Trends Audio is a relatively new company that is part of the now established Chinese high end audio market.  They are also among the new breed that are trying to gain acceptance in Western markets. Many have already done so as you may have heard of Shanling, Melody, Audio Space, Antique Sound Lab, Eastern Electric, and a host of others. Chinese designers have been steadily improving the performance, reliability and the build quality of their gear.  Many of the products produced in China can compete with the most exotic American and European brands in terms of sound quality. This all spawns from a deep passion the Chinese have had for high fidelity going back decades.  I saw this first hand when I visited Hong Kong and Mainland China last October and was quite surprised at how many Hifi shops were ...

Can there be a more polarizing topic among audiophiles than cables? Audio forums are filled with animated chats, debating the validity and effectiveness of after-market speaker cables, interconnects and power cords. Non-believers affirm there is nothing to gain by paying additional money for cables – “wire is wire.” Others have spent thousands of dollars on cables and swear the improvements are real. And judging by the number of cable manufacturers and different designs offered, there certainly is a market of consumers hungry for – or at least very curious about - wiring upgrades. The skepticism, however, is not surprising, considering the movement toward designing audiophile-grade cables didn't take full flight until the 1980s. Ever since, hobbyists and manufacturers themselves have been engaged in lofty discourse over what cables actually do to the sound of an audio system – if anything. ...

Audiophiles are a restless lot, constantly looking for ways to tweak a system by any means possible, short of taking the plunge for new components. There are numerous forums dedicated to audio “tweaks”; some advice is good, some is laughable, but most is well-intentioned. One often discussed tweak is how to minimize the mechanical vibrations that occur within components and speakers during playback. A variety of vibration-dampening devices are available in a wide range of materials, from hard plastics to brass. Why bother with dampening and isolation? In audio, vibration causes distortion and introduces unwanted sound into each component. Vibration dampening feet are engineered to reduce the effects of mechanical vibrations that occur within a speaker, amplifier or other component, by transmitting them away from the source to optimize the audio you eventually hear. After spending several weeks with Valhalla ...

During my last two years of high school, I would come home from class, put on my Koss headphones, take a seat behind my drum set and play along to music for about an hour. I played loud and needed the music equally so to hear above my own din. After every session I was left with a bit of buzzing in my ears that, fortunately, has yet to cause any permanent damage. But those couple of years spent learning Neil Peart's licks left me with little love for headphones. It seemed more like I was surviving the music rather than enjoying it, and have since never found headphones comfortable or pleasant to listen to. The worst for me have been the “ear-bud” variety that now pervades the market thanks to the astonishing success of Apple's iPod. Most have painful ...

Tactile transducers have been around for years, but to be honest, I’ve always been a bit skeptical about them.  The thought of adding something to my home theater to shake my seating seems gimmicky and artificial.  After all, my reference system already includes two Velodyne DD-18, eighteen inch woofers capable of creating low frequency extension and sound pressure levels, far exceeding what any reasonable person would want.  Why would someone like me need to augment bass, when I already have bass in abundance?  A friend purchased Berkline Home Theater Seating with factory installed ButtKickers and convinced me they are worth trying.  TechnologyA tactile transducer is an electro-mechanical device that will shake almost anything.  Most tactile transducers are very similar to a loudspeaker woofer driver minus the cone, driven by an oscillating force (the voice coil).  They can operate at higher ...