LATEST ADDITIONS

Book Review: "The Complete Guide to High-End Audio"

Martin Colloms, Kristen Weitz | Mar 28, 1995 | 0 comments

The Complete Guide to High-End Audio
by Robert Harley
450+xxiv pp., $29.95 softcover, $39.95 signed hardcover. Published by Acapella Publishing, P.O. Box 80805, Albuquerque, NM 87198-0805. Credit-card orders: (800) 848-5099.

Tonearm Reviews

Graham Model 1.5 tonearm

Dick Olsher | Mar 26, 1995 | First Published: Mar 26, 1991 | 0 comments

Frankly, I'm fed up with the prophets of doom, those false seers who forecast vinyl's imminent demise. Some claim to have seen the writing on the wall as far back as ten years ago, sensing that the advent of the CD would perforce relegate the stylus-in-groove method of transduction to the trashpile of history. First of all, most of the music I enjoy happens to be on LP. And I'm sure I speak for many audiophiles who have also spent a lifetime building up a vinyl collection when I say we're not about to throw away our cherished treasuries of music. These LPs I expect to enjoy until the end of my time. Thus, I welcome any phono-system technological advance that will recover more information from the groove.

Reference

DTS & Data Compression

Thomas J. Norton | Mar 25, 1995 | 0 comments

In the October 1994 Stereophile (Vol.17 No.10, p.39), I discussed my experiences with the DTS audio data-reduction code/decode switch box, which, briefly, is a two-channel box that makes use of the algorithm DTS has proposed for their version of discrete multichannel sound for laserdiscs.

Recording of the Month

Recording of March 1995: J.S. Bach: Secular Cantatas

Paul L. Althouse | Mar 18, 1995 | 0 comments

J.S. BACH: Secular Cantatas
"Coffee Cantata," BWV 211; "Peasant Cantata," BWV 212; Durchlauchtster Leopold, BWV 173a
Dorothea Röschmann, soprano; Hugues Saint-Gelais, tenor; Kevin McMillan, baritone; Les Violons du Roy, Bernard Labadie
Dorian DOR-90199 (CD only). Craig D. Dory, eng.; Brian C. Peters, eng., prod. DDD. TT: 73:13

Reference Features Music and Recording Features

Stereophile Test CD 3

John Atkinson | Mar 07, 1995 | 6 comments

Back in the spring of 1990, Stereophile introduced its first Test CD, featuring a mixture of test signals and musical tracks recorded by the magazine's editors and writers. Even as we were working on that first disc, however, we had plans to produce a second disc which would expand on the usefulness of the first and feature a more varied selection of music. The result was our Test CD 2, released in May 1992.

Stand Loudspeaker Reviews

Monitor Audio Studio 6 loudspeaker

John Atkinson | Mar 03, 1995 | First Published: Mar 03, 1994 | 0 comments

Back in the summer of 1968, I bought a secondhand pre-CBS Fender Precision Bass guitar for the grand sum of £35 (then about $75) (footnote 1). It was so cheap because the previous owner had pretty much scratched the sunburst finish to ribbons. The P-Bass may have looked like roadkill but it played like a dream, so I decided to refinish its body. Paint stripper removed the remains of the original nitrocelloluse lacquer, leaving me with a white wood body—ash, I understand—which I carefully sanded and stained. Contrary to what you might expect, the finish of an electric guitar does have an effect on the sound, so I thought long and hard about how I was going to varnish the body. I ended up applying thinned gloss-finish polyurethane, which I then sanded, repeating this process some five or six times, using finer and finer sandpaper, until the application of a final coat of varnish gave as close to a mirror-smooth finish as I could get...which wasn't anything near as perfect as the piano-lacquer rosewood finish on the samples of the Monitor Audio Studio 6 loudspeaker that Monitor Audio USA sent for review!

Floor Loudspeaker Reviews

Spica Angelus loudspeaker

John Atkinson, Various | Feb 25, 1995 | First Published: Feb 25, 1988 | 0 comments

I am puzzled. No, really. I know you find it hard to believe that we sacerdotes of the golden-eared persuasion could ever be perplexed, but I have been pondering the imponderables of ports. Ever since the classic work of Richard Small and Neville Thiele in the early '70s showed how the low-frequency response of any box loudspeaker can be modeled as an electrical high-pass filter of some kind, with the relevant equations and data made available to all, there would seem to be very little reason why all loudspeakers with the same extension should not sound alike (or at least very similar) below 100Hz. Yet after reviewing 20 dynamic loudspeakers (and using 24) in the same room over the last seven months, I am led to the conclusion that speakers vary as much in the quality of their mid-to-upper bass as they do in any other region. A few are dry, more are exaggerated in this region; some are detailed and "fast," most are blurred, with the upper bass "slow" (by which I mean that the weight of bass tone seems to lag behind the leading edges of the sound).

Recording of the Month

Recording of February 1995: Two Sides to Every Story

Thomas Conrad | Feb 25, 1995 | 0 comments

TIGER OKOSHI: Two Sides to Every Story
Tiger Okoshi, trumpet; Mike Stern, electric guitar; Gil Goldstein, acoustic piano; Dave Holland, acoustic bass; Jack DeJohnette, drums
JVC JVC-2039-2 (CD only). Jim Anderson, eng.; Akira Taguchi, prod. DDD? TT: 65:20

As We See It

Bits is Bits, Right?

John Atkinson | Feb 08, 1995 | 0 comments

"Never explain, never apologize." But in this month's "As We See It," I intend to do both. First, the apology:

Records To Die For

1995 Records To Die For

Stereophile Staff | Feb 06, 1995 | 0 comments

"I've got a great idea, RL," said John Atkinson to me one fine fall morning five years ago, as we relaxed over cappuccino and croissants in the slowly rotating editorial suite of the imposing Stereophile Tower that---surmounted by a heroic statue of J. Gordon Holt, thumb down, lip curled, great bronze cigarette glowing triode-red---rises like a Tube Trap of the Gods to dominate the downtown skyline of our round brown town of La Villa Real de la Santa Fe de San Francisco de Asis. In a paroxysm of the editorial euphoria that comes upon him when he suddenly envisions page after page of Stereophile copy which he himself does not have to write, JA then outlined for me the annual list of the Greatest Performances recorded in the Greatest Stereo Sound that has since become the "Records To Die For" we all love and hate---one of Stereophile's most entertaining, annoying, and downright fun features.

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