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Features
Tour Pro-Ject's New Logistics Center and New Factory
Michael Fremer  |  Jun 28, 2017
After last May's High End Munich show, Pro-Ject founder and CEO Heinz Lichtenegger invited international distributors attending the show to visit the company's brand new high-tech "green" logistics center outside of Vienna. They also toured the original Pro-Ject factory in Litovel, Czech Republic as well as the brand new factory down the road.

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Features
Tour SME With New CEO Stuart McNeilis
Michael Fremer  |  Jul 12, 2017
Last year, Cadence Group purchased from the Robertson-Aikman family venerable SME, Ltd., appointing as its new CEO Stuart McNeilis. Mr. McNeilis, a veteran of the the aerospace industry, is attempting to maintain SME's exceptional traditional manufacturing quality while moving the company (gently) into the 21st century.

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Features
Tour The Archive of Contemporary Music's 3 Million Record Collection
Michael Fremer  |  Jan 03, 2020
Bob George The Archive of Contemporary Music's founder and director was scheduled to participate in a "Making Vinyl Hollywood" panel discussion I moderated last fall, so to prep for it I called Mr. George and proposed a visit to the Archive during which we'd discuss his participation. As you'll see in the video, by the time I visited last September I'd forgotten the reason for the visit!

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Features
Tour the SME Factory
Michael Fremer  |  May 20, 2014
Following Munich's High End 2014 show I flew to the U.K. where I met up with Chad Kassem and Chad Stelly of Acoustic Sounds, the new American SME distributor. On Monday, May 19th we took a train to Shoreham by Sea to visit turntable and tonearm manufacturer SME.

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Features
Tour the Tesla Tube Factory
Michael Fremer  |  Dec 28, 2014
Back in 1999 I reviewed in Stereophile the KR Audio VT 8000 monoblock vacuum tube amplifier. I wrote in the review: "Virtually every part in the amplifier is custom-made in-house or sourced from associated facilities, including the metal fabrication, the transformers, and the circuit boards. The internal wiring is Swiss in origin. And, of course, the vacuum transducers themselves are made in-house by hand, and that includes all of the tiny internal components, which are stamped out one at a time by hand on dies custom-machined in-house. Even the glass for the tubes is turned and formed by hand. If I hadn't seen all of this with my own eyes, I wouldn't have believed it."

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Features
Traversing The Phil Zone: The Late, Great Grateful Dead Co-Founder Phil Lesh’s Brilliant Music Legacy Lives On, and We Have Four Dead Experts Here to Pick Their Favorite Phil Moments on Vinyl
Mark Smotroff  |  Nov 07, 2024

Phil Lesh, co-founding bassist of the Grateful Dead, sadly passed away at age 84 on October 25, 2024, and he will be remembered by millions of fans for the brilliant, inspiring music he made over the course of his incredible career. AP editor Mike Mettler asked our resident Deadhead Mark Smotroff to put together a proper tribute, and he enlisted three other fellow Dead experts to help bid Phil a proper fare thee well. Read on to see what their respective choices are for Lesh’s finest moments on vinyl. . .

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FeaturesTurntable Reviews
Turntable Buyer’s Guide: Five (or Six, or Seven) Things to Look for When You’re in the Market for a New Turntable, Regardless of Price
Ken Micallef  |  Sep 30, 2024

With the vinyl resurgence, we live in a golden age of well-made turntables, many of them at prices affordable to one and all. With that in mind, we wanted to present you with a buying guide of sorts that takes into account all types, interests, and wallets, covering a wide-swath price range starting around a baseline of $650 on up to a champagne level of around $30,000. Read Ken Micallef’s in-depth turntable primer, which should be able to help you find a truly great table that fits your current needs, handles your upgrade aspirations, and/or addresses all the essential parameters of solid design and performance for practically any price. . .

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Features
Two Months With Widex’s Moment 440 mRIC R D Hearing Aids
Michael Fremer  |  Oct 02, 2020
“You are committing audio reviewer suicide” friends insisted when towards the end of 2018 I told them I was going to review some inexpensive Hearing Aids. Guess what? All of the comments under the review were positive and my reviewer creds are intact. Plus, my now 91 year old mother-in-law can now hear much better since I’d really bought them for her benefit.

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Features
Two Weeks With ZVOX’s VB20 VoiceBud
Michael Fremer  |  Dec 31, 2018
An elderly gentleman wearing a pair of high tech digital hearing aids accompanied his wife to a kennel club meeting at my home a few years ago. He had little interest in the dog doings upstairs so I invited him downstairs into my listening room. It allowed me to conduct an experiment of sorts. Did he like music? Yes. Had he ever heard or seen a big high performance audio rig? No, he hadn’t. Would he like to hear some music on it? Yes he would: jazz or classical. I obliged, curious to find out what exactly he heard listening through digital hearing aids to a high-resolution audio system. The look on his face told me he was hearing plenty.

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Features
Vanatoo Transparent Zero Loudspeaker Review Follow-Up
Malachi Lui  |  Jul 24, 2019
In my review of the $359/pair < a href=https://www.analogplanet.com/content/vanatoos-transparent-zero-speakers-offer-great-convenience-satisfying-desktop-sound>Vanatoo Transparent Zero desktop speakers, I noted that while playing Kanye West’s “I Am A God,” the active speaker produced a high-pitched whistle/screech noise. After we published the review, Vanatoo co-founder Gary Gesellchen suggested that instead of the cause being a design flaw, the noise was an artifact of an air leak due to loose screws. He recommended sealing the air passages by taking off the active speaker’s handle and tightening the screws all the way in.

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Features
Vanatoo's Transparent One Powered Compact Loudspeaker
Michael Fremer  |  Jan 04, 2015
While analogplanet doesn't regularly review loudspeakers, the recent Vanatoo Transparent One speaker giveaway prompted us to have a listen.

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Features
Vanatoo’s Transparent Zero Speakers Offer Great Convenience & Satisfying Desktop Sound
Malachi Lui  |  Jul 10, 2019
Today’s budding audiophiles have more introductory options than ever. Available and (fairly) affordable are introductory turntable systems, great headphones, headphone amps, DACs, and… desktop speakers?

Enter the minds of Vanatoo, the company founded by experienced audio enthusiasts Gary Gesellchen and Rick Kernen. Gesellchen’s background includes decades of speaker designing and building, while Kernen has worked for over 35 years in micro-processing. Their speakers are aimed at those who “care about music, want something that sounds good, and also understand that they shouldn’t be forced to sacrifice convenience for quality,” Gesellchen told me in an email exchange. Vanatoo’s speakers though intended for desktops, can also be used in home theaters as well as in full room stereo systems.

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FeaturesVinyl Reports
Vinyl Reports: Burial + Four Tet + Thom Yorke, James Ferraro, Yung Lean, & Actress
Malachi Lui  |  Aug 24, 2021
(Vinyl Reports is an AnalogPlanet feature aiming to create a definitive vinyl LP guide. Here, we talk about sound quality, LP packaging, music, and the overarching vinyl experience.)

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FeaturesVinyl Reports
Vinyl Reports: Don't Believe the Hype
Malachi Lui  |  Apr 09, 2020
(“Hype: to promote or publicize something intensively, often exaggerating its importance or benefits.” We all succumb to hype, either from others’ high recommendations or our own excitement and anticipation. Once something falls short of those expectations, we rush to denounce it as “overhyped;” not necessarily bad, but underwhelming for however much we expect. Today’s Vinyl Reports feature centers around such overhyped records.)

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Features
Vinyl Reports: Gil Scott-Heron, PJ Harvey, Boards Of Canada, & Dexter Gordon
Malachi Lui  |  Oct 30, 2021
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