World's Largest Capacitor?
Every time I passed the parts bin with this bad boy in it, I did a double take. Man, that's big!
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Finishing a Panel
This precision sander puts the lovely exterior finish on the Anat's panels. Yes, the machine does the grunt work, but factory manager Roger Wertz supervises the entire time with his hand on a deadman's switch.
Crossover
It's an acoustic fourth-order Linkwitz-Riley, crossing over at 1.75kHz, if you're keeping score at home.
The Other Side
More crossover naughty bits.
Anechoic Chamber
YGA gets its open air measurements by lifting the speaker under measurement away from that pesky floor boundary with a forklift.
AQVOX Audio Devices Phono 2Ci phono preamplifier
The German company AQVOX Audio Devices has produced an innovative moving-coil/moving-magnet solid-state phono preamplifier, the Phono 2Ci, that's as intriguing for its technology and performance as it is for its relatively low price: $1400. The zero-feedback, op-amp–free circuit uses a compact switch-mode power supply that's built into the chassis and features conventional voltage gain for moving-magnet cartridges via its RCA jacks, and current gain for moving-coil cartridges through the balanced XLR inputs. Rear-panel switches select between RCA or XLR inputs and offer a convenient ground lift. Either the single-ended or the balanced outputs can be used with either input. Unfortunately, the tight spacing of the RCA input and output jacks, which are mounted on the circuit board, will somewhat limit your choice of cables: Pairs of thick-barreled plugs will have difficulty fitting.
Mikey In the Press Room at RTI
Here's a sneak-peek at Mikey Fremer's upcoming DVD, "It's a Vinyl World, After All," scheduled to be released later this year. I swear: Mikey doesn't always talk like this. It's just that it's loud at the <a href="http://www.recordtech.com">RTI</a> pressing plant, and Mikey's a little excitable.
PSB Imagine
Last Tuesday evening, JA and I left the office together and stormed through Madison Avenue's rush-hour onslaught, beneath so much Art Deco splendor, around Grand Central's excitement and confusion, passed happy hour revelers—slicked-backed men dressed in jackets and ties as if it wasn't 100 degrees outside, and impossibly radiant women in their picture-perfect poses sipping frozen drinks through tall, thin straws—to make our way into Park Avenue's old and golden Waldorf=Astoria.
PSB Launches "Imagine" Loudspeakers
PSB came to New York in late July to debut its new line of loudspeakers, giving journos an advance peek at them before the official launch at the CEDIA Conference in early September. <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/interviews/231/">Paul Barton</A>, showing a lot of emotion for a normally reserved Canadian, was frankly in love with the four new loudspeakers.
PrimaLuna ProLogue Eight CD player
There's a retro, Heathkit vibe to the curiously capitalized PrimaLuna ProLogue Eight CD player: a shelf of glowing tubes and a chunky transformer case perched atop a plain black chassis. But on closer inspection, it seems there's much more going on here. The chassis is made of heavy-gauge steel, with (according to the manual) a "five-coat, high-gloss, automotive finish," each coating hand-rubbed and -polished. The tube sockets are ceramic, the output jacks gold-plated. Inside, separate toroidal transformers power each channel. Custom-designed isolation transformers separate the analog and digital devices, to reduce noise. The power supply incorporates 11 separate regulation circuits. The output stage is dual-mono with zero feedback. Audio-handling chips include a Burr-Brown SRC4192 that upsamples "Red Book" data to 24-bit/192kHz, and one 24-bit Burr-Brown PCM1792 DAC per channel. Only the tiny silver control buttons (on the otherwise hefty faceplate of machined aluminum) betray a whiff of chintz.