Tom Fine

The latest moonlight drive down love street is a series of all-analog LPs from Rhino High Fidelity (RHF). A limited-edition numbered box set version sold out in days; un-numbered single LPs will sell until the production parts wear out. Cut by Kevin Gray at Cohearant Mastering using his Studer A-80 tape machine and Neumann VMS-66 lathe with Technics quartz-drive motor, they were plated and pressed at Optimal in Germany and are housed in the heavy-cardboard gatefold jackets used throughout the RHF series.

In audio reproduction, my values are similar. I can't enjoy music if the system is producing a clouded, muddy, overly warm, or otherwise unclear sound. I want the electromechanical representation of music to be richly detailed, sharply focused, and full range in dynamics and frequency. In that kind of all-encompassing and attention-demanding aesthetic, I can truly hear what the music is about. Under those conditions, the nature of the recording—good or bad, craft or crud—is plainly heard.

As a back-catalog label, Rhino was active early in the vinyl revival—and it continues to be. Rhino quickly learned that a popular older album, when released as a high-quality physical artifact—whether it's an LP, a CD box, a multichannel Blu-ray audio disc, or a combination of formats—engages fans more than merely dropping a new remaster onto streaming. I spoke with Rhino's president, Mark Pinkus, about the company's three-tier vinyl strategy soon after the company announced the third of those tiers, a new, lower-priced all-analog vinyl line called Rhino Reserve.

I am sitting earthbound in my living room almost a quarter-century beyond the year 2001, living a similar scenario with the Focal Diva Utopia streaming amplified wireless speaker system. My living room is not at all reminiscent of the Discovery One with its rotating central interior (footnote 1). But with the Diva Utopia system, I feel more in a sci-fi future young me might have imagined than with any hi-fi component I've reviewed so far. About the only thing the Diva Utopia has in common with the stereo systems I grew up with—and with my current reference system—is two floorstanding cabinets and diaphragms that move air to make sound.

Remember albums? The idea is quaint in the era of streaming, a time of "summer songs," one-hit wonders, meme songs, song snippets on TikTok, songs tied to viral videos, robot-generated playlists, and whatnot. Those of us older than the World Wide Web itself, we remember albums. They were 12" slices of happiness, sadness, escape, epiphany—all the feelings.

But hey, that's better than nothing. If you're in the market for a pair of modestly sized, reasonably priced floorstanding loudspeakers, I encourage you to read on as I describe the lively musical times I spent with the Sonus faber Sonetto V G2s ($6499/pair).