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Letters? Boy, did we get letters last year when we ran the very first "Records to Die For": subscription renewals, subscription cancellations, groveling gratitude, death threats, paeans, pans, madness, ecstasy, invitations to any number of sanity hearings (we sent our regrets)---and that was just from our own staff. How could we not do it again?

That was the question asked by a reader who was perfectly happy with his CD-based system. He was using the gain control provided by the variable output of his CD player and was apparently in no need of phono playback or greater flexibility. He asked us to answer this question, ignoring for the moment the obvious functions of switching, volume and tone control, and phono preamplification. With those hardly trivial qualifiers—and bearing in mind the high output available from many of today's line sources, CD players in particular—do you really need the added expense and complexity of a preamplifier?

On a number of occasions we have commented on the effects of an amplifier's output impedance on a system's performance. A high output impedance—such as is found in many tube amplifiers—will interact with the loudspeaker's impedance in a way which directly affects the combination's frequency response. The Cary CAD-805, for example, has a lower output impedance than most tube amplifiers, and should be less prone to such interaction. Some months back—before the CAD-805 arrived—I investigated this phenomenon in conjunction with measurements for a forthcoming review of the Melos 400 monoblock amplifier. Since the Melos 400 also had a relatively low output impedance for a tube amplifier (at 0.43 ohms at low and mid frequencies, rising to 1.2 ohms at 20kHz, from its 8 ohm tap), I took that opportunity to run some frequency-response measurements using an actual loudspeaker as the load for the amplifier.

ANONYMOUS 4: On Yoolis Night
Medieval Christmas Carols and Motets
Anonymous 4
Harmonia Mundi 907099 (CD only). Robina G. Young, prod.; Brad Michel, eng. ADD? TT: 68:03