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Equipment Reviews

Ultra Audio's site platform was changed in August 2010. For equipment reviews previous to that, use this link to transfer to the old site.

Vitus Audio Signature SM-010 Mono Amplifiers

Written by: Daniel Barnum
Created: 01 August 2012

Vitus SM-010Vitus Audio electronics have impressed me at every trade-show exhibit at which I’ve heard them. VA always shows its strengths and sonic character while allowing the associated loudspeakers, cables, and ancillaries to shine. Typically, I would saunter into the room, get a first impression of the sound, then anchor myself and thoroughly enjoy the music as I worked out fantastic schemes to get the Vitus gear into my system. Cost or logistics didn’t matter -- I had to have them. Luckily, I didn’t have to follow through on my plots; I got my wish, at least for as long as it takes me to prepare this review: I’m listening to Vitus Audio’s SM-010 monoblock amplifiers ($45,000 USD per pair) in my home system.

Read more …

YG Acoustics Kipod II Signature Loudspeakers

Written by: Howard Kneller
Created: 15 July 2012

YG Acoustics Kipod II SignatureSelect ComponentIf you fancy the audiophile rags (and if you're reading this, you likely do), chances are you've heard of high-end speaker maker YG Acoustics. A while back, YGA caused a stir with an ad campaign that proclaimed its speakers "The best . . . on Earth. Period."

That's a brash statement from any manufacturer, let alone one that's extremely small (YGA currently employs only about ten people) and is barely ten years old. Not surprisingly, lots of people, including many reviewers, were taken aback. However, after listening to the company's wares, more than a few people have concluded that the statement isn't entirely hype.

Read more …

Vandersteen Audio Treo Loudspeakers

Written by: Doug Blackburn
Created: 01 July 2012

Select ComponentVandersteen Audio TreoVandersteen Audio is one of the survivors: a now-classic audio brand whose first product was the Model 2 loudspeaker, in 1977. In all those years, many flavor-of-the-month loudspeaker brands have come and gone, and most that have gone have deserved that fate.

A company doesn’t stick around for 35 years by accident -- it lasts because it makes products that people want, and has stood behind its products all that time. For many years, with his Models 1, 2, and 3, founder-owner Richard Vandersteen focused on maximum performance for the dollar. Updates for these models were issued regularly over the years, and for a long time they were Vandersteen’s core business. All featured essentially the same look: top and bottom caps of wood, and four side panels covered with an acoustically transparent cloth sock. Vandersteen’s thinking was that good-looking wood cabinets are expensive and add nothing to a speaker’s performance. Avoiding expensive wood finishes let him engineer better sound into his speakers than other companies could put into speakers at similar prices with real-wood finishes.

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Magico Q1 Loudspeakers

Written by: Peter Roth
Created: 15 June 2012

Select ComponentMagico Q1When any audio component comes in for review, it’s usually several weeks before its true nature begins to fully reveal itself. Familiar recordings of different musical styles, placing different demands on a playback system, are selected to tease out the character and capabilities of the device under test. But every once in a while, the initial impact made by a component is so clear that it stands out in stark relief from the rest. In those rare circumstances, the hundreds of tracks played in the following weeks serve only to confirm that initial impression, rather than blaze a circuitous trail to its real character, hitherto unrevealed. 

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Hemingway Audio Prime Reference Mk.II Speaker Cables, Interconnects, and Power Cords

Written by: Michael Wright
Created: 01 June 2012

HemingwayI enjoy doing cable reviews . . . but nothing seems to get audiophiles more stirred up than criticisms of their speakers or cables. Critiques of anything else seem permissible, but cables and speakers . . . say the wrong thing and you’ll get e-mails for weeks. I know this because I visit audio forums and message boards, and I read what the cliques have to say about what reviewers have written about their favorite cables. A lot of the time, what these folks seem to forget is that reviewers need to use a unique set of standards in choosing cables. 

Read more …

Synergistic Research Element Copper, Tungsten, and Copper-Tungsten-Silver Interconnects and Speaker Cables

Written by: Howard Kneller
Created: 15 May 2012

Synergistic ResearchSelect ComponentIn April 2009, when I reviewed Synergistic Research’s Tesla Apex interconnects and speaker cables, I concluded that they were among the best cables I’d heard regardless of price -- and I had heard more than a few. However, as a result of nothing more than my own carelessness and the need to begin my next review, I failed to give the Teslas the Reviewers’ Choice award they deserved. I remedied that failing two months later in a follow-up review, and wondered what Synergistic could come up with next. 

I got my answer at the 2011 Rocky Mountain Audio Fest, when the company’s chief designer, Ted Denney III, released their new Element models. At that show, Denney told me that the Element cables represent an "enormous" jump in performance over the Teslas, which are to be discontinued. Knowing firsthand just how good the Teslas are, I was skeptical of this claim. Clearly, a review was in order. 

Read more …

Crystal Cable Arabesque Mini Loudspeakers

Written by: Peter Roth
Created: 01 May 2012

Arabesque MiniThinking outside the box. Some designers do it, others don’t. Gabi and Edwin van der Kley, the husband-and-wife duo behind the Dutch sister companies Crystal Cable and Siltech, have coupled a solidly engineering-based design approach with a questioning spirit that leads them beyond the status quo. Whether it’s a novel amalgam of silver and gold conductors, or a cable-design philosophy based on the principle of thinner is better, the van der Kleys favor elegant solutions. Known principally for the cable offerings of their two companies, Edwin has also explored what’s possible in electronic design in a limited series of Siltech preamplifiers and amplifiers.

In 2008, with its glass-cabineted Arabesque, Crystal Cable introduced to the world Gabi’s ideal full-range loudspeaker: elegant in appearance, exceptional in sound. Besides its transparent enclosure, the most obvious characteristic of the floorstanding, mirror-imaged Arabesques is their unorthodox shape in cross-section, which gave them their name. (From Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 11th Edition: "arabesque: an ornament or style that employs flower, foliage, or fruit and sometimes animal and figural outlines to produce an intricate pattern of interlaced lines.") The original Arabesque ($65,000 USD per pair) was reviewed in Ultra Audio in 2009, was designated a Select Component, and then received the SoundStage! Network’s top honor: Product of the Year. 

Read more …

EgglestonWorks Fontaine Signature Loudspeakers

Written by: Tim Shea
Created: 15 April 2012

EgglestonWorks FontaineWay back when, I was a teenager looking to buy my first set of "serious" speakers with the hard-earned money I made on my paper route, and went looking for the biggest suckers I could find per dollar spent. Sound quality was a consideration, but I’m embarrassed to say that looks and woofer size were at least as important as the quality of sound the speakers could produce. I ended up with a pair of Pioneer HPM100s. I still have them today . . . though I can’t remember the last time a signal passed through them.

Since those blissfully ignorant wonder years, more time has passed than I like to admit. Fortunately, I’ve actually learned some things since then. Of the few I can remember, one is that it’s often not the size of the package that counts, and that’s certainly true of speakers. It took me a while to accept this, but accept it I have, to the point where my next pair of speakers may be minimonitors. Never woulda seen that coming not so long ago.

So when the relatively smallish Fontaine Signatures arrived from EgglestonWorks, along with their not-small price tag of $8500 USD per pair, I wasn’t nearly as concerned as I’d have been back in the day. That said, knowing what else is out there at that price had me thinking that they’d better pack a bunch of sound per square inch.

Read more …

AudioQuest Diamond and Carbon FireWire 800 Cables

Written by: Doug Blackburn
Created: 15 March 2012

AudioQuest CarbonThis review is completely and utterly insane. If you read it, then describe it using such words as preposterous, impossible, improbable, hogswallop, or the ever-popular bullship, I won’t disagree. I did all the work here, and I still think it’s the goofiest thing I’ve ever experienced in audio since I got seriously involved in the field 40 years ago. It should be impossible. I was trained as and worked as an engineer -- mechanical, electrical (including power-supply compliance), software, and computer systems -- for more than 35 years, but this goes against everything I know or thought I knew about electricity, electronics, and physics. Had these results been written by anyone else, I’d have described them as complete fantasy. Perhaps most interesting of all, what I talk about in this review might be only the iceberg tip of something I don’t recall having once read about in the last four decades. 

Read more …

Artos Audio Sunrise Loudspeakers

Written by: Michael Wright
Created: 01 March 2012

Artos SunriseAs a reward for my efforts in 2011, editor Jeff Fritz made me an offer: Would I like to review my first loudspeaker for the SoundStage! Network, the Artos Audio Sunrise ($23,000 USD per pair)? Their construction is first-rate, and the speakers are not only beautiful to look at but sound good. I said yes, and Jeff put me in touch with Artos Audio’s US distributor, Alfred Kainz, who owns highend-electronics, Inc., in Apple Valley, California.

Read more …

  1. Esoteric I-03 Integrated Amplifier
  2. NuForce DAC-9 Digital-to-Analog Converter
  3. Audience adeptResponse aR6-TS Power Conditioner
  4. EAR MC 4 Step-Up Transformer
  5. PBN Audio Montana InnerChoic Liberty Loudspeakers
  6. Simple Design Sonore Music Server
  7. Herron Audio VTSP-3A Preamplifier
  8. Copland CDA825 CD Player
  9. TW-Acustic Raven 10.5 Tonearm
  10. Artisan Silver MC Phono Stage
  11. MSB Technology Universal Media Transport
  12. Well Tempered Lab Amadeus Turntable
  13. Purity Audio Design Purity Reference Preamplifier
  14. Silverline Audio Sonatina Mk.IV Loudspeakers
  15. Ayre Acoustics DX-5 Universal A/V Engine
  16. Coda Technologies 15.0 Stereo Amplifier
  17. LessLoss Firewall Power Conditioner and DFPC Signature Power Cable
  18. Miyajima Laboratory Premium BE Mono Cartridge
  19. Magnum Dynalab MD 309 Integrated Amplifier
  20. Audio Research Reference 5 Preamplifier
  21. VAC Phi 200 Stereo Amplifier
  22. Ortofon Cadenza Mono Phono Cartridge
  23. Ultrasone Edition 8 Headphones
  24. YG Acoustics Carmel Loudspeakers
  25. Atma-Sphere Music Amplifier M-60 Mk.3.1 Mono Amplifiers
  26. AudioPrism Ground Control Grounding Cables
  27. Nordost Norse Frey Interconnects and Speaker Cables
  28. Ayre Acoustics KX-R Preamplifier and MX-R Mono Amplifiers
  29. Raysonic SP-300 Integrated Amplifier
  30. Synergistic Research Galileo Universal Interconnect and Speaker Cells, and Mini Power Couplers
  31. VAC Renaissance Mk.3 Preamplifier
  32. Accustic Arts Reference Tube-DAC II SE DAC and Reference Drive II CD Transport
  33. Silent Running Audio VR fp isoBASE Equipment Platforms
  34. EAR 890 Stereo Amplifier

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210x600 T+A Solitaire P SE (20230726)
PMC Fenestria
Simaudio
767x500 T+A Soltaire P SE (20230726)
Vitus Audio
Vitus Audio

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