Michael Fremer News Today

The 2024 edition of the Audio Expo North America, more commonly known by the acronym AXPONA, opens on Friday (April 12) at the Renaissance Schaumburg Hotel & Convention Center in the Chicago suburb of Schaumburg, IL.

Vinyl records are bulky, fragile, expensive, and a relic of the past. So why are LPs outselling compact discs year after year?

As Wes Phillips recently reported on this website, CD sales are down and legal downloads of audio files are up. Stereophile has been criticized more than once for not paying enough attention to the subjects of MP3 and other compressed file formats, such as AAC, and for offering no guidance at all to readers about how to get the best sound quality from compressed downloads.

Every product listed here has been reviewed in Stereophile. Everything on the list, regardless of rating, is genuinely recommendable. Within each category, products are listed by class; within each class, they're in alphabetical order, followed by their price, a review synopsis, and a note indicating the issues in which the review, and any subsequent follow-up reports, appeared. "Vol.46 No.7" indicates our July 2023 issue, for example. "WWW" means the review is also post...

Audio Advice Live 2023 is back! Last year’s show was a smash hit, and this year promises to be even bigger and better. Over 80 top audio & video brands will be displayed and experienced in custom rooms.

In 1928, Swiss engineer and inventor Jean-Léon Reutter created a clock that could run for years without human interaction or any type of external power source. The Atmos Clock required no AC power, batteries, solar panels, or hand-winding. It was able to wind itself by leveraging subtle changes in atmospheric pressure and temperature.

The phrase "renaissance man" carries gravitas. It's probably overused. But Damon Von Schweikert believes the term genuinely befits his late father, speaker designer Albert Von Schweikert, who passed away on May 29, 2020, leaving behind myriad contributions to audio through his namesake companies.

The Momentum M400 MxV Mono amplifier ($79,500/pair; footnote 1) is the latest iteration of Dan D'Agostino Master Audio Systems' debut amplifier of 2011, the Momentum Mono amplifier.

Founded in 1978, VPI Industries appears to be one of the most successful turntable manufacturers in the world—certainly in the US. The New Jersey–based company sells turntables, tonearms, cartridges, record clamps, plinths, record cleaning machines, and a phono preamp. But that's not all. The company offers VPI-branded pillows, candles, mugs, stickers, T-shirts, and a tell-all company history, 40 Years on the Record.

Even if Darren Myers's name isn't familiar, you still may have heard—or at least heard about—hi-fi components he designed, including the PS Audio Stellar phono preamp, which garnered Stereophile's Analog Product of the Year Award in 2020.