Jim Austin

1 week ago | stereophile.com | Jim Austin

At recent shows, Switzerland-based CH Precision has most often presented its electronics with Wilson speakers. At High End Munich 2025, the company was planning to demo with a pair of Rockports; that plan was foiled when a badly behaved volume-control took out a pair of tweeters. CH hardly had to settle for second-rate speakers, or anything approaching bad sound.

1 month ago | stereophile.com | Jim Austin

I heard people at the show, including Stereophile writers, were talking about the Ø Audio room—though when I say they were talking about it, I don’t mean that they were saying the company’s name, since no one knew how to do that. I looked it up. Ø is a letter in Norwegian and Danish that comes after the end of our alphabet, after Æ and before Å. If you want to know how to pronounce it, I'll provide a link to a pronunciation guide.

1 month ago | stereophile.com | Jim Austin

The Innuos ZENith Next-Gen ($20,700 as equipped) does what streamer-servers do: store music files, read them into memory, and send them on to a D/A converter to make music. In Innuos's complex (yet logical) lineup of streamers and streamer-servers, the ZENith Next-Gen sits just below the flagship Statement and above the ZENith Mk.3 (footnote 1). The ZENith Mk.3 remains in the Innuos lineup for now but will be replaced at AXPONA shortly after this issue hits mailboxes and newsstands.

1 month ago | stereophile.com | Jim Austin

"Just read your May 2005 As We See It for the first time in many years," John wrote. "Great stuff!"Could 20 years really have passed since I wrote that piece? Back then, I was in a different career, indulging my hi-fi passion by contributing to Stereophile on the side; now I'm in my seventh year as Stereophile editor. Then I was still a youngish dude; now I am an oldish dude. "Time flies" just doesn't capture it. Some readers will surely remember that long-ago editorial.

2 months ago | stereophile.com | Jim Austin

Recently, I found myself in an email correspondence with David Chesky, the musician/composer/entrepreneur behind Chesky Records and HDtracks, which was the world's first hi-rez music-download service. With his brother Norman, David has long run those businesses while engaging with his art. At the time of our correspondence, he was on tour with his jazz trio and busy "writing operas and children's works to keep me out of trouble," as he wrote in an email.