After walking me through <a href="http://blog.stereophile.com/rmaf2010/the_naim_uniti/">the Naim Uniti display</a>, Naim’s David Dever then ushered me over to a second Naim room where the company was showing off its new NDX network player ($4750, shipping this November).
“Oh, this is new…and this is new, too. And, oh yeah, we’ve also got this,” went Music Hall’s Leland Leard around and around his busy room, a funhouse of hi-fi and vinyl.
Music Hall’s inexpensive USB turntable, the two-speed, belt-driven USB-1 ($249), uses an aluminum die-cast platter, has a groovy S-shaped tonearm equipped with an Audio-Technica AT3600L moving-magnet phono cartridge, and comes in a high-gloss black finish. Overall, it resembles something Run DMC might’ve brought to a gig.
As with other Shows, RMAF gave audiophiles the opportunity to stock up on LPs—the original hi-rez medium—both old and new. This is the bazaar on the Marriott's ground floor, which was crowded throughout the Show.
As in previous years, the 2010 RMAF featured a full program of seminars. I moderated two of them, the first of which on Saturday morning featured Channel D's Rob Robinson demonstrating how to rip LPs to your PC. Rob flew by the seat of his pants, doing everything in full view of the packed house—including booting-up his Mac mini, hooking up a Music Hall turntable to a preamplifier/ADC and connecting the preamp to the computer with a FireWire link—to make the point that there was nothing intimidating about the process. (His and my thanks to AudioEngine for providing powered speakers to allow the audience to hear what was happening.) The only departure from orthodoxy was that as Robinson was using Channel D's Pure Vinyl program (<A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/phonopreamps/pure_vinyl_lp_recording_amp_edi… by Michael Fremer</A> last August) to capture the data, he was using the program's digital-domain RIAA correction so used a flat-response preamp rather than a true phono preamplifier.
...was the title of the seminar presented Sunday afternoon by Audio Precision's Jonathan Novick. Audio Precision manufactures high-performance test gear (including the systems used by <I>Stereophile</I> for its reviews) and Novick's presentation concerned, among other things, how graphs, as published by <I>Stereophile</I>, are more meaningful than single figures of merit and how conventional measurements can miss problems with amplifiers that are undoubtedly audible. I came away from this presentation with some ideas on how to improve the magazine's test regime, but most telling was Novick's final slide which paraphrased Albert Einstein: "Not all that matters can be measured. Not all that can be measured, matters!."
<I>Photograph: John Atkinson</I>
<I>Stereophile</I> editor John Atkinson in a pensive mood as he listens to Jonathan Reichbach of Sonic Studio/Amarra speak at the start of the <I>Advances in Computer Audio</I> seminar JA chaired on Sunday morning.
It's always a joy to encounter Todd Garfinkle of M•A Recordings. Here he shows his latest audiophile quality CD, <I>Nama</I>. Also available as a 24-bit/176.4kHz hi-rez DVD-ROM format in a plain package that belies the beauty of its contents, the recording is the rightful successor to M•A's <I>Sera una Noche</I> and <I>La Segunda</I>, and features some of the same superb Argentinean artists. I can't wait to take a listen, once I dig it out of my luggage.
Galibier and Daedalus wanted to make sure they would not be missed. Their products surfaced, together and separately, in six different rooms in the top floor of the Marriott Tower.