Wright