One of the things I think associated with good quality is to use a balanced, rather than a…
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My best wire, MC Silver, has three different layers of Teflon film around the wire and runs flat up to 22GHz! And it's just a multi-strand wire with a single line in the center in a braiding. People working with this wire have said this is the very best they have ever auditioned. This is a new standard in audio. It is very expensive to make but on the other hand I am quite sure that when you get this wire, in 10 years you will not have a better wire. It will keep its quality over all that time.
There are also a lot of mechanical reasons why products change—the bending of metals, for example. Producing wires for conductors is a very deteriorating process, particularly when you chemically coat copper with silver. In the process, you bend the cable, stretch it, bend it, stretch it again—30 or 40 times—so the wire is worn out even before it's silver-coated. That's one of the reasons why silver-coated copper sounds harsh. There's also the chemical deterioration under the silver which starts to break down the structure of the copper before even the slightest coating of silver is done.…
van den Hul: My experience with the European press has been that there was a certain skepticism about the carbon-fiber cables because it's a new material. After reviewers listened to the product, however, they were extremely happy with the quality. There is more openness there toward products using a different approach, a different idea.
You will find very few journalists declaring that there is no difference. We're all human beings—we all have two ears, two eyes, one nose, one mouth, and two arms. But are we all the same? No. We are all blessed with creativity, but everyone uses his…
Question: What is it that almost every audiophile takes for granted, yet has more effect on the sound of his system than does any single component in that system? Answer: His listening room.
It is probably safe to say that 95% of the systems in audiophile homes are being degraded by a bad listening environment. Sound waves reflect from walls, floors, and ceilings, reaching our ears milliseconds after the direct sounds from the speakers and smearing those sounds. Echoes reverberate back and forth between parallel reflective surfaces, adding more smear and coloring the sound with spurious…
(This is the most common recommendation; other authorities recommend having the 100% at the speaker end and the 50% at the listening end. I prefer the room to be completely deadened, with the addition of an electronic reverb device like the Benchmark ARU to add acoustical space to the listening area. Play the absorption game by ear. An excess of deadening is generally better than a deficiency, but any error is easily reversible if you don't glue things in place.)
What about size? Well, nonparallel room boundaries will yield many different dimensions, but the average dimensions—that is,…
Many audiophiles will look back on the summer of 1982 as the year the creeping cruds invaded their hallowed halls of hi-fi. In the Conrad Hilton hotel, where most of the high-end contingent gathered at the June 1982 Consumer Electronics Show, one exhibitor was featuring a videodisc presentation with wide-range audio and insisting that this was the way of the future. And at least three others had managed to smuggle in digital tape recorders (all Sony PCM-F1s), and were giving many CES visitors their first taste of real, unadulterated, digital reproduction.
This was most unsettling to those…
The following was submitted as a letter to J. Gordon Holt, in response to his Editorial "Digital Revenge," in issue #53 (August 1982, Vol.5 No.6). We are publishing it as a guest editorial, because the writer is one of the few audio people whose judgement we respect who disagrees with us about digital's merits. The feeling, it would seem, is mutual.—Ed.
Dear Gordon:
Although we have had a few chats over the past years I can't really say I know you. Nevertheless I identify with you in that we are both pioneers in our respective fields, and have put up longer than most with the…
BOB MARLEY: Exodus: 30th Anniversary Edition
Island 314 586 408-2 (CD). 2007. Bob Marley & the Wailers, prods.; Karl Pitterson, eng.; Guy Bidmead, Terry Barham, asst. engs.; Chris Blackwell, Aston Barrett, Karl Pitterson, mix. AAD? TT: 37:18
Performance *****
Sonics *****
Island 314 586 408-2 (CD). 2007. Bob Marley & the Wailers, prods.; Karl Pitterson, eng.; Guy Bidmead, Terry Barham, asst. engs.; Chris Blackwell, Aston Barrett, Karl Pitterson, mix. AAD? TT: 37:18
Performance *****
Sonics *****
What kind of record would you make if someone had just tried to assassinate you? How would that kind of event be reflected in the music? Would the prevailing emotions of the music be bitterness? Fear? A seething desire for revenge?
Those were the questions surrounding Bob Marley in London from…
It was 45 years ago this month that the first issue of Stereophile, just 20 pages in length, went in the mail. It had been founded by one J. Gordon Holt. Gordon had been technical editor of High Fidelity magazine in the 1950s, and was tired of being asked to pander to the demands of advertisers. "I watched, first with incredulity and then with growing disgust, how the purchase of a year's advertising contract could virtually insure a manufacturer against publication of an unfavorable report," he said in a 1974 article looking back at those dark times. And if a company didn't buy advertising,…
Readers often ask how I choose components for review. My method is simple: Ninety percent of what I review is gear that has impressed me at one of our Home Entertainment Shows, or new designs from manufacturers whose products I've liked in the past. The remainder are assigned by John Atkinson.
This time I tried something different. I contacted three audio retailers whom I trust for their hearing acuity, passion for music, and honesty, and asked each this question: "Which affordable speaker have you heard lately that impressed you?" (My working definition of affordable…