On the Move at Munich High End
I don't know about you, but I have a hard time wrapping my head around the computational power required to accurately and consistently upsample to DSDx16 (DSD1024)
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LATEST ADDITIONS
Warner Music Group Goes with MQA
MQA's game-changing breakthrough has arrived. On 9am UK time on May 6, 2016, Warner Music Group (WMG), whose vast catalog includes everything from the Beatles to Maria Callas, announced a long-term licensing deal with MQA (Master Quality Authenticated). The agreement makes it possible to digitize the entire WMG catalogue in the superior MQA-encoded format of various resolutions, and disseminate the files via download and streaming services in a far more efficient and user-friendly manner.
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WoM presents Pro-Ject Audio Systems in New York City
Pro-Ject Audio System's founder and President Heinz Lichtenegger debuted three products in Manhattan this past April 28. Among the upbeat Austrian's new wares were the Vertical turntable (above), the Classic turntable, and the DAC Box DS2 Ultra. Presented at World of McIntosh's SoHo townhouse, visitors were given a tour of the 1890s-built former New York City power substation, now beautifully renovated and stuffed floor to ceiling with audio gear from Sonus Faber, McIntosh, and of course, Pro-Ject.
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Sennheiser HD 202: Inexpensive Headphones Done Really Well
This story originally appeared at InnerFidelity.com
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First, how in the hell do you make a pair of headphones, distribute it to retailers, and have it shipped overnight to your house for $20!? I shake my head; how can this be? Well, the answer, of course, is economies of scale. And with 312,000,000 headphones sold world-wide annually, there's plenty of scale in that economy.
Trade Day Begins at Munich High End
To get an idea of how many press and industry members attend Munich High End, just take a look at this "opening bell" shot of people queuing on the ground level and on one of the spiral stairways up to the atrium level of the MOC Convention Center
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Listening #161
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.Robert Frost
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I doubted if I should ever come back.Robert Frost
Perhaps it was different for other audio hobbyists in other parts of the world, but to this American, the Naim Audio of the late 1970s and early '80s seemed a bit prickly. It wasn't just their road-less-traveled-by attitude toward amplifier designscorning class-A output architecture, preferring DIN connectors to RCA jacks, routing preamp output signals and power-supply voltages through the same cablebut also the British company's perspectives on selling and setting up and even listening to hi-fi gear that seemed combative: Shopping for amplifiers based on output power is foolish. Using short speaker cables and long interconnects is the wrong way to go about it. And why do you Americans bother with all that "soundstaging" nonsense?
Music in the Round #78
The number of devices that can constitute a home-audio streaming system ranges from onea laptop computer running a music program to play internally stored filesto x the unknown. These days we have storage devices, servers, streamers, renderers, bridges, controllers, players, and DACs, at least one of which is hoped to have a volume control. Any combination of these elements can be put in a single box and described by one of many new hyphenated product categoriesor can be given a name along the lines of exaSound's PlayPoint Network Audio Player: a model designation that at least hints at this product's ability to play music. Let's see what else it can do . . .
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Murray, Allen & Carrington Power Trio, Perfection
Perfection (on the Motema Music label) shows David Murray in his finest form, and playing in his most simpatico band, in a decade, maybe longer. The bandmates are Geri Allen on piano, Terri Lyne Carrington on drums, and that's itno bass: odd, and possibly unprecedented for a Murray trio, but Allen's left hand and Carrington's foot pedal are so deft and strong, you scarcely notice its absence.
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Peter Wolf: A Hard Drivin' Man
Don't get me wrongit was a nice surprise. It's always good to find another member of the cult, someone else interested in music and sound, and proud to be called an audiophile. But . . . Peter Wolf?
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"What's John Atkinson like?"
"Here's the $64,000 question: What's in your system?"
Observations and Prognostications for 1965
Well, the New York Hi-Fi wingding has come and gone once again, and now is the time when audio editors dutifully adopt the role of oracle, divining the future of high fidelity, and generally sketching out The Big Picture for those of us too blind to see the graffiti on the wall. So, who are we to shirk our duty? Herewith, The Stereophile's audio observations and predictions for 1965.
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