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Exasperated, I tried for a while not to think about audio reviewing. I played one record after another, doing my best not to analyze, but just enjoy. But every record made me tense and unsettled, so before it finished I'd take it off and put on another, hoping it might be more satisfying. One recording did stand out and play quite well: Kander and Ebb's "You're My Thrill," from the soundtrack to Philip Leacock's 1960 film, Let No Man Write My Epitaph, on Ella Fitzgerald's Clap Hands, Here Comes Charlie! (CD, Verve/Classic VSCD-4053). This disc showed enough of that great force we call "Ella…
Turntables, tonearms, and phono cartridges are tuned systems. That each of them can be adjusted to maximize the sound quality—especially the quality called tunefulness, which is difficult to quantify—drives vinyl deniers crazy. Today, one of them e-mailed me: "You are the stupidest motherfucker I have ever encountered. Go shove a tone-arm up your ass." He followed that with this: "You are demented, deluded, and deaf. Records suck, and always have."
Just ignore them. I do. (Well, I try.)
The ability to fine-tune a vinyl playback system is part of what makes it possible to combine…
Setup and Use: The Döhmann Helix 1 comes in a compact road case and is relatively easy to set up. It sits on adjustable leveling feet, from which the turntable itself is completely decoupled. It's big: 23.4" wide by 5.2" high by 18.7" deep. The MinusK suspension requires no tuning or tweaking, other than to adjust the vertical "travel" once the arm(s) has been installed: The suspension is very sensitive to weight.
Audio Union supplies a pair of thick, mirror-imaged aluminum armboards that can be machined to accommodate your choice of tonearm. The boards are bolted, from above, to…
There are always chance encounters at an audio show, and when I went to meet AVTech America's general manager Keith Pray (left) and Hi-Fi News editor Paul Miller (right) to discuss, among other things, November's Hi-Fi News Show in Windsor, England, Audeze CEO Sankar Thiagasamudram was with them holding a sample of the California company's new Mobius head-tracking headphone ($399). The Mobius uses planar-magnetic diaphragms like the upmarket Audeze cans, but once zero'd in the forward direction, will keep the soundstage aimed at that direction when the user moves his head. In this the Mobius…
JOHN PRINE: Fair & Square
Oh Boy OBR-034 (CD). 2005. John Prine, prod.; Gary Paczosa, prod., eng.; Thomas
Johnson, Brandon Bell, asst. engs. AAD? TT: 62:16
Performance ****½
Sonics ****½
Oh Boy OBR-034 (CD). 2005. John Prine, prod.; Gary Paczosa, prod., eng.; Thomas
Johnson, Brandon Bell, asst. engs. AAD? TT: 62:16
Performance ****½
Sonics ****½
In 1998, it looked for a time as if one of America's finest singing and songwriting voices might be silenced. Fortunately, John Prine, a solo-guitar-and-voice dynamo and the composer of such wry folk-rock hymns as "Dear Abby," "Illegal Smile," and "The Oldest Baby in the World," beat the illness that nearly laid him low and now has released Fair & Square, his first studio album of…
A different-drummer loudspeaker
To judge from his Arpeggione loudspeaker, Jean-Marie Reynaud (footnote 3) is an individualistic and perhaps even idiosyncratic loudspeaker designer in the mold of Paul Klipsch, Amar Bose, Irving M. "Bud" Fried, and Dick Shahinian. The Arpeggione is the floorstanding version of the Twin Mk.3 bookshelf speaker, having the same 6.5" mid-woofer and 1.5" soft-dome tweeter. The differences being cabinet volume and woofer loading, the Arpeggione has more bass extension and volume than the Twin. Its price increment over the Twin ($1200 vs $895) seems quite…
To judge from his Arpeggione loudspeaker, Jean-Marie Reynaud (footnote 3) is an individualistic and perhaps even idiosyncratic loudspeaker designer in the mold of Paul Klipsch, Amar Bose, Irving M. "Bud" Fried, and Dick Shahinian. The Arpeggione is the floorstanding version of the Twin Mk.3 bookshelf speaker, having the same 6.5" mid-woofer and 1.5" soft-dome tweeter. The differences being cabinet volume and woofer loading, the Arpeggione has more bass extension and volume than the Twin. Its price increment over the Twin ($1200 vs $895) seems quite…
Wood is not an engineering material. It might look pretty, but it's inconsistent and therefore unpredictable. So we smash cheap wood into sawdust and then glue it all together again to create something that can be machined. This is called medium-density fiberboard, or MDF. We then thinly slice some classy hardwood—hopefully harvested from sustainable sources—and use it to cover the ugly MDF. This might have made sense back when Chippendale was making furniture, but it seems strangely old-fashioned in our age of plastics and composites. I haven't seen wood trim on a TV set for more than a…
Listening
Once correctly level-matched and equalized, the SV Sound PB13-Ultra and Quad ESL-989s generated full-range audio output with great deep-bass extension. When I played orchestral recordings, the sub rendered a clean, fast response for bass drum and timpani. The deepest notes had a tight, rhythmic quality. The PB13-Ultra's Hi Pass filter protected the Quads from the deep bass notes, allowing them to deliver greater dynamic range before their clipping protection circuits could shut them down. For example, the intense synthesizer opening of "Deeper Wells," from Emmylou Harris's…
Once correctly level-matched and equalized, the SV Sound PB13-Ultra and Quad ESL-989s generated full-range audio output with great deep-bass extension. When I played orchestral recordings, the sub rendered a clean, fast response for bass drum and timpani. The deepest notes had a tight, rhythmic quality. The PB13-Ultra's Hi Pass filter protected the Quads from the deep bass notes, allowing them to deliver greater dynamic range before their clipping protection circuits could shut them down. For example, the intense synthesizer opening of "Deeper Wells," from Emmylou Harris's…
The Fremont's rated voltage sensitivity—substantially above the average range of B-weighted speakers reviewed in Stereophile—allowed it to produce very high SPLs with no sign of clipping or compression up to peaks of 112dB when powered by a pair of 1000W Bryston 28B-SST monoblock amplifiers. I also drove the Escalantes with the 25W Mark Levinson ML-2 monoblocks, which produced the sweetest upper midrange and best-defined bass at reduced volume levels that I'd heard in some time. Even so, the Fremont's high voltage sensitivity allowed the ML-2s to crank out clean sound levels and hit…
An unusual tropical rain welcomed the Audio Engineering Society to its 109th gathering, held at the Los Angeles Convention Center September 22–25. Audiophiles may breathe a collective sigh of relief to learn that the Super Audio Compact Disc is getting a big push, not only from corporate parents Sony/Philips but from studio-equipment makers, consumer-electronics companies, and—perhaps most important—music labels.
"More than 160 SACD titles are available now," said Sony Electronics' Nathan Bentall, who gave me the Cook's tour of hardware and software tools for the new format. Arrayed on a…