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Listening #145

Art Dudley Jan 22, 2015

Kids, you tried your best and you failed miserably. The lesson is: Never try.Homer Simpson

Months ago, as we put together the most recent installment of "Recommended Components," Phillip Holmes, of Mockingbird Distribution, got in touch and asked if we would please remove from our list the Abis SA-1 tonearm, which Mockingbird distributes (and which I first wrote about in our March 2014 issue, footnote 1). As it turns out, Abis is making some changes to the arm, and Holmes didn't think it would be right to let the recommendation endure until we'd had a chance to try the new one.

Audio Streams

Audio Streams #4

Michael Lavorgna Jan 21, 2015

Everything these days has a computer inside it, but you wouldn't call a car a computer. Same goes for music streamerswhat we at AudioStream.com also call network players. While a network player has a computer inside, I don't consider it a computer because it's designed to do just one thing: play music.

A network player connects to your home network via Ethernet or WiFi, searches for network-attached storage (NAS), looks for the Internet to connect to streaming services, and serves up all of this music through an app that typically resides on a smartphone or tablet. The theory goes that, being purpose built, a dedicated network player should sound better than a full-blown computer, the latter's multitasking abilities degrading its ability to get us to dance, literally or figuratively.

Interviews

Aerial Acoustics' Michael Kelly Reveals Some Trade Secrets

David Lander Jan 21, 2015

Aerial Acoustics, the speaker firm that Michael Kelly conceived a quarter-century ago with David Marshall, is headquartered north of Boston, not far from the Merrimack River Valley region that once produced textiles and shoes by the trainload. Kelly, though, is quick to equate Aerial with far more distant firms. His industrial models are in Germany, where he lived for a while when his father, a US Army officer, was based there, and where he later spent time as a vice-president of a/d/s/, which had been founded by a German-born and -educated scientist, Godehard Günther, who died last October. They're small-to-midsize specialty firms that together constitute a category called Mittelstanden, and they're as accomplished as they are narrowly focused. They're artisan enterprises, and it's only natural that someone as dedicated as Kelly is to building state-of-the-art loudspeakers would embrace them as examples.

News

On Newsstands Now: Our February Issue!

Stereophile Staff Jan 18, 2015

Canadian manufacturer Bryston is known for its amplifiers but it is a loudspeaker that gets the cover treatment this month. Kalman Rubinson likes what he heard from this mid-priced tower, while John Atkinson spends some of his valuable listening time with a speaker that costs less than $60/pair. “Affordable” is also the name of the game both with VPI’s Nomad record player and GoldenEar’s awesome Triton One speaker reviewed in this issue. But it is our annual “Records to Die For” that headlines this issue: our editors and writers review 54 albums, ranging from chamber music to psychedelia, that are essential listens. Check this 156-page issue out.

CES 2015

CES 2015: A Major Opening, or Not Just Another Show

Jason Victor Serinus Jan 17, 2015

Photo: John Atkinson

On one level, this was just "another CES." The barrage of humanity, traffic, flashing lights, cigarette smoke, hawkers, gawkers, noise masquerading as music, and the ever-present Las Vegas Strip above was such that, as I entered the Venetian on the last day, all I could think of was the promise that, before the night was over I would be back amongst the trees, silence, and rejuvenating peace of our home...The Age of the Audiophile is far from over. As CES 2015 has made abundantly clear, the show may be over, but the fun has just begun.

CES 2015

Set-Up Tips from the 2015 CES

Robert Deutsch Jan 17, 2015

For this year's CES show blog, in addition to reporting on new/interesting products, our plan was to ask manufacturers for tips on the installation and optimization of their products, echoing the how-to theme of the articles in Stereophile's 2015 Special "Recommended Components" issue, the cover of which is pictured above with John Atkinson. (This special issue will be available on newsstands and in bookstores next week.)

CES 2015

PS Audio's Forthcoming Statement Amplifier

Jason Victor Serinus Jan 17, 2015

With its forthcoming BHK Signature 250 amplifier ($7500), PS Audio's Paul McGowan (above) has stepped outside his own self-imposed price point box. By inviting his longtime friend and colleague, Bascom H. King (Constellation, Infinity, Infinity class-A, Conrad-Johnson, and Marantz), to create his magnum opus without regard to price, his goal was to make, in his own words, "one of the top five amplifiers in the world."

CES 2015

Vandersteen Announces the Mk.II Model Seven

John Atkinson Jan 17, 2015

Richard Vandersteen points to the detailed improvements to his flagship Model Seven speaker, which produced one of my best sounds at the 2015 CES.

CES 2015

Bliss with dCS, Rockport, D'Agostino, Transparent

Jason Victor Serinus Jan 17, 2015

What better way to end a day than to move from Magico/Soulution/Baetis/BAD/Vovox to a system in which dCS's digital statement, the ne plus ultra Vivaldi four-stack marvel (something like $108,496 plus all those cables to power and connect it), Dan D'Agostino Momentum monoblock amplifiers ($55,000/pair), Transparent MM2 cabling, and the new Rockport Cygnus loudspeakers ($62,500/pair). The sound was very different than Magico's on the next floor of the Mirage, and equally extraordinary.

CES 2015

The Mega Magico/Soulution/BAD/Baetis /Vovox System

Jason Victor Serinus Jan 17, 2015

In the first system to which I took a serious listen at CES, Alon Wolf could have made no more major a statement than by pairing his Magico Q7 loudspeakers ($185,000/pair) and new active QSub-18 ($36,000) with Soulution 701 monoblock amplifiers ($150,000/pair), Soulution 720 preamp (discontinuedthe current 725 line stage is $50,000), Berkeley Audio Design Reference DAC ($16,000), Baetis Audio music server, Vovox cabling from Switzerland, Magico MRack ($50,000), and superb Magico QPOD equipment supports.