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BRAHMS: Clarinet Quintet in b, Op.115
WEBER: Clarinet Quintet in B-Flat, Op.34
Eddie Daniels, clarinet; The Composers String Quartet
Reference Recordings RR-40 (LP), RR-40CD (CD). Keith O. Johnson, eng.; J. Tamblyn Henderson, Jr., prod. AAA/DDD. TT: 62:31

Equally adroit performing jazz or classical music, heralded as a…

"What's in here, anyway?"

"It's an audio amplifier."

"You're kidding! I didn't know they made them that heavy."

"Well, this model is only second from the bottom in a line of four. The top model weighs 185 lbs."

"I sure hope you're not getting one of those, too!"

Mr. Fed-Ex need not have worried. With a shipping weight approaching 100 lbs, the KSA-100S is about as heavy an amplifier as I can manage. Given the rave the KSA-300S…

The CAT SL-1 Signature preamp was Stereophile's 1993 "Product of the Year," and I had no reason to believe that combining it with the KSA-100S would be in any way problematic, but I wanted to check out how the…

Digital Sources: Sony XA-9000ES SACD/CD player, Bel Canto PL-1A universal player.
Preamplifier: Bel Canto Pre6.
Power Amplifiers: Bel Canto e.One REF1000 monoblock, Bel Canto e.One S300, Simaudio Moon Evolution W-8.
Loudspeakers: B&W 802D, B&W 804S, Pioneer S-1EX, JL Audio Fathom f113 subwoofer.
Cables: Digital: Stereovox HDVX. Interconnect: Crystal Cable Cinemax multichannel, AudioQuest Cheetah/DBS balanced. Speaker: AudioQuest Mont Blanc/DBS biwire. AC: JPS Aluminata.
Accessories: APC S-15, Environmental Potentials EP-2450 power…

Before performing any measurements, I preconditioned the Classé CA-3200 by running it for 60 minutes at one-third power with all three channels driven into 8 ohms. At the end of that time, the THD+noise had dropped from 0.0024% to 0.00195%, but the top panel and the heatsinks were way too hot to touch, the curved front panel was around 50°C, and a noticeable draft of hot air rose from the top-panel vents over the center channel's internal heatsink. If this amplifier is to be used in a custom installation, it should be well ventilated.

The voltage gain into…

So, like every other reviewer, I cannot claim to have surveyed all of the vast assortment of speakers in a given price category. I rely on word-of-mouth to select speakers that really merit reviewing on a high-end basis. This may not be fair, but it reduces an otherwise unmanageable list of manufacturers to about 40—even allowing for the…

Thiel Audio, headed up by Jim Thiel (President and chief designer) and Kathy Gornik (Marketing Director), sets itself apart from other speaker manufacturers not only by making what I feel to be almost uniformly excellent products, but also by serving as a kind of hallmark for the good dealer: Although not all good dealers sell Thiel, just about every Thiel dealer is a good one. This comes about because, in spite of just about uniformly positive reviews and excellent customer relations, Thiel (primarily in the person…

I listen in an unusual room, 20' by 35' with an 11' ceiling—almost 8000 cubic feet. Although heavily carpeted and furnitured, the room is not at all dead—not nearly dead enough for J. Gordon Holt, who is, for my tastes, too accustomed to his Tube Traps. Amplification for this review was provided by Mark Levinson, in the form of the Nos.26 and 20. Source material was analog LP (no digital-to-analogs, thank you) played on a Well-Tempered Turntable (the best value ever in a $1000–$2000 'table-plus-tonearm, in my opinion) with a variety of cartridges,…

Fig.1 shows the plot of impedance with frequency for the Thiel loudspeakers. It agrees with the appropriate specified impedance in the "Specifications" sidebar, but it is noteworthy how little change there is. Obvious features can be distinguished, such as the port tuning for the CS2, but I would conjecture that Jim Thiel has used some form of conjugate load system in his crossover design to give such flat curves with frequency. (This is where elements are added to the crossover to compensate for phase and impedance changes to result in a simple resistive load.) I…