Money can't always buy love, but it is often thought it can buy audio happiness. Or can it? What is the least amount you have spent on an audio component that produced music that made you happy?
<A HREF="http://blog.stereophile.com/ces2009/now_thats_what_i_call_music">James Bongiorno</A>, the engineer behind the Sumo Andromeda, has enjoyed a long and colorful career as an audio amplifier designer. He has cast himself at times as an <I>enfant terrible</I>, exploding at audio critics and running scandalous advertisements (footnote 1). His best-known amplifier is the Ampzilla, produced by Great American Sound, but he also designed the Dyna 400. Currently Jim is living on a boat and serving as part-time consultant to the Sumo Company.
According to a recent Consumer Electronics Association's (CEA) <A HREF="http://www.ce.org/Press/CurrentNews/press_release_detail.asp?id=11935">… release</A>, "CE Industry to Surpass $174 billion in 2010, Reach Record High by 2011," sales forecasts are far more optimistic than had been expected. While the figures aren't easily translatable to the high-end market (which the CEA identifies as "high-performance audio"), some consumer-electronic (CE) trends give cause for qualified optimism, and provide clues as to which products may prove most profitable for manufacturers and dealers.
On the train this morning, deep into Aaron Copland’s classic, <i>What to Listen for in Music</i>, which Art Dudley discusses in our November issue, I read a bit about rhythms and polyrhythms. Copland is giving a brief history on the use and evolution of rhythm in modern Western composition, explaining how we got from basic two-four time marches to much more complex combinations of two or more independent rhythms in varying times. This is what I read:
<i>The Cambridge Audio Topaz AM10 has a phono stage.</i>
This morning we received our office copies of the October 2010 issue, which includes the latest installment of "Recommended Components."
Soon after raving over Fred Hersch’s new piano-trio album, <A HREF= http://blog.stereophile.com/fredkaplan/fred_herschs_iwhirli/ ><I>Whirl</I></A>, I learned that it was also available on 180-gram vinyl. I’ve since obtained a pressing and can report that, good as the CD sounded, the LP sounds considerably better.
While headphone listening remains secondary to that of loudspeakers for most serious listeners, it's still an important alternative for many. And while good conventional headphones exist, electrostatics are usually considered first when the highest playback quality is required. As always, there are exceptions (Grado's headphones come immediately to mind), but most high-end headphones are electrostatic—such designs offer the benefits of electrostatic loudspeakers without their dynamic limitations. <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/headphones/koss_esp950_electrostatic_stereop… year I reviewed</A> the Koss ESP/950 electrostatics (Vol.15 No.12), a remarkable set of headphones from the company that practically invented headphones for serious home listening. Here I listen to examples from two other companies, each known for its headphones since Pluto was a pup.
Way back in the mists of time, around 1980 to be exact, the Marantz company in Europe introduces a range of ostensibly cost-no-object solid-state electronics under the "Esotec" banner. Manufactured in Japan, but apparently designed in the USA, these ruggedly constructed components are noteworthy in that the power amplifiers are capable of being operated with the output stages running under class-A bias as well as class-B. The relatively expensive Esotec amplifiers sell in small numbers in the UK—remember that this is before the rebirth of the British high end—and pass into the history books. I am reminded of them, however, when I visit my friend Ivor Humphreys of <I>Gramophone</I> magazine at Christmas 1987; he is using a pair of the 30W mono class-A Marantz amplifiers to drive <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/floorloudspeakers/550">KEF R107</A>s—and making very nice sounds.