Equipment Reviews

Network Hub Buying Guides Newsletter Signup Advertisers' Index

Sunday, May 11, 2025

Legacy link:

This new site was launched in July 2010. Visit the older site to access previous articles by clicking above.

Ultra Audio's site platform was changed in August 2010. For equipment reviews previous to that, use this link to transfer to the old site.

: Written by: Aron Garrecht; Created: 15 May 2018

For the past few months I’ve been evaluating two products from Balanced Audio Technology: the VK-53SE preamplifier and the subject of this review, the VK-255SE stereo power amplifier. The VK-255SE presents attractive measures of size, mass, gain, and power output for its asking price of $8995 USD, but would its impressive specifications result in equally impressive sound quality? I couldn’t wait to find out.

: Written by: Jeff Fritz; Created: 01 May 2018

Reviewers' Choice The current popularity of the integrated amplifier is unquestioned. This component category has risen in the esteem of audiophiles over the last decade and more, even as it has grown in complexity. On average, integrated amps can now do more than ever before. In fact, if a 2018 integrated doesn’t have at least a built-in digital-to-analog converter, it breaks with current convention. Streaming options, onboard storage for music files, wireless connectivity -- these and more appear on the lists of features of many of today’s integrateds.

: Written by: Howard Kneller; Created: 15 April 2018

I’ve said it before: No matter what type of audiophile you are, Furutech probably makes a product you’ve lusted after. In addition to power distributors and filters, and finished interconnects, speaker cables, and power cords, they make DIY bulk cables and component parts, and accessories that include the stainless-steel and silver-plated FI-50 NCF power-cord connectors, the Destat III Static Charge Eliminator for LPs and CDs, the DF-2 LP Flattener, Nano liquid contact enhancer and PC-α (Alpha) cleaning solution for CDs, the SK-III Electrostatic brush for discs and A/V gear, and a variety of AC outlets, cover plates, and fuses.

: Written by: Jeff Fritz; Created: 01 April 2018

Back in May 2012, I reviewed the Raidho C2.1, a smallish, three-driver, floorstanding loudspeaker from Denmark that retailed for $28,000 USD per pair. A lot has changed since then for the manufacturer of that speaker, Raidho Acoustics. The primary designer of the C2.1, Michael Børresen, has left the company to helm Aavik Acoustics along with his partner, Lars Kristensen. Aavik makes some very expensive amplifiers and a DAC-preamplifier.

: Written by: Vade Forrester; Created: 15 March 2018

Part of the fun of being an audio reviewer is to discover new gear unknown to the general public. Such a device is this DAC from Waversa Systems, a Korean manufacturer previously unknown to me. Their founder, CEO, and lead design engineer, Dr. Collin Shin, draws on 30 years’ experience in developing low-noise, jitter-canceling chips for precision medical and military applications, to design circuits that will allow the listener to be enveloped by digitally encoded music. In designing this version of the WDAC3, Shin was assisted by legendary American audio engineer and SoundStage! Network equipment-measurement engineer Bascom H. King.

: Written by: Tom Mathew; Created: 01 March 2018

Reviewers' Choice Rethm’s polymath founder, CEO, and designer, Jacob George, is based in Cochin, in southwest India. He brings to loudspeaker design a nontraditional vision informed by his love of wide-frequency-band, high-efficiency, single-driver speakers, vacuum tubes, his trainings as an architect and engineer, and a musician’s ear. His passions for audio and speaker design were driven by his pursuit of a type of sound reproduction that existed in his imagination: fast, coherent, highly detailed, yet nonfatiguing. The products of that pursuit have been steadily refined, and have culminated in the latest Rethm loudspeaker, the Maarga ($9750 USD per pair).

: Written by: Garrett Hongo; Created: 15 February 2018

Reviewers' Choice Over Thanksgiving and the ensuing week, I flew down from Oregon, where I live, to spend time at a retreat for artists (I write poetry) in northern California near the Bay Area. Because I also had friends to visit, I rented a car when I landed at the Norman Y. Mineta San José International Airport, splurging on a full-size vehicle: a silver Chevrolet Malibu sedan. It was big and stable, gave good mileage, and had lots of features. It got me around -- to Berkeley and Lafayette, to San Francisco and Santa Cruz. But it didn’t have savoir faire. It lacked that je ne sais quoi that aging guys like me crave on getaways from our humdrum lives.

: Written by: Jeff Fritz; Created: 01 February 2018

Reviewers' Choice Integrated amplifiers have often been touted as space savers. Combining two components into one, the typical integrated amplifier also does away with a set of interconnects, and results in a smaller package than would be possible with separates. This saves not only on real estate, but on price as well. You’ve heard all this before.

Forget it.

: Written by: Jason Thorpe; Created: 15 January 2018

Last year, at the Montréal Audio Fest, I did a solid for Mat Weisfeld, president of VPI Industries. Throughout that weekend I’d been in and out of various rooms that featured VPI turntables, and during those visits Weisfeld and I had struck up brief conversations. Close to the end of the show’s final day, as we discussed VPI’s MW-1 Cyclone record-cleaning machine, as I was picking his brain about the finer points of the Cyclone’s design, Weisfeld asked if I’d mind taking the display unit home with me. “We’ve got enough to transport back to the States -- it’d be a great help if you could look after this for us.”

: Written by: Howard Kneller; Created: 01 January 2018

I received review samples of Esoteric’s Grandioso K1 SACD/CD player and DAC ($31,000 USD) and G1 master clock generator ($26,000) at the same time. Figuring that not everyone would plunk down $57,000 all at once, I first reviewed the Grandioso K1 alone. Now it’s the Grandioso G1’s turn.