News

Here you will find all News and Updates to my site in chronological order. I will also post audio or music related information I find interesting below:

October 2021 / April 2022LFD phono and line stage - No longer for sale!
March 2019Here is an article about truly amazing sounding MC step-up transformers made in Berlin - a must read for tube phono stage lovers!
February 2019Here is a guest article of my friend Alexander about his experience with The Little Red Rooster, Martin Küng's new SE FET amp - definitely a great read! 🙂
December 2018Friends have developed the cool app TestHiFi for testing the HiFi capability of a music system.
The app will be available from Friday, 2018-12-07 14:00 Central European Time (CET).
Please visit testhifi.com for more info...
November 2018NOW SOLD! (Feb. 2020): Used Ortofon RMG 309i tonearm on the "Gear for Sale" page. Feel free to check what's on sale right now.
More to come in the next weeks!
February 2018New entry (used Kimber 4TC speaker cable) on the "Gear for Sale" page. Feel free to check what's on sale right now...
October 2017New article of a wonderful audio trip to Umbria, Italy! I hope you enjoy reading it.
June 2017New entries on the"Gear for Sale" page. Feel free to check what's on sale right now...
January 2017The New Year brings a new design to my The Audio Eagle page! I will update older content to this new design as time allows. I hope you enjoy the new looks! 😉
March 2016 I recently found a very interesting comparison on the sound quality of original Blue Note lps with the highly acclaimed reissues from Music Matters on the net. The great article with mp3 sound samples from the well regarded LondonJazzCollector (from 2013) presents a comparison on the original Blue Note mono 1542 record of Sonny Rollins Vol 1 (47W63rd second pressing) with the beautifully made MusicMatters Blue Note reissue of the same record (45 rpm double lp from 2013). This is a topic I always was curious about and as I bought some MM33 Blue Note reissues over the last two years, a sound comparison of these with other reissues and hopefully originals is also on my to-do list.
If you love jazz lps from the 50s and 60s, this LondonJazzCollector article is a fun way to find out for yourself what you prefer soundwise (reissue or original) via these mp3 samples (due to mp3 quality the differences are reduced but still discernible).
For me personally, the "verdict" of LJC is spot on! 😉 Too bad that such originals are way out of my financial reach...
December 2015 New entry on the "Gear for Sale" page -> Item sold in the meantime! Feel free to check what's on sale right now...
January 2015New article on rediscovering the magic of 2A3 SET amps
December 2014My report of ETF 2014 is online now. Enjoy!
November 2014This time - together with my friends David and Alex - I attended ETF 2014 in Berlin and it was a fantastic festival and definitely worth the 9 hours car ride 🙂 There will follow a short report soon, but in the meantime enjoy the links to Thomas Mayer's great live blogs from ETF 2014:

http://vinylsavor.blogspot.co.at/2014/11/live-from-berlin-etf-2014-part-1.html

From this link you can easily access the other 19 of his blog entries regarding ETF 2014, enjoy!
March 2014Finally, the wait is over and here is my latest article on a good friend's superb tube amp designs and how we met. Enjoy! 🙂
November 2013This year, I unfortunately couldn't attend the European Triode Festival in Berlin. As I was told, ETF 2013 was again a blast 🙂
Here are some links to great pics from ETF 2013:

http://s108.photobucket.com/user/i_should_coco/library/ETF2013

http://morfeus.cc/ETF2013/index.html

http://www.holgerbarske.com/etf2013/index.html

http://www.audiohagel.dk/index/categories.php?cat_id=44&sessionid=0hul978k8aldse2qv5huqr7tj0

and finally great live photo reports from Thomas Mayer under his vinylsavor blog:

http://vinylsavor.blogspot.co.at/2013/11/live-from-berlin-etf-2013-part-1.html

http://vinylsavor.blogspot.co.at/2013/11/live-from-berlin-etf-2013-part-2.html

http://vinylsavor.blogspot.co.at/2013/11/live-from-berlin-etf-2013-part-3.html

http://vinylsavor.blogspot.co.at/2013/11/live-from-berlin-etf-2013-part-4.html

http://vinylsavor.blogspot.co.at/2013/11/live-from-berlin-etf-2013-part-5.html


Enjoy!
January 2013New entry on the"Gear for Sale" page (price change for the First Watt unit in Nov. 2013 - in the meantime sold!). Feel free to check what's on sale right now...
November 2012Finally, the wait is over. Here is an article called Lenco Magic. Enough said, just go for it...
June 2012After auditioning the latest version of Martin Küng's DAC, which now incorporates a Fet output stage, you can find my impressions at the end of the December 2011 review of a comparison of three musical DACs.

Futhermore, there is a new item for sale - a two chassis Thomas Mayer 300B SE stereo amp - listed under the "Gear for Sale"-section (already sold!!).
April 2012Gammas in Orbit - My friend Alexander talks about his audio experiences and why he choose a pair of Haigner Gammas. Great article by the way!
January 2012Finally and long awaited, my listening impressions of the outstanding Haigner Gamma horn loudspeakers!
December 2011New article about a comparison of three musical DACs (Lampizator Level 4, Metrum Acoustic Octave Mini and Martin Küng DAC) added. Have fun reading this one!
November 2011The "Gear for Sale"-page can now be directly accessed through a dedicated button in the menu-toolbar. Feel free to check out what's currently for sale 🙂
November 2011The European Triode Festival (ETF) was held the 3rd time end of November in Stella Plage (north of France). Unfortunately, I couldn't participate this year. What I've heard from friends, who participated, it was an excellent and fun festival with a wonderful main theme "Vintage Audio". Here is a link to great photo impressions on Holger Barske's site.
October 2011I added a new article about Martin Küng, the master of upgrades. "Pimp my audio gear" so to say... 😉
September /
October 2011
DAC comparison planned. As it looks, I will have a chance to compare the much raved Metrum Acoustic Octave DAC, Martin Küng's new DAC and Lukasz Fikus' famous Lampizator DAC Level 3.5 and 4 (both with tube output stage) in different digital configurations (with CD-player as drive as well as with an high level Audio PC as source). So please, stay tuned...
August 2011As my audio inventory needs reduction, I started a new page on my site called Audio Gear & Parts for Sale. So, have a look (page will be updated regularly)
July 2011Finally, a new article is ready! This time about David Haigner and my listening experiences with his 3-way monitor Tau.
March 2011I recently bought great music on CD which I would like to recommend to you. The project behind is called Playing for Change (PFC) "Songs around the World". I bought both CDs, PFC which was published 2008, 2009 and PFC2 which was released 2011. The recordings were done by enthusiastic people during their traveling around the world and recording as well as filming gifted musicians in their local neighborhoods.

The result is wonderful multicultural music, partly supported by famous musicians, like Keb Mo, Bono and Taj Mahal for example. An inspiring project with great cover versions and excellent sounding too. With every album you also get an accompanying DVD, which is a wonderful bonus.

Both CDs are a relief soundwise in comparison to the new Paul Simon album "So Beautiful or So What"; the latter album (I own the LP version) has excellent song material, but doesn't sound natural at all. What did they do, that the recorded music lacks dynamics and life and sounds thin? To much compression? What a waste!

Regarding the extreme use of compression in recordings please read John Marks' great Stereophile article on the Loudness Wars.
2010 and earlier News / UpdatesThese News and Updates you will find here (under the "Latest News and Updates" page of my former website layout.)