Features

Rhino Records, Warner Music Group's back-catalog label, has jumped into the rarified niche of prerecorded reel-to-reel tapes. Under the Rhino High Fidelity brand, the first two titles were announced in October 2025: T. Rex's Electric Warrior and The Yes Album. Both are limited editions; no more than 500 tapes will be made and sold.

In the context of a modern hi-fi system, phono cartridges are most akin to loudspeakers in that both are electromechanical transducers. Cartridges convert the mechanical movements of a stylus tracing a record groove to an electrical current.

What goes into building and outfitting a listening room? One of Stereophile's reviewers found out first-hand—and almost bit off more than he could chew. A tale of white powder, a mummified dog, and various deals with the devil.

We're all involved with the world we live in. Friends from 20 years ago? Hey, nice to see ya, put on a little weight I see. Generally, you hang with your crew, although you might miss the bigger picture that way.

I wrote for Stereophile from 1993 through 2002, and I remember my experiences fondly, including the pure pleasure of listening to music on all that wonderful audio equipment. But I hung with my tribe and never fully appreciated the crucible in which Stereophile was formed. It's a genuine saga; cue Ennio Morricone's soundtrack to Once Upon a Time in the West.

Seen from the air, Denmark is a vista of farms and wind turbines. But once your plane touches down, it is a land of loudspeakers. Perhaps this is because audio has a long history in Denmark—it was a Dane, Valdemar Poulsen, who developed a magnetic wire recorder in 1898—but there are more loudspeaker manufacturers per person than any other country. According to Wikipedia, Denmark is home to 5.75 million people, compared with New York's five boroughs, which have a population of 8.67 million However, as well as drive-unit manufacturers Audio Technology, Peerless, Vifa (which merged with Peerless to form Danish Sound Technology), and ScanSpeak, there are Bang & Olufsen, DALI, Dynaudio, Gamut, Gryphon, Jamo, Lyngdorf Audio, Peak-Consult, and Raidho all making loudspeakers. Lots of loudpeakers.

If there's one buzzword in high-end audio for the 1990s, it's undoubtedly jitter. "Jitter" describes timing variations in the clock controlling the ones and zeros that represent the analog audio signal. If that clock isn't stable to an extraordinarily precise degree, the sound quality of the digital processor will be degraded.

A CD transport/digital processor combination introduces jitter in three ways: 1) the transport puts out a jittered signal; 2) the S/PDIF or AES/EBU interface between the transport and processor creates jitter; and 3) the digital processor adds its own jitter to the clock. These additive factors are largely responsible for the great range in sound quality we hear from different transports and interfaces.

One evening late last summer I took the most expensive workout of my life. In my hurry to meet a friend at the gym, I left the house, leaving my computer and hi-fi on despite the ominous look of the sky. In the South, experience teaches you to dash about disconnecting everything at the first sign of a thunderstorm. Usually I do, but this time my mind was elsewhere.