At some point in every music lover's life, someone shows up — a friend, a forum post, a YouTube rabbit hole at 2AM — and says something like "you can't really hear music until you've heard it through a proper setup." And then they use words like soundstage, instrument separation, air, and i...

Every audiophile journey has a starting point. For some it's a gift. For others it's a forum post at 2AM that they deeply regret by the time the credit card statement arrives. Mine started with a silver aluminum brick that looked like it fell out of a laboratory — the xDuoo XD-05 Plus, one of the...