The Four Surprising Reasons Why Some Reviewers Rail Against Measurements
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- Written by Doug Schneider Doug Schneider
- Category: Monthly Column Monthly Column
- Created: 01 April 2021 01 April 2021
The SoundStage! Network began publishing in 1995. By 1999, we had started expanding, adding more sites to the network, and we inked a deal with Canada’s National Research Council (NRC) to measure speakers in their anechoic chamber and publish the results. The NRC’s anechoic chamber and associated lab facilities were world-famous then—and still are today—because that’s where Dr. Floyd Toole initially conducted his groundbreaking loudspeaker research (in the 1970s and into the 1980s) that correlated listening impressions with objective measurements. Toole’s research is considered by many to be the most comprehensive body of work ever produced on the subject and was so influential that it helped to build and shape the Canadian loudspeaker industry.
Cleaned Up, Rearranged, and Improved—My 2021 Reference Room and Stereo System
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- Written by Doug Schneider Doug Schneider
- Category: Monthly Column Monthly Column
- Created: 01 March 2021 01 March 2021
On December 16, 2020, I posted the picture below to my personal Facebook newsfeed with this caption: “There are valid reasons why I don’t often post pictures of my listening room—this reviewing gig can get a little out of hand sometimes.”
Making Way for More Equipment at John Thompson's The Record Centre. Is This the Future of Hi-Fi Selling?
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- Written by Doug Schneider Doug Schneider
- Category: Monthly Column Monthly Column
- Created: 01 February 2021 01 February 2021
In 1979, Bob Geldof’s Boomtown Rats released “I Don’t Like Mondays” and instilled the idea that bad things happen on the first day of the workweek in an entire generation. But one particular Monday—December 11, 2017—wound up being a revelatory day for me. That was the day I first set foot inside The Record Centre, which is located in Ottawa, Canada, the city where I live. But I wasn’t there for the records—a friend had told me that the store was selling new and used hi-fi gear, so I wanted to see its stock for myself.
Three Reasons Why the SoundStage! Network Has So Many Websites (Important Lessons for Aspiring Online Hi-Fi Publishers)
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- Written by Doug Schneider Doug Schneider
- Category: Monthly Column Monthly Column
- Created: 01 January 2021 01 January 2021
Last month, I wrote about our 25th anniversary of online publishing. In that article I described how we began, how the SoundStage! name came about, the events that took place before we secured the soundstage.com domain name for the initial website, and some of the other things that helped us to get off to a pretty good start.
The 2020 SoundStage! Network Products of the Year—in One or Two Sentences
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- Written by Doug Schneider Doug Schneider
- Category: Monthly Column Monthly Column
- Created: 15 December 2020 15 December 2020
It’s that time of year again. We are pleased to announce our annual SoundStage! Network Products of the Year, which have been selected from the Reviewers’ Choice products reviewed in 2020 on one of our sites: SoundStage! Access, SoundStage! Hi-Fi, SoundStage! Simplifi, SoundStage! Solo, SoundStage! Ultra, or SoundStage! Xperience.
We Are 25 Years Old — And Some Other Things You Might Not Know About the SoundStage! Network
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- Written by Doug Schneider Doug Schneider
- Category: Monthly Column Monthly Column
- Created: 01 December 2020 01 December 2020
November was going to be a really big month for us — it marked the 25th anniversary of the SoundStage! Network. But with all the COVID-19 lockdowns around the world, resulting in people being cooped up in their homes, businesses shutting down, travel being restricted, and events being canceled, we decided to postpone all the plans we had made for celebrations until next year. However, I still think it’s worth marking the milestone here this month by highlighting a few interesting things about our founding that many people — including most of our writers, since I’m the only person who’s been here from the beginning — don’t know.
The Purifi Puzzle, Part Two: The Measured Performance of the SPK5 Loudspeaker
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- Written by Doug Schneider Doug Schneider
- Category: Monthly Column Monthly Column
- Created: 01 November 2020 01 November 2020
So far, I’ve written four articles about Denmark’s Purifi Audio and their products. The first, “Audio Video Show 2019: Coffee with Peter Lyngdorf,” was published in November 2019 on SoundStage! Global, while I was attending the annual show in Warsaw, Poland. That conversation with hi-fi entrepreneur Lyngdorf was when I first got intrigued about his new venture, Purifi Audio, and the company’s products.
More Measurements? Here's Why . . .
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- Written by Doug Schneider Doug Schneider
- Category: Monthly Column Monthly Column
- Created: 01 October 2020 01 October 2020
If, last year, someone predicted that millions of people around the world would be told to leave their offices and work from home for the foreseeable future, I suspect that most of those people would have found the prospect unbelievable. But the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent global lockdown have made the unbelievable a reality; in fact, it’s the biggest experiment in working from home the world has ever seen. When almost everything and everyone was locked down, many companies had to quickly make other changes in how they operated, to adapt to a sudden “new normal” that’s unlikely to return to the old normal anytime soon -- if ever.
The Purifi Puzzle, Part One: The Measured Performance of the Eigentakt Amplifier
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- Written by Douglas Schneider Douglas Schneider
- Category: Monthly Column Monthly Column
- Created: 01 September 2020 01 September 2020
On June 1, in “Purifi Audio’s Pint-Sized Powerhouses,” I described a bit of the history and technology behind Purifi Audio’s class-D 1ET400A amplifier module and PTT6.5W04 midrange-woofer, which Purifi sells as OEM parts to other manufacturers. I also gave my impressions of the sounds of the speaker and amplifier evaluation kits Purifi sent me, as listened to in a typical two-channel setup. One kit was the Eigentakt stereo amplifier, a small, DIY-type case housing two 1ET400a modules, a Purifi-designed gain board, and a Hypex power supply. The other was the SPK5 loudspeaker, which marries the PTT6.5W04 midrange-woofer to a Mundorf air-motion transformer (AMT) tweeter in a basic enclosure mostly made of plywood. At the end of that article, I wrote that I hoped to have both products measured, and the results posted online, by “July 1 or, at the latest, August 1.”
Why I Prefer Vinyl
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- Written by Jason Thorpe Jason Thorpe
- Category: Monthly Column Monthly Column
- Created: 01 August 2020 01 August 2020
“You could tell a lot about a man by the books he keeps -- his tastes, his interest, his habits.”
-- Walter Benjamin, Illuminations: Essays and Reflections
