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.
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 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.
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.
I can't help wondering: how did the mainstream audio press, cheered Dynaco and Marantz and McIntosh and Quad for switching to transistors a couple of generations ago, greet the first tube-revival products from Audio Research and the like? What was the reaction when moving-coil cartridge technology, considered all but dead by the early 1970s, became the perfectionist hi-fi norm just a few years later? And what would the same people make of the fact that a high-mass, transcription-length pickup arm—with interchangeable pickup heads, no less—is one of the most recommendable phono products of 2008? The mind boggles.
T.H.E. Show, aka <A HREF="http://theshowlasvegas.com/2009/">The Home Entertainment Show</A>, has put out a welcome mat for members of "authentic Audiophile Societies throughout the globe."1 Scheduled for January 9–11, 2009, in Las Vegas, the same dates as the Consumer Electronics Show down the road, T.H.E. Show has for the first time offered members of audiophile societies paid access to over 100 anticipated active-display suites in both the St. Tropez and Alexis Park hotels.
"Up for another?" asked the e-mail.
Friday, June 20th, was Elizabeth Donovan's last day at work. We left the office together, and walked across the street to Mulligan's Pub. Elizabeth carried a large backpack, a box of books, a lamp. The place was packed, but we found a little space by the door, beneath an air conditioning unit.
After a year spent exploring the best that can be obtained from minimonitor loudspeakers, I embarked on what will be an equally long examination of what floorstanding towers have to offer. I began with the <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/floorloudspeakers/1207sonus">Sonus Faber Cremona Elipsa</A> ($20,800/pair) in December 2007, followed in 2008 by: in February, the <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/floorloudspeakers/208kef">KEF Reference 207/2</A> ($20,000/pair); in April, the <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/floorloudspeakers/408psb">PSB Synchrony One</A> ($4500/pair); and in May, the <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/floorloudspeakers/508mag">Magico V3</A> ($25,000/pair). For this review, I've been listening to a speaker aimed at those with shallower pockets than are required even for the PSB: the Avalon NP Evolution 2.0, which costs just $1995/pair.
In the waning days of 2007, I delivered some small audio doohickey to John Atkinson one weekend afternoon. "Come down to the listening room," he said. "I want you to hear something."