With their laudable spirit undiminished by the passage of time, Michael Alazard (left) and Anton Dotson (Buddha) traveled all the way from Las Vegas to continue holding forth in mind-bending splendor. Was this the true funhouse within the…
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One of the most delightful annual surprises of the now departed Las Vegas installment of THE Show was stumbling upon the NFS (Not For Sale) room. Assembled by the distinguished personage known as Buddha, it allowed visitors to become submerged in a combination of post-psychedelic revelry, good sound, lots of free booze, and a total absence of hawking.
Alon Wolf with the Magico M Project speakers. All photos: Jason Victor Serinus
Ever since 2013, when Alon Wolf's California-based Magico loudspeaker company consolidated its original 5000 sq. ft. Berkeley headquarters and 5000 sq. ft. San Jose warehouse into a single 20,000 ft. facility in Hayward, people have been telling me that I had to experience the company's "incredible" listening room. Ironically, it was only after I had relocated from the Bay Area to Port Townsend, WA, that the opportunity arose to take Alon Wolf up on his long-standing invitation to visit.
"It…
JA returned to the MBL N31 in December 2020 (Vol.43 No.12):
In Stereophile's February 2018 issue, I reviewed the MBL Noble Line N31, a baroque-styled CD player and D/A processor from German manufacturer MBL. The N31 is expensive, at $15,400, but, as I said in my review's conclusion, digital audio engineering doesn't get any better and neither does digital sound quality. However, I also wrote that the N31's absence of a volume control might be a problem for those who've sold their preamplifiers, as will be the lack of a network port for those who've banished their noisy NAS drives from the…
That list shows what the MP 3100 HV can do: The built-in transport plays CDs and SACDs. There's a Bluetooth receiver, which works well. You can directly connect USB storage media, from either the front panel connection mentioned above or the one on the back. All the usual digital inputs are included. There's over-the-air radio. And there are no fewer than seven options for data delivered over the network to the MP 3100 HV's streaming client.
USB is by far the most versatile connection; it's capable of PCM up to 32/384 (I corroborated up to 24/354.2, the highest-resolution PCM files I…
Sol & Pat
Sol Gabetta, cello and Patricia Kopatchinskaja, violin
Alpha757 (24/96 FLAC download). 2021. Peter Laenger, prod. and eng.
Performance ****½
Sonics ****½
Sol Gabetta, cello and Patricia Kopatchinskaja, violin
Alpha757 (24/96 FLAC download). 2021. Peter Laenger, prod. and eng.
Performance ****½
Sonics ****½
For fans of these two highly idiosyncratic artists, the only surprise this album may hold is the music. Others may reel as much at the spontaneous improvisatory nature of the playing as the wildness of the repertoire and the uniqueness of its sequencing.
If there's anything that Leclair's short Tambourin in C major and C.P.E. Bach's Presto, Helm 66 VI have in common with two movements from Jörg…
Saturday–Sunday, April 14–15, 10am–5pm: Lyric HiFi (1221 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY) invites audiophiles to listen to an assortment of systems, interact with representatives from brands such as McIntosh, Focal, and Audio Research, and qualify to purchase demo units at 20% off, all part of The Show at Lyric HiFi.
Lyric co-owners Lenny Bellezza’s and Dan Mondoro’s fine-tuned listening rooms will host at least seven different systems. In renovations which cost nearly $500,000 (and that’s in 1982 dollars), architects and acoustical engineers sought to stifle the rumbles of the…
Sidebar 3: Measurements
Because the CH Precision M1.1 is so heavy (165lb), I drove the 45 miles to Michael Fremer's home with my Audio Precision SYS2722 system (see the January 2008 "As We See It"), cables, noninductive power resistors, and analog and digital oscilloscopes, and I set up everything on a table in his garage. Because I knew from experience that the AC outlets in the garage are on a circuit with a 15A breaker, I ran two long extension cables—one for the test gear, one for the amplifier, which has two AC cords—to an outlet in the house that has a 20A circuit.
I…
Sidebar 3: Measurements
I measured the Aqua Formula xHD DAC with my Audio Precision SYS2722 system (see the January 2008 As We See It"), using both the Audio Precision's coaxial and AES/EBU digital outputs, and USB data sourced from my MacBook Pro running on battery power with Pure Music 3.0 playing WAV and AIFF test-tone files. Apple's USB Prober utility identified the Formula xHD as "aqua XHD" from "aqua," its serial number as "0 (none)," and confirmed that its USB port operated in the optimal isochronous asynchronous mode. Apple's AudioMIDI utility revealed that, via USB, the Formula…
Thomas Conrad
Stefano Battaglia: Pelagos
Stefano Battaglia, piano, prepared piano
ECM 2570/71 (2 CDs). 2017. Manfred Eicher, prod.; Stefano Amerio, eng. DDD. TT: 2:11:59
With regard to R2D4 eligibility, my rule has been that albums are like wine: They must be allowed to age before they can achieve distinction. Stefano Battaglia's new solo recording is a necessary exception. It is a single imaginative arc, motivated by the plight of the refugees who have been flooding into Europe from Africa and the Middle East, fleeing war, oppression, and famine. Many…
Imagine my surprise while I was preparing my review of the EMM Labs DV2 D/A processor in this issue, EMM Labs' manager of production and social media, Amadeus Meitner, informed me that what I'd thought would be a one-on-one chat with his father, EMM Labs founder and CEO Ed Meitner, would also involve himself and EMM's managing engineer of the past 15 years, Mariusz Pawlicki. Once all three had come to the phone, however, information flowed more or less smoothly. My first question was what makes the DV2 special?
Ed Meitner: It sounds good. At the end of the day, that's what matters. Rarely…