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In the fall of 1982, I had just become the Editor of the English magazine Hi-Fi News & Record Review. Hi-fi was in a state of flux. The Compact Disc had just made its debut in Japan, but the British and American launches were six months and a year away, respectively. The Linn orthodoxy prevailed about the role of the source in system performance, but there was no agreement about what was and was not important when it came to enhancing the musical experience. "Objectivists" insisted that amplifiers and even loudspeakers had pretty much reached a design plateau where no further improvement was necessary or even desirable, while "subjectivists" were fragmented. All I was aware of was that my system, based on Celestion SL6 loudspeakers, needed more of an undefinable something.

This is something we don't see too often: an entirely new approach to power amplifier design. As Quad points out in its literature for the 405, class-A operation of transistors provides the lowest distortion, but drastically limits the amount of power an output transistor can deliver without overheating. (Most transistor amps use class-AB output operation, in which each of a pair of power transistors handles part of each signal cycle and shuts down during the other part. Imperfect synchronism between the two halves causes the familiar "crossover distortion," which accounts for most solid-state sound. In class-A operation, each output transistor draws current though the entirety of each signal cycle, eliminating the crossover transition but doubling the amount of time current is drawn, and thus tending to cause the transistor to heat up more.)

<I>A truly great preamplifier lets everything through, both music and distortion, but with such generosity that neither...is cramped and narrow.</I>&mdash;<B>Larry Archibald</B> (footnote 1)

<I>A truly great preamplifier lets everything through, both music and distortion, but with such generosity that neither...is cramped and narrow.</I>&mdash;<B>Larry Archibald</B>(footnote 1)

<B>MEDESKI MARTIN & WOOD: <I>Friday Afternoon in the Universe</I></B><BR> John Medeski, organs, piano, wurlitzer, clavinet; Billy Martin, drums, percussion; Chris Wood, acoustic bass, harmonica, wood flute<BR> Gramavision GCD 79503 (CD only). MMW, David Baker, Jim Payne, prods.; David Baker, eng.; Dr. Toby Mountain, mastering. DDD? TT: 57:06

One of the great imponderables in hi-fi is how much the vibrations of a dynamic loudspeaker's cabinet walls contribute to its overall sound quality. Studies by William Stevens in the mid-1970s showed that, with some speakers, the acoustic output of the enclosure could be almost as much as that from the drive-units. Since then, responsible speaker designers have worked hard either to damp cabinet vibrations or to shift them to higher frequencies where their effect on the music will be less deleterious.

"You are <I>not</I> going to believe this."