The name “B&W” brings many positive thoughts to audiophiles around the world, and with good reason. This high-end speaker manufacturer, owned by John Bowers and Roy Wilkins, has been a prime catalyst for developing major upgrades to every loudspeaker unit that they ever produced, starting with their first commercial loudspeaker, the P1, which they began manufacturing in 1966. Many years later, they developed the very awe-inspiring Signature 800 series of loudspeakers that featured the very innovative Diamond Dome tweeters, which most people only could gasp at when they saw this amazing-looking futuristic tweeter design at CES 2001. The startling “tweeter on top” found in the Signature 800 series, effectively gets rid of the problem of bouncing sound that is found in a speaker system when you put a loudspeaker’s tweeter in the conventional box cabinet that most loudspeaker’s manufacturers still ...

Introduction Acoustic Zen has long been known within the audiophile community as a manufacturer of premium audio cables.  My local brick and mortar hi-fi store has been touting the virtues of Acoustic Zen’s cables for many years.  At CES, I had a candid, off-the-record conversation with an executive for one of the ultra-high end audio electronics companies who extolled the virtues of Acoustic Zen’s Adagio speakers, a new offering from the cable company.  With trusted industry insiders singing the praises of this relatively small manufacturer, I was anxious to see if the Acoustic Zen Adagios were truly world class speakers. I arranged for a review pair of the Adagio speakers, as well as three Adagio, Jr. speakers for center channel and surround duties.  The Adagio retails for $4,300 and is a medium-sized floor-standing speaker measuring 48 inches tall, 13 inches deep and ...

Introduction Every AV enthusiast is different and we each use our systems for different types of music and movies.  Many of us listen to a wide array of musical genres and must strive to get the best sound for each and every one we listen to from a single system, although some audiophiles go to extremes to accomplish this goal by having different speakers or even entire systems for different musical moods.  This is great if time, money and space are not a limiting factor in your pursuit of audio nirvana, but for the rest of us, we need a universal system to accurately reproduce the different genres we listen to; often, this system must do double duty as a home theater.   Finding one speaker to achieve all these goals is not easy, and building one to do it isn’t either.  ...

Introduction I could bore you with a brief summery about the whos and whys surrounding the electrostatic loudspeaker manufacturer MartinLogan, but truthfully, if you consider yourself a fan of high-end audio, then the MartinLogan story is among the most well-known in the business. So instead I’ll lead with this: I have in my possession the coolest iPod speakers ever dreamed of. There has been a lot of to-do over the mighty MP3 player from Apple, as AV manufacturers clamor to jump aboard the train, manufacturing countless accessories and glorified clock radios in a relentless quest to cash in on the seemingly endless success of the iPod. After a recent visit to my local Apple Store, several high-end companies were displaying products that utilize or feature the iPod, hoping to squeeze an ounce of high fidelity out of the otherwise personal player. ...

Introduction Earlier this year Paradigm released an update, version five or v.5, of one of their most successful and longest-lasting speaker lines, the Monitor Series. Paradigm is famous for following the simple business proposition of building a good product for less than the other guy. What I’ve always appreciated about Paradigm is that they don’t skimp on the details, no matter how low the retail price. The sound quality is there, but so are the build quality, finish and nice little touches like their new magnetized grilles. Value here doesn’t mean you’re getting something cheap, it means you’re getting something truly valuable, for less than you might expect to pay. The subject of this review and my new object of affection, the Monitor 9 floor-standing speaker, retails for $949 per pair and is about all the speaker one could hope for, ...