How we test audio gear

The rules every review follows

• Time on the chain. At least two weeks of daily listening before a score is committed, typically four to eight weeks for flagship gear, and never a first-impressions verdict.
• Against a reference, at its price. Every piece is compared head-to-head with the reference unit for its category and price tier, on the same chain, rather than against a memory of one.
• Levels matched, not set by ear. A louder source sounds better; every A/B is matched in loudness first (ITU-R BS.1770), so a difference is the product, not the volume.
• Small differences checked blind. Where a difference is small enough to doubt, the comparison follows the double-blind method of ITU-R BS.1116, the method the site's own ABX tool puts in a reader's hands.
• One published rubric. Every score is built from the same weighted axes, and what earns the points on each axis in a category is printed on that category's hub. How a score is built and what each verdict band means.

The listening room

Jakub Charkiewicz's listening room, where the reference chain lives, has been treated so that what a review describes is the gear rather than the room. It matters most for the categories heard through a room - speakers, DACs, speaker amps & preamps, sources and accessories - and each guide in those categories says so in its own testing notes.

• Front wall. Ekustik Woody Queen Performance Bass panels directly behind the speakers - 15 cm deep, with a dense recycled-PET core the maker rates at NRC 0.94 and effective from 100 Hz - so bass reflecting off the front wall no longer collides with the direct sound. The review.
• First reflections. Ortvik Parametric Towers standing free at the first reflection points, where they absorb and diffuse the early reflection before it reaches the listening seat and smears the direct sound. The review.
• Decay. Between them the panels and towers bring the room's reverb time down without leaving it dead, so micro-detail the speakers produce is heard rather than masked by the room.

Power and digital

The same system feeds every review heard on the reference chain, headphones included, so the noise floor and the digital front end are the same for every product compared on it.

• Mains. A Synergistic Research PowerCell 14 conditions the mains for the whole system - the noise floor every review sits on. The review.
• Power cables. Every power cable in the system replaced with Monosaudio P902E6R, and the USB cable upgraded with them. The review.
• Grounding. An AudioMica Terra Consequence grounding cable, for a darker background with nothing playing. The review.
• Transport. A Denafrips Hermes 12th digital-to-digital converter reclocks the computer's USB stream against its own oven-controlled clock before any DAC sees it. The review.
• I²S link. DH Labs cable on the I²S connection between the transport and the DAC. The review.
• Library. A lossless PCM music library, played bit-perfect; MQA is not used.

The reference chain, category by category

What each category is heard through. Every component is a product this site has reviewed, linked to its own verdict, and each hub prints the same chain above its reviews.

How a listening session runs

The same recordings, across multiple genres and multiple sources, return in every session, so a product is heard on material the reviewer already knows in detail. The reference is swapped in and out on the same chain with the levels matched, and the listening is spread over weeks of daily use, because a flaw that shows up on one track in one mood is not the same as a character a listener lives with. The buying guides record what their own sessions looked for - the sources an in-ear was heard on, the loads an amplifier drove, the recordings chosen to expose a speaker - in each guide's "How we tested" block.

What is measured, and when

Listening is primary. Measurements - frequency response, distortion, output impedance, jitter, sensitivity - are added where they reveal something audible or contradict a marketing claim, and they can move a verdict: twice on the DAC list a measurement changed the ranking, once dropping a converter a tier when a rising distortion profile turned out to be what the listening notes had been calling "presence". The definitions every measurement cites are the AES standards (AES17, AES-2-2012); a spec sheet is an input to a review, never its verdict.

Recording gear

A microphone is recorded, not played back, so it is judged on a real voice in a real room - where its response is lifted or dipped, how much hiss it adds, how much of the room comes with it - and where a comparison is the point it is recorded side by side. The FIFINE K688 review reads the same sentences three ways, over USB, over XLR and against a $1,300 Neumann TLM 103, so the difference is on the recording rather than in a claim. The reviewers record on their own chains, which is why the microphones hub names no single one.

The evidence on every review

A review shows its work. Every one of the 70 reviews has a video review on the channel, where the product is shown and heard, and 67 of them link each written section to the moment the video covers it. The photographs in a review are taken from its own video review, of the unit that was reviewed. Every review names the products it was compared with, so a reader who owns one of them can reproduce the comparison.

Jakub Charkiewicz has written 66 reviews and Bastien Beauchamp has written 4 reviews; figures as of Sep 19, 2026, the date of the latest review.

Where review units come from

Some units are lent by their manufacturer or distributor and go back when the loan ends; others are bought. Where a review records it, the unit's source is stated in the review's header. A loan never commits the site to a verdict, pre-publication review is never granted, and the site carries no advertising and no affiliate links, so a negative review ships with nothing for a brand to withdraw.

Corrections

A substantive correction lands on the review it corrects, dated, and moves the review's Updated date; a check that finds everything still accurate records a Checked date instead (what each date means). Anyone can report an error.

Standards

The standards named on this page, with what each is used for, are listed on the about page: ITU-R BS.1116-3, ITU-R BS.1770-4, EBU R 128, AES standards (AES17, AES-2-2012), IEC 60318-4 (711 coupler), Harman Target Curve research, ANSI/CTA-2034-B (Spinorama), Sound Reproduction (Toole, Olive & Welti, 4th ed.).