Michael Fremer

New Zealand-based pure audio is a partnership between former Plinius Audio co-owner and chief electronics designer Gary Morrison and industrial designer Ross Stevens.

As long as you're spinning an LP for your listening pleasure, and if digitizing it at a resolution of 24-bit/192kHz is transparent to the analog source, why not record and store the LP on your computer at that high sampling rate for future convenient playback via iTunes or for iPod use, or for burning to CD-R? And, while you're at it, why not record the LP unequalized and apply the RIAA curve in the digital domain, where you're not dependent on capacitors and resistors that are imprecise to begin with, and can drift over time? With no drift of phase or value, the virtual filter's results should be better than with any analog filter. And in the digital domain, you can program in any curve known, and select it at the click of a mouse. Aside from the sweat equity invested in programming it in the first place, it wouldn't add a penny to the program's cost.

Foné records’ Giulio Cesare Ricci is easily one of the most charming, entertaining and eccentric people I have ever encountered in an industry packed with such people. I spent some quality time with him and his lovely wife Paola Maria, who works in the fashion industry in Milan, during last fall’s Top Audio show there.

What’s “surprising” about QHW Audio’s “The Vinyl” phono preamplifier? More than a few things, starting with its Made In Spain origin. Perhaps I’m just ignorant but other than the highest tech WADAX brand of digital electronics, an older piece of which I reviewed for Stereophile, I’m not aware of a burgeoning Spanish audio manufacturing scene. Perhaps I’m mistaken. If so, I’d be happy to stand corrected.