SoundStage! Access | SoundStageAccess.com (GoodSound.com)

Reviews of Attainable Hi-Fi & Home-Theater Equipment

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Details: Written by: Dennis Burger; Created: 01 August 2025

I don’t often dig deep into the sausage-making process in my editorials, since I think most of the decisions we make behind the scenes at the SoundStage! Network are quite a bit more boring than many people would suspect. Each of the SoundStage! editors has a lane, it’s not difficult to figure out what is and isn’t our beat, and we rarely have to worry much about which product categories are right for each of us. But when KEF reached out to me with an offer to review its new outdoor speakers, it prompted a lot of editorial discussions about whether outdoor audio—typically the domain of expensive custom installers—had any place in a publication focused on home theater and affordable hi-fi.

Details: Written by: Dennis Burger; Created: 15 July 2025

Here’s something you don’t see very often in the pages of Access, or any of the SoundStage! Network publications, for that matter: outdoor speakers. In a former life, when I covered the custom-installation industry heavily, speakers of this sort crossed my threshold on the regular. But in consumer audio, and especially in the domain of budget-conscious passive speakers, they’re much rarer, for reasons I’ll be discussing in an upcoming editorial.

Details: Written by: Dennis Burger; Created: 01 July 2025

“OK, but how do you know?”

Those were the words SoundStage! founder Doug Schneider threw back in my face when I was telling him about the distinctive tonal balance of the phono stage built into the Advance Paris PlayStream A7 streaming integrated amplifier I was reviewing for SoundStage! Simplifi at the time.

Details: Written by: Dennis Burger; Created: 15 June 2025

One of the trickiest needles for any journalist to thread is the concept of bias. We’re human. We have biases. Pretending otherwise leads to all sorts of preposterous knot-tying and apologetics. So my position on bias is that when I recognize one of my own (I can’t possibly recognize them all, which is why I say “when”), I spell it out.

Details: Written by: Dennis Burger; Created: 01 June 2025

I know the date you’re seeing at the top of the page indicates it’s the first of June, 2025, at the very earliest. But you should know up front that I’m writing these words around the middle of April. I say that only because I have no idea what the future holds (no one does), and by the time this is published, I could look like either a lunatic or a prophet, or a bit of both.

Details: Written by: Dennis Burger; Created: 15 May 2025

There’s a little secret that most electronics reviewers know, but rarely talk about. When we get a product in for review, we pay attention to how many crossed-out labels are affixed to the box. We notice how many times the package has been taped and retaped. Speaking for myself here, I can use this both as a gauge for how popular a product is and of my overall place in the pecking order of reviewers for the applicable category.

Details: Written by: Dennis Burger; Created: 01 May 2025

It’s one thing to mess up. It’s another thing altogether to make a blunder when you’re on record with the correct take already. But such is life. In a recent episode of the SoundStage! Audiophile Podcast, host Jorden Guth and I were chatting about gear, and he mentioned how much he loved the PSB Alpha iQ active speaker system, praising it for practically everything, but expressing some skepticism about the system’s phono input. “Will it give you the best phono stage? Will it give you the best reproduction of your records? I’m going to say probably not.”

Details: Written by: Dennis Burger; Created: 15 April 2025

There are few things in life that I claim to know with absolute certainty, but one of them is this: if you present me with the packaging for an A/V receiver of unusual size (AVROUS?), I cannot resist the urge to stack it atop, under, or near the packaging for an AVR of more typical dimensions.

Details: Written by: Dennis Burger; Created: 01 April 2025

Imagine this scenario: You’ve been following along with my vinyl journey for the past few years, from uninterested commentator to curious outsider looking in to recent convert to burgeoning enthusiast, and you happen to have a time machine. You decide to take a trip back and visit a previous Dennis, tell him that one day soon he’ll actually have a modest but precious record collection, and ask him, “When all is said and done, even after you develop a love for vinyl, what will your least favorite aspect of the hobby be?”

Details: Written by: Dennis Burger; Created: 15 March 2025

As I said in an editorial a few months back, it’s becoming increasingly clear to me that normies, insofar as they’re buying audio gear, are buying powered, self-contained systems—be they powered or active stereo speakers or all-in-one/just-add-speakers components—and as such, I’m going to do my best to work such products into my review calendar. So don’t be shocked if you see me bringing in more products like the Kanto Ren for review going forward, because when I interrogate people at my local record shop about what they’re doing to get sound into the room, it’s products like this that dominate the conversation.