Kalman Rubinson

Kalman Rubinson | Jan 22, 2019 | 88 comments

I had a moment of revelation in 2000, when I first set up a pair of Revel's original Ultima Studio loudspeakers in my living room. It wasn't just my awareness that Revel's next-to-top-of-the-line loudspeaker was outstandingly good—it seemed to perfectly match my space and my ears. From the first day, I knew these would be keepers and I purchased the review samples.

Revel's Ultima Studio2 arrived in 2008, and though it performed even better than the original, the impression it made on me wasn't quite revelatory, and my praise was somewhat restrained—something for which Fred Kaplan justly chided me in his enthusiastic Follow-Up review in December 2009. To this day, the Ultima Studio2 and Revel's top model, the Salon2, remain Revel's standard bearers. Meanwhile, I wonder when there will be a Studio3.

Blind Listening at Harman International

Reference

Kalman Rubinson | Jan 22, 2019 | 64 comments

Revel began demonstrating prototypes of the Performa F228Be, reviewed elsewhere in this issue, at the Consumer Electronics Show and other audio events in 2015, though they had yet to settle on the model name. The most salient feature that distinguished the F228Be-to-be from the established Performa3 F208 was the new beryllium tweeter, and while it sounded more than okay under show conditions, I always heard a bit of brightness and harshness. I knew it was still a work in progress, but I wasn't very eager to want to take it home.

Music in the Round #95: Wolf & NAD

Media Server Reviews Music in the Round Solid State Preamp Reviews

Kalman Rubinson | Jan 10, 2019 | 1 comments

Although I no longer attend the audio pageant that was once the annual Consumer Electronics Show, I now seem to be traveling more, in hopes of recapturing the excitement CES had once provided. Last May I attended High End, in Munich, and found that while it was entirely as advertised, there was, alas, not enough emphasis on the playback of high-resolution files, and hardly any attention paid to multichannel music.

Music in the Round #94: Benchmark & Marantz

Music in the Round Solid State Preamp Reviews

Kalman Rubinson | Nov 01, 2018 | 2 comments

Sometimes, I feel I'm two people. One, a card-carrying audiophile, is always looking for ways to optimize his enjoyment of multichannel music recordings, a purist pursuit that begins with file playback and leads to DACs, amps, and speakers, while eschewing anything that can complicate or compromise the sound. Thus, while his main system may seem elaborate to outsiders, to him it seems streamlined: NAS>player>DAC>preamp>power amps>speakers. In fact, it's possible to combine the NAS and player in a single device, if that device's CPU and RAM are capable of doing all the tasks—but these product categories continue to evolve so quickly that he prefers to keep them discrete.

Paradigm Persona 5F loudspeaker

Floor Loudspeaker Reviews

Kalman Rubinson | Sep 20, 2018 | 28 comments

Since its founding in 1982, Paradigm has developed and sold high-value loudspeakers. When my wife and I acquired our weekend house in 1992, I selected a pair of Paradigm Esprit/BP speakers for our audio system there. Shortly thereafter, however, I wanted to take my big step into multichannel, and it seemed that the Esprits' bipolar radiation would present problems for multichannel sound in my relatively small room. Back then, Manhattan still had many audio salons; after shopping around, I replaced the Esprit/BPs with Paradigm's Reference Studio/60 v.2s, and in 2004 stepped up to the Studio/60 v.3s.

Music in the Round #93: miniDSP & Ripping SACDs

Digital Processor Reviews Music in the Round

Kalman Rubinson | Sep 06, 2018 | 12 comments

As I took my valedictory lap around High End, the immense audio show held each May in Munich, Germany, it was clear that this year's event was an exuberant flowering of mature technology. I witnessed the dominance of hardware for LP playback, as well as analog amplifiers, many of them based on tubes, and passive loudspeakers with traditional cone-and-dome drive-units. And there was no shortage of excellent and impressive musical demonstrations. Still, I experienced no revelations, and heard no announcements of any new technology that might trigger a hopeful anticipation of the near future. It was as if HE2018 were reflecting on the past with reverence and commitment, rather than striving toward the future with innovation and adventure.

Recording of August 2018: The Gershwin Moment

Recording of the Month

Kalman Rubinson | Jul 12, 2018 | 41 comments

Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue (1924 jazz-band version, orch. Grofé). ¹ Piano Concerto in F. ² "Summertime." ³ Gershwin-Wild: "Somebody Loves Me," "I Got Rhythm," "Embraceable You."⁴ Oscar Levant: "Blame It On My Youth." ⁵
Kirill Gerstein, piano; ^1–5 Storm Large, vocal; ³ Gary Burton, vibraphone; ⁵ David Robertson, St. Louis Symphony Orchestra^{1, 2}
Myrios Classics MYR022 (CD, 24/192 FLAC). 2018. Kirill Gerstein, prod.; Stephan Cahen, prod.,1-5 eng.; ^{1, 2, 4, 5} Paul Hennerich, ^{1, 2, 4} Doug Decker, ³ engs. DDD. TT: 73:45
Performance *****
Sonics *** (CD), **** (24/192 FLAC)

I grew up with Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. I was the youngest in a family not particularly interested in music, and whose record collection consisted of pop music and three oddly assorted classical recordings, all on 78rpm discs: Enrico Caruso singing "Vesti la giubba," Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring (on four 12" 78s), and the 1927 recording of Rhapsody in Blue with the Paul Whiteman Concert Orchestra and Gershwin at the keyboard.

Music in the Round #92: Digibit Aria Piccolo +

Digital Processor Reviews Media Server Reviews Music in the Round

Kalman Rubinson | Jun 26, 2018 | 62 comments

Lovers of high-resolution multichannel sound still don't have it easy. While the two-channel market is replete with snazzy, efficient music servers in stylish boxes, the only multichannel equivalents are Merging Technologies' Merging+Player Multichannel-8, and a handful of stereo devices that are rumored to do multichannel, though no such claims are made in print. To be candid, the latter will play multichannel tracks via USB, Ethernet, or HDMI outputs to suitable DACs (but that's another story), but because they're aimed at the two-channel market, they tend to skimp on the CPU horsepower and RAM needed to handle higher-resolution multichannel files. Even the Merging+Player Multichannel-8 ($13,500), with its Intel i3 CPU running Roon, couldn't entirely keep up with everything in my library.

Kal Rubinson Visits Munich High End

Munich 2018

Kalman Rubinson | May 23, 2018 | 13 comments

The Kii Three speaker on top of its BXT woofer module.

For years, I have had the Munich High-End Show on my bucket list and, this year was the time to cross it off. Past reports have been enticing not only from the detailed reports of a wealth of familiar, not-so-familiar and some downright unknown audio companies but, even more, because it is said to be the best show in terms of venue, focus and community spirit.

Music in the Round #91: Parasound Halo A 52+

Music in the Round Solid State Power Amp Reviews

Kalman Rubinson | May 01, 2018 | 4 comments

For some years now, I've tried to free myself from playing physical media and get all my music organized on a server. It's not that I don't enjoy handling and playing discs, but it's almost impossible to keep track of them. When my collection was only a thousand or two LPs, I felt I could remember each one individually. But now I have several times that many silver discs, and I know I can't.

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