Audacious Audio

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Audacious AudioTonearm Reviews
HiFiction Thales AV tonearm
Michael Fremer  |  Oct 31, 2010  |  0 comments
Ideally, LPs should be played with the pickup stylus remaining tangential (ie, at a 90° angle) to the groove—just as the lacquer from which the LP was ultimately stamped was cut in the first place. Over the years, many attempts have been made to accomplish this. Back in 1877, Thomas A. Edison's original machines tangentially tracked his cylinders, but Emil Berliner's invention of the flat disc put an end to cylinders altogether. In the 1950s, a number of companies marketed so-called "tangential" trackers that used dual arms, based on conventional pivoting arrangements, to change the angle at which the headshell was mounted as it moved across the LP side. In 1963, Marantz introduced the SLT-12, which used a plastic pantograph to move the stylus across the record surface. Garrard's Zero 100 pivoting arm controlled its independently pivoting headshell with a bar that extended from the main bearing of the tonearm.
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Audacious AudioFloor Loudspeaker ReviewsJ. Gordon Holt
Hill Plasmatronics Type 1 loudspeaker
J. Gordon Holt  |  Jun 09, 2014  |  First Published: Apr 01, 1980  |  21 comments
Dr. Alan Hill, president of Plasmatronics Inc., was previously employed by the US Government in laser research. His assignment: To increase the efficiency of lasers so that they could do something more impressive than produce holograms, mend leaky retinal blood vessels, and punch pinholes in steel blocks. Dr. Hill earned his keep, thus advancing laser technology a giant step closer to Star Wars, and then retired from government service to design. . . a loudspeaker?!!!?
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Floor Loudspeaker ReviewsAudacious Audio
Impact Airfoil 5.2 loudspeaker system
Brian Damkroger  |  Jun 25, 2002  |  0 comments
"You're a toy junkie!" laughed Trish, my fiancée. "Your life is a search for bigger and better toys!"
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Audacious AudioSolid State Power Amp Reviews
Infigo Method-3 monoblock power amplifier
Jason Victor Serinus  |  Aug 31, 2023  |  63 comments
I should have trusted my ears. When I first encountered Infigo (pronounced In-FEE'-go) electronics, paired with Alta Audio's Adam loudspeaker, at T.H.E. Show 2022 in Long Beach, California, I wrote, "Timbres were beautiful on bass and high-pitched percussion. The chimes and vibes sounded special and clean, colors were plentiful, and deep bass was all of one piece." Nor was I exaggerating. In that system, Infigo's Method 3 monoblocks ($55,000/pair) pleased my ears as much as their blue-illumined interiors delighted my eyes.

Rather quickly, Editor Jim Austin suggested I review the Method 3. Perhaps he'd already been tipped off by Ken Micallef's praise when he first encountered Infigo in November 2021 at the Capital Audio Fest, and by the ensuing buzz.

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Tube Power Amp ReviewsAudacious Audio
Jadis Defy-7 Mk.II power amplifier
Martin Colloms  |  Jul 20, 2012  |  First Published: Apr 01, 1993  |  0 comments
Owning a powerful tube amplifier is like owning a classic automobile. Great pleasure may be had, but ownership involves a little more care and maintenance than usual.

Jadis, an audiophile company specializing in all-tube amplifiers and operating out of a small French town, has enjoyed a good reputation for some years, even if some of its models have suffered from the reliability problems that occasionally afflict the largest tube amps. Another problem area is that of power consumption and heat output. In common with class-A amplifiers and high-bias A/B types, including solid-state models, larger tube amps give off substantial heat. The Defy-7's 240W idling consumption may or may not be welcome, according to your location and the season.

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Floor Loudspeaker ReviewsAudacious Audio
Jadis Eurythmie II loudspeaker
Jonathan Scull  |  Aug 17, 2012  |  First Published: Mar 01, 1996  |  3 comments
The Jadis Eurythmie speakers ($37,000/pair) arrived in a multitude of oversized boxes. Importer Northstar Leading the Way's Frank Garbie dragged them into our downstairs lobby and broke them open, elevatoring the individual modules up to our door. This happened on one of my office days, but Kathleen pushed me out the door in the morning with a "Don't worry cherie, I can handle it..." She phoned in periodic updates on Garbie's progress. Remember that old Stan Freberg routine? "I got it, I got it...I don't got it!" I arrived home just in time to hook up the amps.
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Audacious AudioTube Power Amp Reviews
Jadis JA200 Mk.II monoblock power amplifier
Jason Victor Serinus  |  Feb 01, 2018  |  16 comments
"How natural the sound," wrote Jonathan Scull in March 1994, in his Follow-Up on the original Jadis JA 200 monoblock amplifier, which then cost $18,990/pair. "How easy it was to follow the musical line and fall into the music. How deep, controlled, tight, and satisfying the bass. How magnifique the midrange—the traditional strength of the Jadis presentation. How full and satisfying the lower midrange. How open, airy, how right the highs—not at all hard, but very extended and natural. How involving their presentation. How full, how harmonically correct, how wonderfully compelling. How magical."
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Tube Preamp ReviewsAudacious Audio
Jadis JPL line preamplifier
Dick Olsher  |  Nov 21, 2012  |  First Published: Jan 01, 1993  |  0 comments
In its comparatively few years in the marketplace, the line-level preamplifier appears to have established commercial parity with its full-function big brother. That this was inevitable was clear as far back as the mid-'80s. The advent of the CD and the proliferation of digital sources argued for a modular approach to preamp design. In such an environment, line-level sources (eg, DAT, CD, even analog tape) deserve special attention.
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Floor Loudspeaker ReviewsAudacious Audio
JBL Synthesis 1400 Array BG loudspeaker
Larry Greenhill  |  May 10, 2010  |  5 comments
JBL was founded 60 years ago, by Jim Lansing. Its history has been amply detailed in the book The JBL Story: 60 Years of Audio Innovation, by the late John Eargle's (JBL Professional, 2006). Although it is primarily known for its pro-audio loudspeakers, the Californian company has offered a steady stream of high-performance domestic loudspeakers to the home market, including the 1971 Paragon, the L100 bookshelf speaker, and the JBL 250Ti floorstander, all of which remained in JBL's catalog for 20 years. In 1990, JBL produced the Project K2 S9500 flagship speaker for the Japanese high-end market. The K2 Project culminated in the $60,000/pair DD55000 Everest system, with its cross-firing asymmetric horns, and the subject of this review, the Synthesis 1400 Array BG, was a spin-off from the K2 project. It features horn-loaded midrange and tweeters to attain a flat response out to a claimed 48kHz.
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Solid State Power Amp ReviewsAudacious Audio
Jeff Rowland Design Group Model 7/II power amplifier
Dick Olsher  |  Apr 10, 2014  |  First Published: Feb 01, 1986  |  0 comments
Very few products exude opulence as do the Rowland amplifiers: the massive chassis, the gold finish, those sculpted handles on the front plate. For some strange reason the amp reminds me of Brutus Beefcake, the golden boy of professional wrestling, upon whom I stumbled one night while flipping through the myriad channels of our cable TV. The visual impact is the same: beefy. And then there's the price: also beefy.
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Audacious AudioHeadphone Reviews
JH Audio JH16 Pro in-ear monitors
John Atkinson  |  Aug 10, 2011  |  2 comments
"Good grief, has he lost his hearing?"

It was the distant past, a time so long ago that the M in MTV stood for Music, and I was watching a David Bowie concert on TV. The svelte singer was wearing what I took to be hearing aids.

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Audacious AudioSolid State Power Amp Reviews
JMF HQS 7001 monoblock power amplifier
Jason Victor Serinus  |  Feb 07, 2024  |  7 comments
For some, it takes the likes of Scheherazade to seduce; for me, simple sound will suffice. But not just any sound. If I'm going to enter into a relationship with an audio component, I want it to last.

I don't know anyone who, having heard the JMF Audio system at AXPONA 2023—the HQS 6002 dual-mono power amplifier ($40,000; footnote 1) and PRS 1.5 dual-mono line stage preamplifier ($36,000) with Harbeth M40.3 XD speakers—did not rave about the sound. In my show report, I credited the system, assembled by Fidelis Distribution and Audio Skies, with delivering "some of the finestsounding music" I heard at the show. "This is the perfect sound for mellow music," I proclaimed. "Bliss."

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Audacious AudioCD Player/Transport Reviews
Kalista DreamPlay One CD player
Art Dudley  |  Aug 16, 2018  |  80 comments
Some of my reviewer colleagues would have you believe that negative reviews are the most difficult of all to write, and that positive reviews fairly write themselves. What nonsense!

As I write this, my copy deadline is three days away, yet I've succeeded at crafting little more than my heading (easy enough: it's just the product's name, followed by my name) and my Associated Equipment sidebar (also easy), leaving a great expanse of nothing in between. That's mostly because the Kalista DreamPlay One, a two-box CD player whose $43,000 price might once have kept me from even considering it as a real-world product, has stunned me into a sort of paralysis: I feel that anything I write will be inadequate to the task.

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Audacious AudioSolid State Power Amp Reviews
Karan Acoustics Master Collection POWERa Mono power amplifier
Jason Victor Serinus  |  Apr 13, 2023  |  24 comments
It began with a bad outlet. Perhaps two weeks after my husband and visiting friend created several delightful holiday light displays in the living room, one of the living room outlets died. Every time I tried to plug in part of the light show, it, along with the living room sound system and reading lights, lost power. If the Grinch didn't exactly steal Christmas, he sure tried to guarantee it would arrive silently under the cover of darkness.

I moved fast. Distributor Wynn Wong would arrive from Toronto in less than a month, to install two Serbian-made Karan Acoustics POWERa monoblocks ($106,000/pair) for review. These monoblocks weigh an astounding 231lb each, with a shipping weight of 286lb; each contains two 2700VA toroidal transformers and a 210,000µF bank of custom capacitors. Each monoblock requires two 15A power cables, one for each amplifier stage.

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Floor Loudspeaker ReviewsAudacious Audio
Klipsch Palladium P-39F loudspeaker
Wes Phillips  |  Jun 12, 2009  |  0 comments
It ain't the stuff you don't know that trips you up, it's the stuff you know that ain't so. When, at the 2007 CEDIA Expo, I encountered Klipsch's startlingly new Palladium P-39F loudspeaker ($20,000/pair), I was impressed by its looks. Tall (56"), as beautifully contoured as the prow of a canoe, and clad in striking zebra-stripe plywood, the P-39F is possibly the best-looking speaker Klipsch has ever made.
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