Gramophone Dreams

Gramophone Dreams Phono Cartridge Reviews

Gramophone Dreams #104: Vintage Systems, Vintage Cartridges Part 1

Herb Reichert Dec 24, 2025

Richard Cirulnick's system.

Last week, a black sedan pulled up by the curb in front of my building. I recognized the driver, Richard Cirulnick, because an old audio-world buddy named Al Rhodes introduced me to him at the New York Audio Show in 2017. Since then, we've hung out a lot, especially at audio shows . . .

Gramophone Dreams Phono Cartridge Reviews Phono Preamp Reviews

Gramophone Dreams #103: Ortofon MC X40 phono cartridge, Robyatt & Lundahl step-up transformers

Herb Reichert Nov 26, 2025

The new MC X-series moving coil cartridges appear to have jumped the fence and broken free of what I long perceived as Ortofon's traditional Scandinavian style. This month, I'm auditioning the top of the X series, the MC X40, which costs $1150 and sounds almost Japanese.

Gramophone Dreams Headphone Reviews

Gramophone Dreams #102: Stax SR-007S Earspeakers

Herb Reichert Oct 28, 2025

Walking through any big art museum, even at a brisk pace, it's impossible not to notice how boldly each object wears the unique stamp of its time and place of manufacture. It doesn't matter whether the artist worked in Paris or Polynesia, in the 15th or 20th century. The force of the creator's persona, united with the constraints of the cultural system that supported the making of that type of art, determines the vibe the object emits. That vibe is what I'm hoping to grasp.

CD Player/Transport Reviews Gramophone Dreams

Gramophone Dreams #101: The Shanling ET3 CD transport

Herb Reichert Oct 01, 2025

Costing just $899, Shanling's top-loading ET3 CD transport appears to have been designed by people who recognize the multitude of big and small fails (or lost opportunities) of previous CD transports. In use, the ET3 felt like a distillation of what I've always wanted in a transport: strong, solid, compact, cool-looking, and feels good to use.

Gramophone Dreams Phono Cartridge Reviews Phono Preamp Reviews

Gramophone Dreams #100: the Schiit Stjarna again, the Denon DL-103, the EM/IA 103 SUT

Herb Reichert Aug 27, 2025

My Russian neighbor Alex forges ax heads and smokes pig chests 5' from my bedroom window. At 2:00am, shirtless, in February. One especially cold night, I woke up to the sounds of hammering and loud music. When I looked out, Alex was blacksmithing a glowing red meat cleaver blade, with Rachmaninoff plays Rachmaninoff blaring from a cassette in his boom box.

Gramophone Dreams Phono Preamp Reviews

Gramophone Dreams #99: Schiit Audio Stjarna phono preamplifier

Herb Reichert Aug 06, 2025

I'd been building and repairing tube amplifiers for a few years when my first Altec A5 Voice of the Theater speakers arrived. I bought them to help me evaluate the sound of low-powered triode amps—but whoa! The moment I turned that VOT system on, I heard from 30' away the sound of either a waterfall or a large AM radio tuned between stations . . . What's the best tube tester? A 107dB/watt speaker!

Gramophone Dreams Headphone Reviews Phono Cartridge Reviews

Gramophone Dreams #98: Woo WA24 headphone amplifier, Lyra & Hana phono cartridges

Herb Reichert Jul 01, 2025 First Published: Jul 01, 2025

Woo Audio's 20th Anniversary WA24 headphone amplifier comes in a distinctive, low-slung chassis that welcomes the eye with gentle angular volumes and bright, frosty-surfaced, copper-toned controls. In the always-crowded WooJPS LabsStax room at CanJam 2025, Woo's new $12,999 flagship caught everybody's eye, sitting on a table next to its similar-looking stablemate, the $8999 WA23 LUNA, a tube-rectified single-ended amplifier that, unlike the new WA24, uses 2A3 tubes.

Gramophone Dreams

Gramophone Dreams #97: Jamming With Cans at CanJam NYC

Herb Reichert May 16, 2025 First Published: May 16, 2025

Most of what I know about audio I learned from drag racing. That's where I first recognized the relationship between force, geometry, and sound. When I was barely out of high school, I began consciously picturing sounds as a symphony of forces operating in a Cartesian space. In retrospect, this "Cartesian picturing" was probably inspired by the descriptive geometry class I was taking at Wright junior college in Chicago, but I didn't think of that at the time.

Gramophone Dreams Phono Cartridge Reviews Stand Loudspeaker Reviews

Gramophone Dreams #96: Falcon 2024 Limited Edition LS3/5a loudspeaker, Lyra Delos phono cartridge

Herb Reichert May 09, 2025 First Published: May 09, 2025

The story goes that starting in 1962, Malcolm Jones was KEF's "first employee," where he "did most of the design and development of the legendary KEF drive unitsthe B139, B200, B110, T15, T27and the systems in which they were incorporated. Malcolm left KEF in 1974, having just completed the Reference Series 104 system and work on an active professional monitor to work full time at Falcon Acoustics Ltd."

Fast-forward a few years. I bought my first BBC LS3/5a in 1980. It was a Falcon Acoustics kit I saw advertised in the back of Speaker Builder magazine. Fingers crossed, I sent a postal money order in a thin Air Mail envelope to what I imagined was a garden shed in England. But of course it wasn't.

Gramophone Dreams Stand Loudspeaker Reviews

Gramophone Dreams #95: The Voxativ Hagen2 Monitor loudspeaker

Herb Reichert Apr 07, 2025 First Published: Apr 07, 2025

I think I just found the perfect Herb speaker. It uses a hand-crafted 5" wide-range driver with a cone made from Japanese calligraphy paper. It rolls off around 50Hz at the bottom and 30kHz at the top. It has no crossover. Its cabinet is made of MDF that responds loudly when I tap it with my fingernails. Inside is what its designer calls a "short horn," which appears to harmlessly disperse back-cone energy while adding energy below the driver's cutoff frequency. Mainly, though, it's a perfect Herb speaker because it is naturally phase coherent. And sparkplug fast. And completely unmuffled.

This speaker I'm describing is Voxativ's new Hagen2 Monitor. To say it is a "Herb speaker" is to distinguish it from a John, Jason, or Kal speaker, or even a Ken or Alex speaker. If you want to know what kind of sound an audio reviewer values, notice which speakers they embrace, how well they understand them, and how long they stick with them.