Gramophone Dreams

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Gramophone DreamsTube Power Amp Reviews
Gramophone Dreams #46: Decware Zen Triode Amplifier
Herb Reichert  |  Feb 25, 2021  |  73 comments
I am not a fan of that amp designer who promoted his products by pointing a condescending finger while scolding audiophiles, like errant children, for preferring their records to sound "pleasant" rather than "accurate."

He reminds me of my least favorite teacher, Professor Grausamkeit, who was just like that and said similar things. Every time I smarted back, "Accurate to what?" he'd whack me with a wooden yardstick.

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Digital Processor ReviewsGramophone DreamsHeadphone Reviews
Gramophone Dreams #45: T+A Solitaire P headphones & HA 200 DAC-headphone amplifier
Herb Reichert  |  Jan 26, 2021  |  27 comments
What I categorize as mainstream, dealer-based, fancy-pants streamers and big-speakers audio is actually only the gold-plated tip of a gigantic asteroid-like monolith that extends (underground) from New York to Hong Kong, from the Arctic Circle to Antarctica.
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Gramophone DreamsPhono Cartridge Reviews
Gramophone Dreams #44: Audio-Technica, Goldring, LP Gear phono cartridges
Herb Reichert  |  Dec 28, 2020  |  29 comments
Someone once asked me, "If I buy your $90,000, 25W amplifier, what will I get that I am not getting with my $2000, 200W amplifier?" My answer was simple: "Goosebumps, tears, and smirking." Great, well-tuned audio systems, at all price levels, give their owners less of the annoying and distracting stuff and more of the exciting and engaging stuff. Great systems offer more opportunities for smirking pridefully while listening to great recordings.
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Gramophone DreamsSolid State Power Amp Reviews
Gramophone Dreams #43: First Watt F8 power amplifier
Herb Reichert  |  Dec 03, 2020  |  9 comments
I spent my childhood summers on the Reichert family farm near Turtle Lake, Wisconsin, where, inside the red 1880s barn, my uncle Harold played 78rpm records for his cows.

He used a wind-up Victrola sitting on a shelf directly in front of the cows, just below a framed reproduction of an Alpine landscape painting. He said the music and the mountain scene relaxed the cows, causing them to give better milk. Harold played the same Gustav Mahler symphony every day.

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Gramophone DreamsPhono Preamp Reviews
Gramophone Dreams #42: Sunvalley Audio SV-EQ1616D phono equalizer
Herb Reichert  |  Nov 04, 2020  |  19 comments
The 1980s was a decade when I needed three jobs to support my wife, infant daughter, and octogenarian dad. My primary job was to make and sell art, and I'm sure you know how that can go. Between exhibitions, I was forced to do construction work and to find, repair, and resell old tube amplifiers.
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Gramophone DreamsHeadphone Reviews
Gramophone Dreams #41: Auris Nirvana headphone amplifier & Focal Stellia Casque de Musique headphones
Herb Reichert  |  Sep 30, 2020  |  10 comments
"Future generations will be able to condense into the brief space of twenty minutes the tone pictures of a lifetime—five minutes of childish prattle, five moments embalming the last feeble utterances from the death-bed. Will this not seem like holding veritable communion with immortality?"—Berliner Gramophone Company ca 1877
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Digital Processor ReviewsGramophone Dreams
Gramophone Dreams #40: Denafrips Terminator & Ares II
Herb Reichert  |  Aug 25, 2020  |  20 comments
I am fascinated by DACs and the shifting sands of today's digital-audio marketplace. This month, I am reporting on two more DACs, both made by Denafrips: the $4498 Terminator, until recently their flagship DAC, and the $768 Ares II, the company's least expensive model. Like the HoloAudio May DAC I described last month, both Denafrips converters employ R-2R conversion schemes, and both render recordings into direct, unprocessed sound.
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Digital Processor ReviewsGramophone Dreams
Gramophone Dreams #39: HoloAudio May D/A processor & Intona USB isolator
Herb Reichert  |  Jul 30, 2020  |  25 comments
In contrast to phono cartridges and analog tape recorders, digital audio converters distinguish themselves by the fact that they can be fashioned in an almost infinite number of ways. Therefore, the odds against two manufacturers' DACs or ADCs sounding exactly the same are extremely large.
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Gramophone DreamsHeadphone Reviews
Gramophone Dreams #38: HEDD HEDDphones, Schiit Jotunheim amplifier
Herb Reichert  |  Jul 02, 2020  |  31 comments
Today is March 22, 2020. Outside my door, the plague is gaining intensity. People are wearing masks and rubber gloves. But outside the window by my desk, there is a Callery pear tree, and every day its blossoms are becoming more intensely white. Each day its brightness (measured in units of luminous flux) increases noticeably. The optical radiance of its zillion-petal whiteness illuminates the whole garden.
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Gramophone DreamsPhono Cartridge ReviewsTurntable Reviews
Gramophone Dreams #37: JSikora Initial turntable & Grado Aeon3 phono cartridge
Herb Reichert  |  Jun 02, 2020  |  22 comments
My most cherished intangibles—love, beauty, glimpses of higher realms—enter my awareness only after I prepare my psyche to receive them. Extended bathing, lighting candles, making tea, and preparing food are ritual work forms that prepare my senses to accept both pleasure and illumination. In like manner, collecting LPs and storing them properly, setting up turntables, aligning cartridges, and cleaning styli are ritual actions that prepare me for the high moments of focused musical pleasure only a black disc can provide.
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Gramophone DreamsIntegrated Amp Reviews
Gramophone Dreams #36: Linear Tube Audio Z10e integrated amplifier
Herb Reichert  |  Apr 29, 2020  |  5 comments
I hope you can tell how grateful I am to be writing a column every month. A column makes me feel like a reporter or raconteur, both of which I aspire to become. In a column, I can be more me. I can evolve, think out loud, and speculate, right in front of you. I can pass on crazy stories from a lifetime of audio. When I write about products in a Dream, I try not to form it as a review, per se, but rather as an informal chronicle of discovery.
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Gramophone DreamsHeadphone Reviews
Gramophone Dreams #35: ZMF & Hagerman headphone amplifiers & ZMF headphones
Herb Reichert  |  Apr 02, 2020  |  11 comments
Almost a year ago, a headphone pal loaned me the Zach Mehrbach–designed ZMF Auteur LTD headphones. He said, "Herb, see if you like these." I took them home and right away thought, Wow, these headphones really disappear!

Nothing about their sound attracted my attention. The only thing I noticed, casually, was how relaxed and unbelievably transparent they were.

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Gramophone Dreams
Gramophone Dreams #34: The Salt Cellar System
Herb Reichert  |  Mar 04, 2020  |  40 comments
The image above is not a modernist oil painting. It's an airport x-ray of my friend Jeffrey Jackson's backpack.

Can you identify its contents? Did you notice the red rectangle alerting the inspector of a suspicious object? Do you know what that suspicious object is? Or what it is worth?

That ominous-looking black silhouette is a 1930s-era Western Electric 555W "receiver"—ie, a compression driver for use with a horn. It's about 10" in diameter and weighs around 15lb. It requires a 7V DC/1.4A power supply for its field-coil magnet and would cost about $8000 to replace.

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Gramophone Dreams
Gramophone Dreams #33: Interconnects & Loudspeaker Cables
Herb Reichert  |  Feb 07, 2020  |  72 comments
When I applied for this job, I wrote a pretend review of the Rogue Audio Sphinx integrated amplifier and emailed it to Stephen Mejias, then Stereophile's deputy editor, who printed it and put it on John Atkinson's desk.

Before I sent it to Stephen, I showed a rough draft to my business agent, Sphere, who said, "Herb, you can't turn this in like this."

"Why?" I asked.

"Because you speak as if you are not an audiophile and think you're superior to audiophiles."

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Gramophone DreamsHeadphone Reviews
Gramophone Dreams 32: RAAL-Requisite SR1a headphones
Herb Reichert  |  Jan 08, 2020  |  31 comments
Tell me now: When you're there in the scene, watching Lord Voldemort chase Han Solo through the Cave of the Klan Bear, how often do you notice that the sounds you're experiencing are being pumped at you from five black-painted room boundaries, while the flickering-light images approach from only one? Moreover, in a parallel, more quotidian reality, you're sitting upright in your seat, noisily chomping popcorn while absorbing—and processing—massive amounts of sensory data: Did you ever consider the sensual, mechanical, and psychological complexity of a moment like this, and how fundamentally unnatural it is?
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