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Because of the Legacy Whisper's bulk and mass, I decided to measure the speakers in situ in Paul Bolin's Minnesota listening room rather than have them shipped to my Brooklyn home. It wasn't possible, therefore, to do as complete a set of measurements as I usually perform.

The Whisper is specified as having a very high voltage sensitivity of 95dB/2.83V/m. It appeared to be just over 2dB more sensitive than the 90dB-sensitive Wilson MAXX 2, which PB was also auditioning during my visit (both figures B-weighted). However, the Legacy's impedance plot (fig.1)…

Trish might chalk it up to my own advancing age having compressed the passage of time, but I don't think so. I know that…

Unplug the dm58s, plug in the dm88s
The system I surrounded the Halcro dm58s and dm88 References with consisted of my VPI HR-X turntable with Lyra Titan cartridge, the EMM SACD stack for digital, Wilson Audio Specialties Sophia loudspeakers, and Halcro's own dm10 full-function preamplifier or Sutherland's PhD phono stage with VTL's TL-7.5 line stage. The cabling varied a bit, but most of the time was Shunyata…

Description: Solid-state monoblock power amplifier with active power-factor correction. Inputs: 1 pair balanced (XLR) Voltage Mode; 3 pairs unbalanced (RCA): Voltage Mode, Current Mode, Minimal Path. Outputs: 2 pairs speaker binding posts. Output power: >270W into 8 ohms, >500W into 4 ohms. Distortion: <–126dB (<500 parts/billion) up to 20kHz at full power output, all harmonic-distortion orders. THD: <–140dB (<100ppb) at 1kHz. Intermodulation products: all <–126dB relative to power output for sum of 19+20kHz tones, each delivering 100W into…

Analog Source: VPI HR-X turntable-tonearm, Lyra Titan cartridge.
Digital Sources: EMM CDSD/DCC2 SACD system, Simaudio Andromeda CD player.
Preamplification: Sutherland PhD phono stage; Placette Active, Sutherland Director, VTL TL-7.5 line stages; Halcro dm10 preamplifier.
Power Amplifiers: Halcro dm58, Mark Levinson No.20.6, Simaudio Moon Rock, VTL Ichiban monoblocks, VTL S-400.
Loudspeakers: Thiel CS6, Wilson Audio Sophia.
Cables: Interconnect & Speaker: Nirvana SX-Ltd., Nordost Valhalla, Shunyata Research. AC: Shunyata Research.
…

I preconditioned one of the Halcro dm88 monoblocks (serial no. 00136) by running it for 60 minutes at one-third the specified power into 8 ohms. With the amplifier cold, the measured THD+noise was just 0.00093%! The figure was the same at the end of the hour; while the left-hand side panel was gently warm, the right-hand panel was still cool. It wasn't possible to measure the dm88's Current Mode input; I performed complete sets of measurements via the dm88's balanced and unbalanced Voltage Mode inputs, as well as via its unbalanced Minimal Path jack.

The…

David A. Wilson, of Wilson Audio Specialties, must have an even better ear than I have given him credit for, or at least he has an enviable ear for language. On p.214 of Ken Kessler and Steve Harris' Sound Bites: 50 Years of Hi-Fi News, Wilson coins one of the most striking onomatopoeias that I have read in a dog's age: "Foink, foink. " In that terse spondee,…

The Magneglide system consists of an ABEC-7 grade horizontal bearing assembly—the same as SME uses for the main bearing of its V arm—of very low mass. The bearing's actual mass is 10gm, but since a large percentage of this mass, including the ball-bearing…

Description: Magnetically stabilized, fluid-damped unipivot tonearm. Mounting profiles: standard Graham Custom Mount and SME mount.
Price: $4275. Approximate number of dealers: Not disclosed.
Manufacturer: Graham Engineering, 25M Olympia Avenue, Woburn, MA 01801. Tel: (781)-932-8777 (Tuesday through Thursday only). Fax: (781) 932-8782. Web: www.graham-engineering.com.