The Absolute Sound Podcast

The Bricasti M1 DAC has been a powerful mainstay for consumers looking for affordable yet high-fidelity precision since its debut in 2011. Bricasti is now introducing the Series II, looking to expand yet preserve what made the first edition so special. Does the Series II deliver? Tune in to find out. This video is sponsored by: https://fidelityimports.com/pages/introducing-perlisten 00:00 Bricasti...

Today I’m taking an inside look at possibly the most innovative company in the consumer audio space. I say this because today’s subject, Theoretica Applied Physics, is working on some of the biggest problems of audio believability, their results are quite successful in my experience, and the architecture they use is relatively low cost. Let’s take a deeper look. Learn more: https://www.theoretica....

Flexibility is not something one usually associates with wired headphones. After all, you're tethered to your equipment. You can't go out, hop up and get a cup of coffee, and you can't do a lot of adjustment to the sound profile as well. Wireless headphones promise to do a lot more. Aside from the flexibility of being able to get up and move around, that will without a cable tied to your head. But...

In this briefing, I give my basic observations about the performance of the Isoacoustics GAIA Neo speaker footers. These are complex passive absorbers that replace the spikes normally used at the base of speakers like my test subject, the Perlisten S7t. Normally, I think of products like this as “below threshold” items – products that may be beneficial, but whose effect may be difficult to hear in...

Erratum: Giveaway occurs on January 30, 2026 When we reviewed the new Onkyo M-80 power amp and P-80 streaming preamp, Onkyo kindly sent us a TX-RZ30 receiver to offer to our viewers as a giveaway. We didn’t want to interrupt the review video excessively, yet we thought there might be viewers interested in the giveaway who hadn’t seen the review. So, we made this brief Giveaway announcement. Januar...

There's a lot of nostalgia out there for the 1980s, and when British speaker maker Monitor Audio looked back at that decade, it discovered gold in the form of its studio 15 speaker. And so, inspired by the creativity and individuality of the 1980s, monitors set out to create the studio 89. So are these $2,750 per pair speakers totally awesome or just bogus? Let's find out! This video is sponsored...

Orchard Audio is a US manufacturer of amplifiers, headphone amplifiers and now streamer/DACs in the case of the product we’re reviewing here, the Pecan Pi+ Premium. The company believes strongly in engineering and is particularly sensitive to leveraging appropriate parts. We’ve reviewed their Starkrimson GANFET amplifer previously. With the Pecan Pi, we were particularly attracted by the incorpora...

Details of the Viewer Giveaway of an Onkyo 9.2 channel Atmos receiver are after the break. Every once in a while, reviewers get products to evaluate that just doesn’t conform to the standard or to their expectations. That has certainly been the case with the new Onkyo M-80 amp and P-80 preamp. Let’s take a look, because the way this pairing deviates from normal might be very interesting to you. Th...

That said, for those of you who have a budget that could accommodate the JCAT XACT S1 Evo Server at $18,600 US or for those of you who are genuinely curious about the state-of-the-art in audio streaming, you’re gonna wanna stick around while I share what I heard when listening to this refined bit of kit. This video is sponsored by: https://www.devialet.com/en-us/amplifiers/?srsltid=AfmBOopMaf_et8m...

Last year I built a new listening room. From the ground up. In part, this is the story of that process, but much more I have tried here to organize what I learned so that it is also instructive for music lovers and audiophiles who want to get more out of their current rooms. So, you don’t have to build a new room or complete a new building like I did to get a lot of value from this. I hope. This i...

If there's one job for soundbars, it's to deliver deep bass. That's the Achille's Heel of every single big screen TV. In that sense the Devialet Dione does its job admirably, but it does much more than that, delivering a musicality that most other manufacturers surely are envious of... tune in to learn more! 00:00 Devialet Dione 00:57 Overview 02:11 Specs & Design 04:58 Sound Quality 10:59 Dol...

The Boulder 1162 is an amplifier at a price point where you would expect excellence, and indeed you get it. Also, at this price point details matter because there are other excellent amps both below and above this segment of the market. Let’s take a look. This video i sponsored by: https://www.theabsolutesound.com/articles/the-absolute-sounds-review-methodology-first-principles/ 00:00 Boulder 1162...

Being one of the long established companies in specialist high-end, Audio Research has enjoyed quite a reputation for tube equipment since its founding in 1970. Only a fraction of the models they have produced over the years have been solid-state, though half of the 6 new model introductions are this year. How does the I/70 stack up compared to their other tried-and-true amplifiers? Tune in to fin...

Anyone that’s been to an audio show in the last five years has likely run across a system from Audio Group Denmark, the Scandinavian company founded by former Raidho designers Lars Kristensen and Michael Børresen that is a union of four hifi brands: Ansuz, Aavik, Børresen and Axxess. Audio Group Denmark have marketed themselves heavily as being at the cutting edge of technology across amplificatio...

If you've been following high-end audio for any length of time, you know GoldenEar has carved out this interesting niche. They're not playing the same game as everyone else in regards to what the traditional 2 channel configuration looks like in a number of their designs. While some speaker companies are still arguing about whether you need a subwoofer or not, GoldenEar basically said "what if we...

So, this review has been a long time coming, ARCAM announced their new flagship streaming integrated amplifier at High End Munich in May of 2024 and released the 5th Generation Class-G amplifier in fall of the same year. This dynamic titan is certainly indicative of a company who focuses on perfecting past products, while simultaneously incorporating new technologies into cost effective packages....

From Thomas Tan: When I was asked to review the Pink Faun Scion streamer transport, I felt both excited and a little uneasy. Excited because this is a $20,000 machine. A serious piece of audio engineering. And easy because the science is purely a streamer with no DAC. And I wonder whether it could really sound different from a $200 streamer. After all, in theory, a streamer is just sending ones an...

Big screen TVs are notorious for having really minuscule or poor sound quality. That's because just the dimensions of them dictate the fact that you can't fit a huge speaker into a thin LCD or OLED big screen TV, so soundbars are supposed to be a convenient solution to that one piece of equipment that can bring expansive sound in that immersive, enveloping quality to the soundtrack of a movie or e...

Chesky Audio is a relatively new company. Today I’ll be reviewing their second speaker model, the LC2. Like the original LC1, the LC2 features a compact 3D-printed monocoque cabinet, with a 2-way design using dual side-mounted passive radiators. It is priced at $1995per pair, including shipping in the US. That specification seems pretty ho-hum, and this price point might lead to modest expectation...

A couple of months back, Tom Martin reviewed the Sound Lab G7-7C – the G5-4C’s big brother (although still not the largest speaker Sound Lab makes). In that video, Tom did such a fabulous job getting into the technical minutia of Sound Lab speakers that there’s likely nothing beneficial I could add to that. I would recommend going back to that video to get a clearer overview of Sound Lab’s design...

Welcome to this edition of Recordings of the Month. Here we recommend recordings that our audio reviewers have enjoyed. They may be new recordings or older recordings that we have recently discovered. Sometimes, they are recordings our reviewers have come to appreciate more and more as they use them in audio review work. This video is sponsored by: https://www.mofielectronics.com/products/mofi-ele...

T+A elektroakustic is a venerable German company with extensive engineering and manufacturing capabilities for speakers, amplifiers, D/A converters, turntables and headphones. The Criterion Series S240 which is our review subject, are part of the T+A Criterion range of speakers, each of which uses transmission line loading for the bass drivers. Let’s see what all this experience and technology del...

Grimm is a manufacturer of audio equipment that take a somewhat different path than normal. Eelco Grimm, the CEO, is a fascinating person if you like audio tech because he comes at many problems from a systems perspective, integrating knowledge of the influence of the recording process, acoustics, ear and brain on the sound. This is in addition to knowledge of the component elements necessary for...

At times, audiophiles tend to think of innovation in the field as something dramatic – technologically dramatic. In the case of speakers, the mind imagines new driver physics or driver configurations. I get it: plasma drivers or radiastrahlers or large electrostatic panels look dramatically different and sometimes sound quite different too. And yet, such exotic concepts have made limited headway i...

In this review, Robert Taylor explores the dCS Lina Master Clock, the problem it's trying to solve, and its synchronization with this dCS Bartók APEX Streaming DAC. Does it clock a higher fidelity sound? Tune in to find out. This video is sponsored by: https://shunyata.com/product/everest-x/ The Absolute Sound’s Review Methodology: https://www.theabsolutesound.com/articles/the-absolute-sounds-revi...