For over 50 years, Magnepan has defined a category all its own—planar magnetic loudspeakers that offer a sonic experience unlike anything else. Known for their stunning transparency, lifelike imaging, and wide-open soundstage, Magnepans have earned a legendary reputation among audiophiles and music lovers around the world. Now, we’re thrilled to bring these remarkable speakers to our showroom and to our customers.

Unlike conventional dynamic drivers that concentrate force in a central voice coil, planar magnetic drivers distribute force evenly across a large diaphragm surface, creating pistonic motion over a much larger radiating area. This means more controlled movement, dramatically lower distortion, and a phase-consistent waveform at the listener’s ears.

Shunyata Research is pleased to announce the long awaited Everest-X shelf unit. Due to popular demand from customers and dealers, the Everest-X shelf unit possesses all the performance attributes of the Everest-X tower but in a form factor that fits elegantly into any component rack system.

Internally, the Everest-X shelf unit is identical to the Everest-X tower in terms of materials, patented science, measured noise reduction and performance. Everest-X tower recently earned Product of the Year from The Absolute Sound Magazine in the US. There are also many recording studios who now depend on Everest-X to get the best from their recording and mastering projects. The Everest-X shelf unit will set a similar performance standard that is impossible to match at any price in our industry.

Dynamic, Accurate, Solid. The audiophile’s choice - Where sound quality and Transients free of overhang are paramount. Simply no better expression of bass performance then our push-pull subs. Ground up drivers developed by our team of engineers. Glass fiber composite diaphragms, multiple aluminum shorting rings, massive magnets, multi-layer Nomex spiders and lightweight aluminum voice coil wire are the key ingredients – Proprietary nonlinear modeling techniques allow us to simulate all these components and then optimize for real world driver performance – free air and in box. Further refinement is done with the aid of Klippel laser measurements to dial things in. To take performance to another level, the push-pull drivers reduce even order harmonics distortion by an additional 10-12dB. Powered by our 1.3kW amplifier, all functions and safeties are controlled by a 48-bit data bath DSP and 32-bit ARM M4 Cortex processor, able to react in microseconds, powerful enough to slam. All R-Series subs share our 2.4” LCD touchscreen display and ability to control advance settings using our App. Certified THX Dominus when 4 R210s subs are used a testament to the level of design and performance achieved.

The Absolute Sound: "With the brand-new Alpha Series 3, Berkeley Audio Design has brought near-reference-level performance to a significantly lower price. In fact, you can think of the Alpha Series 3 as a distillation of the $25,000 Reference in a less expensive implementation. By keeping some of the essential elements of the Reference (including the state-of-the-art clocking circuitry) and forgoing the expensive chassis machined from a solid block of aluminum, the price of entry to Berkeley’s unique technologies is substantially reduced.

"The Alpha DAC exhibits the characteristic Berkeley DNA—superb resolution of low-level detail, three-dimensional soundstaging with the ability to hear very fine timbral and spatial information at the back of the hall, dense tone color, and outstanding clarity that allows you to hear individual instruments within the whole. With a Reference 3 DAC and the new Alpha in my rack for comparison, I found that the Alpha doesn’t have quite the last measure of world-class performance, but it comes closer than you’d expect for less than half the price. I could easily live with the Alpha Series 3 and never look back. The Alpha DAC Series 3 is a terrific bargain and an unqualified triumph." - Robert Harley

Stereophile - "My experience with the Little Loco convinced me that it wouldn't be hard to find a reasonably priced cartridge that sounded beyond incredible with it: I just tried what I had in my closet, and most of them worked beautifully—good enough to stop shopping then and there. The combination of the Little Loco and the $500 AT-OC9ML/II sounded as good as a $20,000 combination of my experience, in nearly every way—and better in some. With the $1600 Benz Micro SL, the Little Loco did things I've never heard my system do before.

"For my money, the Little Loco is the best way to spend $3800 on an audio system with an analog source." - Brian Damkroger

Stereophile Class A Rating

The Tracking Angle

"Put it all together and you have a remarkably compact, lightweight, high performance package that at $16,999 is costly but not impossibly so and that can be taken out of the box, perfectly set up and playing records within ten minutes. If there's another turntable that combines all of these attributes at the NAIA's price I haven't seen or heard it—and I've seen and heard plenty!" - Michael Fremer

A Vinyl Revelation - "Extraordinary about sums it up. That any turntable can deliver so much musical information, so much of what the musicians who made each record laid down in the first place is truly remarkable. I have always known that vinyl is the finest format, the medium with the greatest sound quality available to the music lover and the Rega Naia proves this to be true in no small way. The Planar 10 is one of the best turntables in the world and this is significantly better, I seriously doubt I will hear another record player that comes close."

Earns EAR Best of 2023 and Editor's Choice Award

The Absolute Sound - 

"Yet the Harbeth Super HL5plus XD is easily the finest stand-mount speaker I've heard, and it challenges most floorstanders for pure musicality and enjoyment. It manages to combine high definition, warmth, soundstage dimensionality, intimacy, lyricism, gracefulness, refinement, insight, and clarity, and to weave those elements into a beautiful, sensuous, fulfilling whole." - Art Dudley

The Absolute Sound:

"This combination of the Ultima Pre 3 and the Ultima 5 is not lush or polite sounding. An impressive characteristic I found was the solidity of the central image and the realism of acoustical instruments. Nearly all types of music play extremely well with the Chord, but large symphonic works were particularly rewarding. The Chord equipment is revealing and uncompromising. You get what is on the recording: compressed recordings sound compressed;
and highly detailed or even enhanced recordings will be revealed. I would characterize the Chord combination as musical while being unapologetically linear and detailed throughout all volume intensities.

"If you are in the market for an amp and preamp in this price range, and particularly if you have difficult speakers to drive, the Chord combo should definitely be on the list for an audition" - Rivas Bird