Loudspeaker Brand Sound Signatures: Stereophile-sourced Synthesis.

As per last week's explorations using AI-assisted research into Stereophile's measurements, we can see that there's a lot of data out there gathered over the decades. While we can look at measurements individually, I think it's more fun to combine the data together to find trends that might be hard to spot.

I suggested that one interesting area of exploration is to examine audiophile loudspeaker brands and see if we can pick out a "house sound" or "brand signature" to the products from the companies. By doing this, not only can we see the tonal tendencies of brands, but perhaps even more interestingly, we can see just how varied the sonic signature can be between different models of the same brand. I suspect that technically-oriented companies that rely on measurements would probably create products with tighter sonic character that hugs closer to their ideal target such as a flatter frequency response or better off-axis performance.

Since the AI already pulled the data, let's have it go a bit deeper and show us what the signatures look like among multiple companies. I'll present the graphs alphabetically by brand name.

Brands discussed/analyzed: Aerial Acoustics, Audio Note (UK), B&W, Boston Acoustics, DALI, DeVore, Dynaudio, EgglestonWorks, ELAC, Epos, Estelon, Focal, Hales, Harbeth, JBL, Joseph Audio, KEF, KLH, Klipsch, Linn, Magico, Marten, Mission, MoFi, Monitor Audio, NHT, Paradigm, Polk Audio, ProAc, Revel, Rockport, Sonus Faber, Spendor, TAD, Tannoy, Tekton, Thiel, Totem, Triangle, Vandersteen, Vienna Acoustics, Vivid Audio, Wharfedale, Wilson, Zu, Apogee, Avantgarde, Magnepan, MartinLogan, MBL, McIntosh, QUAD, B&O, Shahinian.

Stereophile's loudspeaker measurements across time. Have loudspeakers improved? And the Wilson Audio, Sonus Faber, KEF "house sound".

Over the years, I've talked about using AI technology to help us understand the audiophile world (just a tiny piece among many, many other things to understand of course 😏). In early 2023 I discussed using LLMs like ChatGPT to generate content including the ease of making "subjective" text such as for product reviews. By 2024, we discussed the multi-modality of AI technologies; the ability to "imagine" not just words but also across generated visual and audio content. But then there are also silly uses like trying to sell snake oil.

While I think we have reason to be concerned about whether the financial model is going to work out with the massive AI infrastructure buildout currently under way, and the survival of many AI-related companies, IMO the technology and gains we've made with machines capable of thought is real even if we do have to ride out another Y2K-like Dot-Com Internet Bubble. It'll be painful (always is) for investors, but corrections are necessary.

Over the last year, we are now clearly in the midst of an "agentic AI" expansion where the public can now access virtual assistants to help us out with tasks beyond just chatbot Q&A interactions (OpenClaw being one that made headlines in November 2025, at that time called Clawdbot). Agents, like secretaries and assistants can do work for us behind the scenes like research, creation of reports, even do stuff like sending off E-mails or finding good deals on stuff to buy! We know that already more than half of Internet traffic these days is non-human agentic bots.

It's a brave new world that requires TRUST of course. For now at least, even though I'm OK with my AI agents seeing my work schedule and some personal E-mails, I certainly would not want to be the guinea pig giving it access to autonomously send off serious work without review or my credit card and bank numbers. 🤔

So, what does this have to do with audiophilia? Well, already it has been nice to get my agents to gather research data for blog articles. For example, a few months ago in April, I used my agent to gather data on inflation and examine the price of Stereophile Recommended Components. In September, an agent crawled across the Steve Hoffman Forums exploring what audiophiles are talking about these days. And now as we approach the end of 2026, we can access even more full-featured agents at our disposal that are capable of creating full briefings and analyses in ways that would take hours if not spread out over days to complete.

As I've noted over the years, I like Stereophile and the measurement data they've published across the decades on "High-End" products. It gives us a look into this "class" of devices that most hobbyists would not be able to test out for ourselves. In particular, large, expensive, loudspeakers are not the kinds of things we would routinely bring in and out of our homes for auditioning/testing!

To me, this library of loudspeaker measurements is John Atkinson's most important legacy since it was him who measured the majority of these products. The published body of work will probably be studied for years to come. (Unlike purely subjective reviews and opinions, mostly already forgotten.)

A bespoke audiophile tube DAC: measurements and discussions. And politics season, a low point.

As per the title and image, this post will be a nebulous one because we're not looking at an easily-accessible mass produced product. 🤔

The reason is because we're looking at what appears to be a one-of-a-kind device that's not advertised, the company making it doesn't have any web presence with only a handful of posts I can find over the decades referencing the company/person who makes what appears to be typically tube-based products.

I came across this unit from an audiophile friend who commissioned this designer/maker for a good sounding DAC with tubes. This was what he got; the first iteration at least.

As you can see, it's a 2-box unit with identical metal chassis except for some cut-out differences for the volume control in the DAC section, a 6.35mm headphone jack (not pretty!), and digital input selector (coax, optical, USB). We can see the tubes sticking up from the DAC box. The box below is the (presumably linear) power supply with its own power button and a "dummy" knob that I guess is just part of the generic case.

I was told that the DAC chip inside is the ESS ES9038Q2M which we've explored previously like here and here.

The boxes are metal and of basically identical size: ~7.5" x 13" x 3". The DAC box is quite light, about 1.95kg, and the power supply weighs a bit more at 2.5kg.

AudioQuest DragonFly Copper: Review and Measurements. A classic dongle DAC returns. (And Rubber Soul - 2026 remix.)

Audiophiles following the news cycle know by now that after seven years, AudioQuest has released a new DragonFly USB DAC. The DragonFly Copper (US$250, CAD$345) was spoken of at High End Vienna 2026 and started shipping in September, replacing the Cobalt at the flagship. As usual with a new Dragonfly, the forums and review sites lit up within days of the announcement (see sites like this, or this). Recently, I even got E-mails from blog readers asking when I was going to review this device, so here it is by request. 😉

Over the years, I've measured these little USB DACs going back to the DragonFly v1.2 in 2014. More recently, I wrote the two-part series on the DragonFly Black in 2017 with a good chunk of that examining MQA "rendering", and then the three-way comparison of the Cobalt, Red, and v1.2 in 2019. In that last article, the Cobalt did not exactly manage glorious performance on the test bench, clipping at 100% volume with 0dBFS material, THD merely on par with the ancient v1.2, and higher idle current draw than the Red despite all the "low power" marketing. The Red, as I wrote back then, was the winner for lowest distortion among the Dragonflies.

So in my mind, the Copper arrives with something to prove at least to this "more objective" audiophile if it truly is to be a better device. In the company literature, AudioQuest claims to have made progress in 3 main areas: "twice the output power" as a headphone amp, "25% lower current draw", and the "high-conductivity copper-plated case" allows "for improved RF-noise drainage". We'll have a look.

I bought this DAC through consumer channels and this post is in no way company-sponsored.

FiiO K11 R2R DAC: Affordable R-2R desktop DAC & headphone amp. Let's talk about R-2R and euphonic preferences.

It has been more than a year since I last measured or reviewed a DAC!

To be honest, in 2026, DACs are IMO boring from the perspective of expecting any sonic progress when it comes to high-fidelity audio. They are very much a "solved problem" and will not pose any challenge for the audiophile who desires accuracy. Unless there's some new technology to evaluate or must-have features, digital-to-analogue conversion has clearly matured to allow extremely high resolution playback - perceptibly perfect even - within reach of basically everyone in the last decade.

[In the big cultural-level picture, I think we're at the phase now with less expensive products (eg. Chi-Fi) where more than adequate function has been achieved and we're going to be seeing an emphasis on "Design-Driven Innovation" where emotional, symbolic, and esthetic significance become more important with each generation for product differentiation. I think we're already seeing this with the FiiO line-up as I describe related products to this at the end of this post. In time, I suspect this will be an existential threat to many current High-End brands.]

Because of that lack of excitement around evaluating yet another DAC objectively, for more than 6 months now, this FiiO K11 R2R DAC (US$176, Canada link) has been sitting on my table for evaluation! 🙄 I bought this with the plan of using it in my office at the hospital for desktop speaker playback and headphone listening which I'll do after publishing this.

Make sure not to confuse this model with the slightly less expensive FiiO K11 non-R2R DAC (US$145) which uses the Cirrus Logic CS43198 chip. Feature-wise, I think they're very similar and look identical other than the stylized "R2R" stamped on the top of the case.

Okay, let's put this through its paces...

HiFi Centre: Vancouver Audio Fest 2026 (September 19, 2026). And the impossibility of achieving accurate sonic impressions at shows.

Good mix of ages. Mostly guys, as expected.

Audiophiles in Vancouver know that there are a few pretty good-sized stores with decent sound rooms locally. I suspect the largest one is HiFi Centre just outside Chinatown. Not the nicest/safest locale in Vancouver and close to some of the open drug use in the city so you'll probably need to be buzzed in if coming for a visit. This location opened in 2015 and I had an article on that.

Back in 2015 and 2016, there used to be the Vancouver Audio Show (here and here) run by the Chester Group. Unfortunately since then, the closest audio show to us would be the Pacific Audio Fest with the most recent show in 2024. Supposedly, the next one is coming up January 15-17, 2027 at a new venue near Seattle; could be an interesting visit although being in January, there might be some weather considerations for those driving in.

[Also let's not forget current trade tensions, immature renaming of a lake, and basically an incompetent, classless and embarrassing (unethical and convicted felon also come to mind) president and enablers have tainted Canadians wanting to spend money in the USA. How pathetic and exhausting. I hope things get better by January.]

And so without a local audio show, it's good for a larger dealer like HiFi Centre to run their own mini-show "Audio Festival" like this one on September 19.

MUSINGS: On imagination, fantasies, transcendence, and balance in audiophile play. And an AI-assisted analysis of audio hardware discussions in September 2026.

Since I started this blog, I've used the tagline "A 'more objective' take for Audiophiles" (later adding the word Rational). This was intentional because back in the early 2010s, the environment was quite different than today. At that time, computer audiophilia was primarily about playback of local music libraries on hard drives (collapse of NAND flash drive prices for SSD in mid-2012 soon allowed 500+GB SSDs), prior to the massive expansion of online streamed audio (Spotify launched in mid 2011 in N. America, lossless Tidal not until late 2014). In those days, we also didn't have anything like the expansive high-fidelity "Chi-Fi" hardware options we have today. These products have tremendously brought down the cost of literally everything in the audio chain. While DACs have been high performance devices for ages already (some history here), others like reasonably priced Class D amps (Hypex UcD launched 2003, nCore 2011, very inexpensive TI TPA32xx "chip" amps by 2016) came out later, and today are ubiquitous (like this, and this, and this). The availability of Raspberry Pi and similar devices have made bit-perfect digital end-points easy and cheap to build. These products have commoditized high fidelity in ways I think should be welcomed by all audiophiles.

Not only has availability of hardware changed (and concomitantly necessary software), but I'm glad to see that in the last decade, the modern audiophile who's getting started in this hobby now has easy access on the web to a lot of information including better objective analyses and subjective opinions/preferences. I think the environment today is a much better mix of technological understanding that can be used to quite easily refute nonsensical mysticism while at the same time rationally discuss human subjective preferences.

Compared to the early 2010's, the media landscape has changed so significantly from what used to be mostly unchallenged narratives driven by the old "magazines of record" like Stereophile and The Absolute Sound; nowadays these sites have sheltered themselves with no discussion forums to leave comments on, and even old comments accumulated over years have been purged (changes as recent as 2025)! As far as I can tell, the magazines these days have little ability to offer deep insights beyond articles acting as proxy advertisements.

With these changes, the "more objective" part of my tagline I think has already become much of mainstream audiophile discourse and culture. And so I was contemplating the other day whether we're already at a comfortable balance now between subjectivity and objectivity among hobbyists.

As humans, it seems like balance is one of the hardest things to achieve. I see audiophilia as a safe microcosm to view other aspects of life like politics. As in politics, it's all too easy to be drawn to extremes. In fact, the modern liberal freedoms we enjoy and the progress we've made have been based on the "dynamic equilibrium" as a central defining pillar. For us audiophiles, balance likewise is a necessary foundation to satisfy questions surrounding what devices we buy and also why we choose the audiophile hobby as our area of interest in the first place.

On Magic Beans "True Target": Dirac Live 2-Pass Procedure.

Sunset on summer 2026...

Ahhh, fall is coming and can be felt in the air here in Vancouver. At this time of the year, I get the compulsion to make sure I finish discussing topics I had examined in the summer and wrap up loose ends.

A couple of weeks back I discussed the Magic Beans Audio "True Target" app, an interesting program that I think can help improve sound quality for many audiophiles who use DSP in their rooms as a technique for "speaker correction" - that is, a system that flattens the direct sound coming from one's speakers above the modal and transition frequencies while respecting sensitive zones in the speaker response.

I mentioned near the end of the article about a "DLBC (2-pass calibration)" procedure. For completeness, I figure I'd give this a try and discuss in this post.

AuraEngine: Perfectionist off-line mega-tap digital filtering - with hybrid-phase transient detection & blending.

As you know, while digital oversampling filters have been around for ages (4x oversampling available back in the '80s), audiophiles probably got more interested in digital filters thanks to Bob Stuart, and Meridian by 2009 talking about "apodizing" filters. DACs started allowing different filter options. And spin-offs like MQA took things too far utilizing poor designs through the 2010's (and still looking for a reason to exist).

Years ago now, I spent quite a bit of time talking about digital filters across articles like this and contemplating things like pre-ringing here. There were also discussions of using the intermediate phase setting as a compromise. And we even ran a blind test to compare strong pre-ringing vs. no-pre-ringing minimum phase settings.

While I think I've exhausted my time exploring such things at the base level, ever-more-precise filtering options have been available for audiophiles to use. HQPlayer has many realtime software-based playback settings including DSD transcoding. Companies like Chord/Rob Watts have taken their stand on using ultra-tap-length linear phase filters (to the point of extreme IMO).

Off-line upsampling of high precision can also be achieved using software like Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster (PGGB) in 2021 -  I see they have a PGGB+ version now with DSD and up to "ludicrous" 256-bit processing.

Well friends, it's 2026 and the other day I was contacted by Toxa Dev about his new ultra-accurate upsampling system called AuraEngine (current version 1.2.2) available on Github; full source code published and freely released for non-commercial use. You can also download and run the pre-built Windows portable app here. Notice that there are three downloads available: Starter 1M-taps, Standard 10M-taps, and Reference 30M-taps. Pick your level of obsession err... weapon against weak upsampling!

Magic Beans Audio: True Target. DSP correction fine tuning, concepts, and effects.

In my previous post, I discussed target curves and gave examples of curves you might want to consider when implementing DSP correction in your sound room.

While the use of full-range target curves is not uncommon, as discussed, there are those who advocate against doing so and would insist that only partial corrections in the bass frequencies up to the Modal+Transition Zones should be applied. There are of course some good reasons for this line of thinking which will be addressed.

As you can see in the comments last time, I had a long discussion with Joe Mariano (aka Joe N Tell) of Magic Beans Audio about his product called True Target. I continued my discussions with Joe via E-mail and he provided access for me to the Pro version which allows export of the curves to Room EQ Wizard in order to have a deeper look under the hood at how the system works.

The picture above was taken right before one of my measurement sessions with Magic Beans highlighting some "tools of the trade" used to perform the tuning.

Let's talk about the Magic Beans* True Target app. 

[Standard version regularly priced at US$249 should suffice for the vast majority of users, Pro version US$399 allows up to 128 channels and unlimited daily calibrations.]

Room Target Curves - then, now, and options to try...

Be it resolved that there is no such thing as achieving sonic perfection - technically at least based on objective ideals, but "perfect" can also be a subjective state of mind.

In domestic homes, we're simply not going to be able to achieve near-perfect rooms. Likewise, no sound system will be absolutely transparent although the digital electronics side will get much closer to "perfect" than analogue playback and loudspeakers. Furthermore, beyond what we can say about our domestic playback systems, despite all the care and detail-orientedness put into a recording studio, they're not identical even if they followed published standards (like ITU-R BS.1116, or EBU Tech 3276), and besides, is there ever such a thing as a perfectly engineered recording? Or a perfect performance from our favorite artists for that matter?

While perfection might be out of reach, let's not turn away from the pursuit of what is reasonably accurate which is something we can all do to some extent whether it's choosing better-engineered gear, working on small room acoustics, or using DSP to improve frequency response and/or time-domain performance at our listening position. Regarding the specifics of DSP room correction, let me refer you to previous articles covering various methods here, here, here, here, and here.

The intent of this post is to focus on the topic of Room Target Curves which we define and apply when doing EQ and DSP correction. Let's explore a little history, what they are, what they look like and considerations for what to try at home.

SUMMER MUSINGS: True audiophile aspirations; recent events in the audiophile culture - end of Atkinson's Stereophile measurements, YouTube influencer legal drama.

Through my years as an audiophile, I've come across articles in magazines and online talking about hobbyist "aspirations". At audio shows, and seemingly each new issue of magazine we read, we're introduced to the latest and greatest piece or gear, the next "must have" item to consider in this never-ending path of upgrade to satisfy luxury consumeristic appetites.

Given that it's "Summer Musings" season, let's take some time to think about what I think is the most important aspirational item in all of the audiophile hobby - your room. And since in the last month there have been other events happening in audio news, let's also talk about the fact that John Atkinson has retired from doing measurements for Stereophile magazine, and the interesting legal drama around the case of an "influencer" (Michael Gefteas/The Greek Audio Geek) and social media.

SUMMER MUSINGS: "Final" ceiling absorption 😉. AI-assisted summary of Floyd Toole's thoughts on early reflections treatment & discussion on this.

Hey guys and gals, it's July and thus time to enjoy some summer jams, BBQ, and family time ahead. And of course getting into the "Summer Musings" season here on the blog!

Let's "shoot the breeze" and talk about a couple of things in this post related to discussions over the last while with room treatments and acoustics you might want to consider for your own space.

First, as you can see in the picture above, despite the self-proclaimed statement that I was "done", I just had one more little addition to add. I cleaned up and optimized my seating area a little and realized that the rear ceiling panel wasn't exactly overhead. So I added an extra 2' x 4' x 0.8" PET panel immediately overhead above the main listening position. [I also spent some time optimizing the height channels and DSP recalibration along the way.]

Ceiling Absorption Panels (AudioSilk branded PET material 2'x4'x0.8", doubled thickness).

With the recent discussions about room acoustics and treatments, I thought it would be good to continue on this theme and move forward with the next logical step for my listening space. Let's talk about ceiling sound absorption as you can see installed in the picture above.

For years, I've been thinking of doing this but really didn't want to put something up there that could damage the walls. I definitely would prefer not to drill holes unless absolutely needed. Recently, I had some positive experiences with 3M's Command Strips when I put up some picture frames and artwork around the home. These double-sided tape strips were designed to be removable without damaging painted walls. Looking around at options, it seemed that this could be a reasonable ceiling installation solution within weight limits.

On Amazon, there are various options for acoustic absorbers these days. I settled on a package of 4 sheets of 0.4" thick x 2' x 4' AudioSilk-branded polyethylene terephthalate (PET, non-toxic, non-irritant, made typically from recycled plastics like bottles) absorber panels at a good price (~US$110) along with some strong 2-sided tape for doubling up the panels for thickness and of course the 3M Command Strips to stick it up on the ceiling.

On Envy, "Cope", and just plain Reality in Audiophilia. More GR-Research/Danny Richie drama.

After writing the articles looking at room acoustics over the last month, I thought this would be a good time to discuss another observation about the psychology and culture of the audiophile hobby and some of the claims that people make.

As I noted last time, room treatments like the IKEA Mittzon absorption panels are far from the exciting products highlighted in magazines each month or even popular forum topics commonly discussed. While they do review realistic, non-controversial room treatments once awhile (like this), I would find it shocking if one day I opened an issue of The Absolute Sound and saw an article reviewing the Mittzon panel!