This was a transitional year for the Rocky Mountain Audiofest – a new, larger venue along with an earlier date. Upon first first-siting of the massive, Gaylord Hotel (the photo doesn’t convey the scale of this place), I experienced sensory overload, and visions of ‘Vegas swirled through my head, and with that, Johnny Depp and …
And now for something completely different … auditioning DACs. Our neighbor, friend, and Positive-Feedback reviewer Lynn Olson brought over two Exasound DACs for this analog diehard to sample (pun intended). I’m a turntable designer, and many think of me as an analog only kind of fellow, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.
The Mk II turntable series represented a shift from pivoting (rotating) armboards to sliding armboards. After the production launch, we looked into the possibility of this sliding armboard architecture trickling down to our Mark I series turntables The result was the Mk 1.5 conversion. The only downside to this conversion is the sacrifice of dual …
With the release of our Spring, 2019 drive system update, it seemed like a good time to trace the evolution of our motor drives. We’ve included some details for the technically inclined, and we’ve tried to give you some insight into both our developent process and what we were trying to acccomplish. The sonic attributes …
Development of one product frequently informs development of another. In the case of the NiWatt amplifiers, we needed better wire and suddenly, a new line of cables was born. During development of the Eiger rim drive turntable, our biggest challenge was reducing noise transmission from the motor, since it’s directly coupled to the chassis as …
I was going through my notes on the final round of cable prototypes. This was the group of cables that pointed toward the production cable, and I invited Lynn Olson over for a listen. Since Lynn has been an advocate of cotton for longer than I, I knew he’d welcome the opportunity for a comparison.
What do polyester leisure suits have to do with hi-fi cables, why are people returning to cotton underwear, and most importantly how could anyone wear such an ugly suit?
With the number of design changes we’ve made to the NiWatt over the past 18 months, its initial release might well be called the NiWatt Mk-IV. All of this is to say, that the design is stable and mature, and there will be no need for first year revisions (all too common with some manufacturers). …
This morning, we mounted a customers’ van den Hul Crimson XGW Stradivarius cartridge onto a Kuzma 4Point-9 tonearm. The agenda was to verify compatibility of this combination.
It dawns on me that we haven’t had any NiWatt updates in a while, and as we near production, it’s time to bring you up to date (stay tuned for news). I went through photos taken at various stages of prototyping and have a bit more of the story to tell.
