You know the trouble with show reports? You read them after the show. So let me give you a brief report on Home Entertainment 2001 before the Show.For starters, HE2001 is shaping up as a big event. There will be over 200 exhibits and listening rooms. Dozens of new products will premiere. New technologies will be demonstrated to the public. More than ever, the Show will make news. In fact, we expect that Home Entertainment 2001 will be featured on network TV.
The Show's name may have changed, but high-quality audio continues to play a starring role. You'll find plenty of tube…
When I played complex and difficult music, two things struck me. First, I would have expected a turntable fitted with such an inexpensive cartridge (the Ortofon OM 5E lists for $55) to produce some smearing with torture-test records, or at least a hint of mistracking distortion. But there was no trace of either with the Debut III, even in comparison with my Clearaudio Virtuoso Wood cartridge, one of the best-tracking cartridges I've ever heard. Second, I expected an entry-level turntable with a starter cartridge to have some minor irregularities of tonal balance. After several months of…
Sam Tellig wrote about the Integré Passion in February 2003 (Vol.26 No.2): "You have to come over and hear this."
This was the fall of 1988. My friend David Wolf had just opened Audio Images, a high-end hi-fi salon in New Canaan, Connecticut (footnote 1). David was lining up brands—always dicey for a new dealer.
"What is it, David? Did you land Mark Levinson? Krell?"
"I got YBA."
There was such hope in his voice.
"It's a line of French electronics and the stuff sounds fabulous."
In many ways, YBA seemed just right for the upscale…
In one of their many rooms, the Audio Alternative of Fort Collins showcased a luscious system that paired an AMG Viella 12 turntable and 9W2 tonearm ($21,500 total) and a Linn LP12 table with Lingo Mk.III power supply ($6000), both outfitted with Lyra Kleos MC cartridges ($2995 each), with D'Agostino Master Audio Systems' integrated amplifier ($43,000), Audio Research Corporation's Reference 2SE phono preamp ($13,000), and Wilson Duette Series 2 loudspeakers with dedicated stands ($22,500/pair). With AudioQuest cabling and Harmonic Resolution Systems stands and bases completing the chain,…
A large, thick, unpadded rug covers most of the hardwood floor in the listening space, and the wall behind my chair is covered in shelves filled with books and discs of various types. I've installed acoustic panels and additional rugs in the adjoining areas to further tame the acoustic.
While the listening space, so treated—an ongoing project!—is far from dead, music played there has, for me, a pleasingly spacious quality, without obvious reverb or flutter echo. Bass support is good, if less dramatic than in my prior, fully enclosed 25' by 15.5' by 8' room with its lath-and-plaster walls…
At the beginning of this century, when the vinyl resurgence was at best nascent and few believed it would be as strong as it is today, Boulder Amplifiers manufactured a phono preamplifier that cost $29,000. I reviewed that model, the 2008 (now discontinued), in the July 2002 issue. With a power supply that would probably be more than adequate for a high-wattage power amp, it was built to a standard approached by few other makers of phono preamps.
More than a decade later, today's audio market is well populated with luxury phono preamps costing $30,000 and up. That this fact drives the…
The Momentum M400 MxV Mono amplifier ($79,500/pair; footnote 1) is the latest iteration of Dan D'Agostino Master Audio Systems' debut amplifier of 2011, the Momentum Mono amplifier. Weighing 95lb, it is smaller and lighter than its entry-level sibling, the more powerful, 125lb Progression M550 Mono amplifier ($47,500/pair), and is veritably dwarfed by some other monoblocks, including the flagship D'Agostino Relentless Epic 1600 (570lb) and the Karan Acoustics POWERa mono (231lb), which I reviewed in May 2023. But if the M400 MxV's rock-solid look and feel and its exquisite aesthetics—a sleek…
I began by checking the Europa II's low-frequency in-room response. I used the 20-200Hz sweep signal generated by the room-tuning setup program that comes with Velodyne's DD-18 subwoofer, and verified it with the 1/3-octave warble tones at -20dB on Stereophile's Test CD 3 (STPH006-2). I set my RadioShack sound-level meter to its C weighting, in slow ballistics mode, and took and averaged several readings in a window 4' wide by 3' high, and centered on my listening position and ear height to minimize the effect of room modes. When I set the volume so that the 1kHz output registered 0dB on the…
The same delicacy and sweetness were evident in the Brystons' reproduction of Steve Nelson's soft, translucent vibraphone on "The Mooche," from Rendezvous: Jerome Harris Quintet Plays Jazz (CD, Stereophile STPH013-2). The image of the softly playing vibes reached from the far left to the center of the soundstage in my room, and could be clearly discerned, even though Billy Drummond's drums were much louder. I could easily distinguish timbral shadings among Drummond's vintage cymbals, just as John Atkinson stated in his liner note for Editor's Choice (CD, Stereophile STPH016-2), on which…
I also wondered how well the Audioengines could soundstage. They're not exactly matched, are they? One cabinet has a stereo amplifier in it, the other doesn't. One cabinet is internally hardwired, the other via a cable from the first speaker. That said, they reproduced without a hitch the soundstage width and depth, the image specificity, and the hall sound of Antal Dorati and the London Symphony's recording of Stravinsky's The Firebird (CD, Mercury Living Presence SR 90226).
Now for the fun part
I took the wife and kids on our first long-distance car vacation, to visit family and…
