DALI Epikore

If you were around then, cast your mind back to the late 1990s when speakers came bundled with home PCs. A pair of small, lightweight, beige plastic boxes, a power brick, a thin cable running between them, and a sound that could charitably be described as functional. They reproduced audio in the loosest sense: you could hear Windows startup sounds, tinny game effects, or the occasional choppy RealPlayer stream. Nobody mistook these speakers for high-fidelity components; they were just a checkbox to be checked.

Read more: Audio Multitasking: Why Your Desktop Audio Setup Doesn’t Suit Every Listening Mode

When I moved into a suburban row house for my second year of university, one of the first things I did, naturally, was hook up my hi‑fi system.

Read more: The Room That Doesn’t Exist

Every January, the tech world descends on Las Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show, where manufacturers often promise a cable-free utopia. This year was no exception. At CES 2026, brands on the show floor shared visions of a future without cords, cables, or clutter. LG unveiled its Sound Suite with Dolby Atmos FlexConnect, the world’s first soundbar system promising modular wireless flexibility. Samsung showcased its Music Studio speakers, designed to blend seamlessly into modern interiors. Both promised effortless sound, delivered through the ether. Yet a significant question lingers: where’s the power coming from?

Read more: We’ll Always Need Wires: The Myth of the Wireless Revolution

When the Hong Kong–based digital-audio brand AURALiC stopped answering emails in September 2025, the silence spoke volumes. The community forum vanished without explanation. Dealers couldn’t reach anyone. The website went dark except for a terse notice about suspended US shipments. For owners of AURALiC’s Altair, Aries, and Vega streamers, each costing thousands of dollars, the reality set in quickly: they were holding expensive hardware without a support lifeline and facing an uncertain future.

Read more: After AURALiC

Seven years ago, when Gordon Brockhouse asked “Are downloads dead?” on this site, the question felt relevant but premature. Downloads were in obvious decline, streaming was ascendant, and the writing seemed to be on the wall. Today, with streaming accounting for 69% of global music revenues and downloads representing just 2.8% of the market, you’d think the answer would be obvious. Yet download stores are still operating here in 2025, serving a dedicated, passionate audience that has no intention of giving up ownership.

Read more: The Persistence of Downloads

Not only is the television screen the focal point of many living rooms, but it has increasingly become the central control hub for those spaces. That has shifted how people think about audio in these rooms.

Read more: Cord-Cutting: Wireless Surround Sound in 2025

It wasn’t exactly a coming-out party, at least not the one I expected. In a January 1 feature on Simplifi, Mike Jbara, vice-president and general manager of Lenbrook Media Group (LMG), said High End 2025 would mark “the coming-out party” for a new streaming service specializing in MQA-encoded music.

Read more: MQA Update, October 2025

After years of broken promises, Spotify has finally done it. The streaming giant is now rolling out lossless audio to its Premium subscribers, ending one of the most prolonged feature droughts in tech history. Four years after first teasing “Spotify HiFi,” the company that dominates global music streaming is finally delivering serious audio quality to those who demand it.

Read more: Spotify Lossless Is Here at Last! Was it Worth the Wait?

I’ve been a strong proponent of active loudspeaker systems since early in my audio journey. As I described in my recent introductory feature, I bought my first set of active studio monitors back in the late 1990s. Before that, I had assembled an audio system piecemeal that incorporated active crossovers—and in the process, I heard the benefits of this approach firsthand.

Read more: Why Don’t People Get Active?

Like most music lovers these days, I use some kind of computing device for the bulk of my listening. When I’m listening through the KEF LS60 Wireless active speaker system in my living room, I cue up music, control playback, and adjust system settings using a ninth-generation iPad. Upstairs in my home office, I use my MacBook Pro (late 2023, M3) to control playback through the PSB Alpha iQ active speaker system on the top shelf of my secretary desk.

Read more: Shape-Shifters—Using Music Apps on Foldable Smartphones

Ever since I got into file-based playback in the late 2000s, I’ve used some kind of app to play music. At first it was iTunes, the music app bundled with Mac computers. When I started purchasing high-rez albums from download stores like HDtracks, I added BitPerfect, an inexpensive utility that runs on top of iTunes and enables bit-perfect playback of files with different sampling rates and bit depths.

Read more: Direct Connections—Do You Really Need a Music App?

  1. The Long Way Round: My Journey to Simplifi
  2. Reading the Room: An Interview with Nilo Casimiro Ericsson of Dirac Research
  3. Help! I Need Somebody!
  4. Game Over!
  5. MQA’s Second Chapter
  6. Mixed Media
  7. Getting Physical
  8. Getting Spaced: What’s the Future for Atmos-Encoded Music?
  9. Little Colored Lights: Drilling Down in Roon
  10. The French Connection—Is Audirvana a Worthy Alternative to Roon?
  11. Apple’s War on Windows
  12. Fire Sales
  13. Direct versus Retail
  14. Harman International Has Bought Roon Labs—What Comes Next?
  15. Getting Physical—Do LPs and CDs Have a Place in Simplifi’d Hi-Fi?
  16. Active Voices: Livio Cucuzza of Sonus Faber
  17. Is Roon Worth It?
  18. Out and About—Using Roon Away from Home
  19. Lakeside Streaming—Network Entertainment at a Vacation Home
  20. Streaming Update—Spring 2023
  21. Active Voices: An Interview with Paul Barton and Rob Nicholls of PSB Speakers
  22. The State of Streaming—2023
  23. Gordon's System, Re-Simplifi'd
  24. Mix Master: PMC's Heff Moraes on Making Music in Atmos
  25. Toronto Audiofest 2022, Simplifi’d
  26. The Great Debate: Is Component Hi-Fi Dead?
  27. Evolving Hi-Fi: My Journey with a Fleet of Devialet Silver Phantoms
  28. Simplifi'd Hi-Fi at Munich High End–and Elsewhere
  29. How We Listen
  30. Wayback Playback
  31. Listen While You Work
  32. The State of Streaming—2022
  33. Why "Simplifi"—Five Years Later
  34. The Evolution of BluOS: An Interview with Lenbrook's Andrew Haines
  35. Dolby Atmos Music in Your Home
  36. The Big Switch
  37. I'm Only in It for the Money
  38. Encore! Encore! An Interview with Patricia Barber, Jim Anderson, and Ulrike Schwarz
  39. The New Apple Music
  40. Moving Forward with Formation: An Interview with Andy Kerr of Bowers & Wilkins
  41. Glory Days
  42. Spotify Goes Lossless
  43. In Defense of Streaming
  44. Tinkering Simplifi'd
  45. Simplifi Defined
  46. Going Deep with Artison
  47. A Simplifi Yearbook
  48. A Perfect Pair
  49. The Critical Component
  50. Has the Time Come for Surround Music?
  51. My Top Ten Products of the Last Two Years
  52. Turning Pro
  53. All About That Bass
  54. Gently Down the Stream
  55. Big Events
  56. Rules of the Game
  57. The Name Game
  58. January 1, 2020: The State of Streaming
  59. Warsaw’s Audio Video Show 2019, Simplifi’d
  60. Toronto Audiofest 2019, Simplifi'd
  61. Hi-Rez à-Go-Go
  62. Streaming the Classics
  63. Play Nice Together -- An Interview with Rob Darling of Roon Labs
  64. Active Voices, Part Three: KEF's Jack Oclee-Brown
  65. High End 2019, Simplifi'd
  66. Active Voices, Part Two: Axiom Audio's Andrew Welker
  67. Montréal Audio Fest Simplifi'd
  68. Active Voices, Part One: Elac's Andrew Jones
  69. Let's Keep it Simple
  70. A Roon of One's Own
  71. How I Simplifi'd My Wi-Fi
  72. Are Downloads Dead?
  73. Hi-Rez Streaming: Tidal vs. Qobuz
  74. Toronto Audiofest 2018 Simplifi'd
  75. How I Simplifi'd My Hi-Fi
  76. Time to Celebrate: Five Years of Google Chromecast
  77. How Good Can Voice Recognition Get?
  78. Are Smart Speakers Any Good for Audiophiles?
  79. High End 2018, Simplifi'd
  80. Is the Smart Speaker a Dumb Idea?
  81. What's Up with Apple AirPlay 2?
  82. The Spotify Dilemma
  83. CES 2018, Simplifi’d
  84. Farewell, CES
  85. Room Tunes
  86. Social Streaming
  87. CEDIA 2017, Simplifi’d
  88. Classical Prime Time
  89. The Röst Reconsidered
  90. High End 2017, Simplifi'd
  91. Vinyl: There's an App for That
  92. Metadata: Life with Roon
  93. The Internet and Audio: The Good, the Bad, and the Impossible
  94. The State of Streaming
  95. CES 2017, Simplifi'd
  96. Why "Simplifi"

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