Michael Fremer

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Analog Corner # 247: Dr. Feickert Firebird turntable, Viva Fono MC phono preamplifier, AcroLink and Fono Acustica interconnects
Analog CornerCable ReviewsPhono Preamp ReviewsTurntable Reviews
Michael Fremer  |  Apr 11, 2024  |  First Published: Mar 01, 2016  |  0 comments
Dr. Feickert Analogue's top-of-the line turntable, the Firebird ($12,500), is a generously sized record player designed to easily accommodate two 12" tonearms. Its three brushless, three-phase DC motors, arranged around the platter in an equilateral triangle, are connected to a proprietary controller in a phase-locked loop (PLL); according to the Firebird's designer, Dr. Christian Feickert, a reference signal from just one of the motors drives all three—thus one motor is the master while the other two are slaves. (Man, today that is politically incorrect, however descriptively accurate.)
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AudioQuest Niagara 7000 Low-Z Power Noise-Dissipation System
Audacious AudioPowerline Accessory Reviews
Michael Fremer  |  Feb 09, 2016  |  5 comments
Are you old enough to remember when the wires connecting speakers to even the most expensive and sophisticated electronics were 16-gauge, multistrand lamp cord, and the terminals on speakers and amplifiers were just little screws? Sometimes those screws wouldn't even secure all of the wires' strands, but as long as loose strands from one screw didn't touch loose strands from the other, it was good enough . . . and back against the wall went your bookshelf speakers.
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PS Audio BHK Signature 300 monoblock power amplifier
Solid State Power Amp Reviews
Michael Fremer  |  Feb 03, 2016  |  4 comments
Was it more surprising that, in 2015, PS Audio would produce a monoblock class-AB power amplifier containing vacuum tubes, or that PS Audio would release a monoblock power amplifier at all? I'm not sure.

In 1974, Paul McGowan and Stan Warren founded the company to produce and market a standalone phono preamplifier, sold directly to consumers for $59.95. From there they naturally progressed to a series of line-level preamplifiers. Toward the end of the '70s, PS Audio produced the Model One, the company's first power amplifier. In the mid-1980s came the high-performance, moderately priced ($495) 4.5 and 4.6 preamplifiers. I reviewed—and bought—a 4.6 a few years after I began reviewing gear for The Abso!ute Sound; Tom Norton reviewed the 4.6 for the September 1988 issue of Stereophile.

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Musical Fidelity Nu-Vista 800 integrated amplifier
Integrated Amp Reviews
Michael Fremer  |  Oct 22, 2015  |  0 comments
Nuvistors—miniature, small-signal, vacuum tubes made of metal and ceramic—were introduced by RCA in 1959, at the dawn of the transistor revolution. RCA used them throughout the 1960s in its New Vista line of television sets, mostly in the tuner section. But by the early 1970s, solid-state devices had all but replaced tubes, nuvistors included (with a few notable exceptions). Ampex based the electronics of its well-regarded, late-'60s MR-70 open-reel tape deck on nuvistors, which were also used in microphone preamplifiers—in both cases for their very low noise and reputation for reliability and long life. For a time, Conrad-Johnson used them as well. While nuvistors may seem exotic today, they're hardly rare. On eBay you can find for sale hundreds if not thousands of used and new-old stock (NOS) nuvistors, as well as nuvistor sockets, without which the tubes are less easy to implement. (But they can be, and often are, hard-wired into a circuit.)
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Krell Solo 575 monoblock power amplifier
Solid State Power Amp Reviews
Michael Fremer  |  Sep 29, 2015  |  3 comments
Class-A amplifiers have a well-deserved reputation for being power guzzlers that run hot enough to burn fingers. They're inherently inefficient because their output devices conduct full current at all times, and much of that current is dissipated as heat—requiring, in the case of class-A solid-state amplifiers, massive heatsinks. This is why class-A amps tend to produce relatively low power, and tend to be heavy and expensive to buy and run. And these days, energy inefficiency is out of fashion.
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Swedish Analog Technologies tonearm
Audacious AudioTonearm Reviews
Michael Fremer  |  Jul 09, 2015  |  16 comments
Late in the fall of 1982, Los Angeles turned ugly for me. I'd finished my work on Tron and despite the Academy Award nomination for Best Sound (which went to the mixing team, not the sound supervisor), it was obvious that nothing else was coming my way anytime soon. To earn a living, I had to reinvent myself.

So there I was in Las Vegas, at the 1983 Consumer Electronics Show, schlepping heavy bags filled with press kits, each containing an audio cassette of a dozen radio commercials for a car-stereo store that I'd voiced and produced, along with a résumé-bio and endorsements from clients.

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Bel Canto Design Black amplification system
Audacious AudioDigital Processor ReviewsSolid State Power Amp Reviews
Michael Fremer  |  Jun 26, 2015  |  4 comments
Stereophile normally doesn't review audio systems. We review individual components. We've made an exception for the Bel Canto Black system because it deserves to be evaluated as such. It consists of three dense, almost identically sized cases of black-anodized aluminum. One, the ASC1 Asynchronous Stream Controller, is what in a conventional system would be called a "preamplifier." The other two, a pair of MPS1 Mono PowerStreams, would in a conventional system be called "monoblock power amplifiers."
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Clearaudio Maestro V2 phono cartridge
Phono Cartridge Reviews
Michael Fremer  |  May 21, 2015  |  5 comments
Clearaudio began making moving-coil cartridges in the 1970s, and only later got into the moving-magnet business. Moving-magnet cartridge designers must now be mindful that most of today's tonearms are of medium to high mass and that therefore, to be compatible, their MMs must be of low to medium compliance and of higher mass than those of the 1960s and '70s.
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Bricasti Design M28 monoblock power amplifier
Audacious AudioSolid State Power Amp Reviews
Michael Fremer  |  May 01, 2015  |  9 comments
Google Bricasti and all that comes up are sites relating to Bricasti Design products. The name must be fanciful—it sounds Italian, but cofounders Brian Zolner and Casey Dowdell most likely are not, and the company's headquarters are not in Milan or Turin but in Massachusetts.

While its name might be whimsical, nothing else about Bricasti is. As John Marks reported in his review of Bricasti's M1 DAC in the August 2011 issue, both founders previously worked at Lexicon: Dowdell as a DSP-software engineer, Zolner as international sales manager. Bricasti develops its products in conjunction with Aeyee Labs, formed by a group of ex-employees of Madrigal Audio Laboratories and based in New Haven, Connecticut.

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Boulder Amplifiers 2110 line preamplifier
Audacious AudioSolid State Preamp Reviews
Michael Fremer  |  Mar 05, 2015  |  2 comments
Founded in 1984, Boulder Amplifiers is a conservative audio company that goes quietly about its business, choosing not to call attention to itself with marketing flash or acronym-laden features. Change comes slowly to such companies, which is why the just-retired 2010 preamplifier enjoyed a 17-year run.
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