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When I browse through early issues of this magazine, I envy J. Gordon Holt. When he founded Stereophile in 1962, there were aspects of society that stood as solid as the Rockies overlooking his current Colorado home. Back then a magazine was a thing forever; the main means of serious communication would always be the written word; records would always be LPs...recorded in stereo; the US had a large, prosperous consumer electronics industry; computers were huge mainframes made in the USA by IBM (of course), and required air-conditioned rooms and armies of white-coated attendants; everyone…
Last October, in Vol.11 No.10, Stereophile's Founder and Chief Tester J. Gordon Holt stated, in his acerbic editorial "The Acoustical Standard," that, in his opinion, only recordings for which there is an original acoustic reference—ie, typically those of classical music—should be used to evaluate hi-fi components. And that in the absence of a consensus over such a policy, high-end component manufacturers were losing their way over what does and does not represent good sound quality.
Many readers wrote to us agreeing with Gordon's thesis, although its uncompromising nature did surprise…
MILES DAVIS: The Complete On the Corner Sessions
Miles Davis, trumpet, electric trumpet, electric organ, electric piano, synthesizer; Michael Henderson, (electric bass); Badal Roy (tablas); Dave Leibman, Carlos Garnett, Bennie Maupin, John Stubblefield, Sonny Fortune, Sam Morrison (reeds, flute); Wally Chambers (harmonica); Cornell Dupree, John McLaughlin, Dave Creamer, Reggie Lucas, Pete Cosey, Dominique Gaumont (guitar); Al Foster, Bernard Purdie, Jack DeJohnette, Billy Hart, Pete Cosey (drums); Mtume, Don Alias, Billy Hart (congas, percussion); Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, Harold…
Miles Davis, trumpet, electric trumpet, electric organ, electric piano, synthesizer; Michael Henderson, (electric bass); Badal Roy (tablas); Dave Leibman, Carlos Garnett, Bennie Maupin, John Stubblefield, Sonny Fortune, Sam Morrison (reeds, flute); Wally Chambers (harmonica); Cornell Dupree, John McLaughlin, Dave Creamer, Reggie Lucas, Pete Cosey, Dominique Gaumont (guitar); Al Foster, Bernard Purdie, Jack DeJohnette, Billy Hart, Pete Cosey (drums); Mtume, Don Alias, Billy Hart (congas, percussion); Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, Harold…
It was the strangest feeling: to be part of something yet without any understanding of how what I was doing fit into the whole. Back in the early 1980s, I had graduated from playing miscellaneous instruments in an early-music ensemble to devoting myself to the recorder (the end-blown fipple flute, not the audio archiving machine). My teacher, Nancy Winkelmann, had introduced me to various ensembles, and one Saturday afternoon, an ad hoc group of us was working with a composer of so-called "aleatoric" music; literally, music by chance.
"It is very important in this piece," we were told, "…
Richard Vandersteen was in good form at the 20th-anniversary seminar held by retailer Advanced Audio on November 11, 2006. When asked about his priorities in loudspeaker design, he sat erect in the seat next to me and thundered, "I will not [slams table with open hand] spend one red cent on cosmetics that I could have put into improving the sound of a loudspeaker!"
On one hand, I wasn't shocked. Vandersteen has long been known for his iconoclastic opinions on audio design —views that have led him to wrap his speakers in plain-looking "socks" rather than in exotic veneers. "I…
The percussion and brass fortissimo in Variation VII almost propelled me physically deeper into the room. If you want to hear orchestral power, the Quatro Wood ought to rocket onto your list. At the same time, the strings had delicacy, sheen, and gloss that were convincing and extended.
That high-frequency smoothness and extension were put to the test with the Hot Club of San Francisco's Yerba Buena Bounce (CD, Reference RR-109CD). On track 1, "Mystery Pacific," violinist Evan Price and solo guitarist Paul Mehling leapt into the stratosphere with flurries of notes over the chugging…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: Four-way, sealed-box loudspeaker with powered subwoofer. Drive-units: 1" dual-chamber, coated aluminum-alloy dome tweeter; 4.5" woven-cone midrange; 6.5" woven-fiber cone woofer; two 8" carbon-loaded cellulose-cone subwoofers. . Crossover frequencies: 100Hz, 900Hz, 5kHz, first-order slopes. Subwoofer amplifier: built-in, 250W, with multiband room-response compensation. Frequency response: 24Hz –30kHz, ±2dB. Impedance: 6 ohms ( ±3 ohms). Sensitivity: 87dB/W/m.
Dimensions: 43" (1100mm) H by 10" (255mm) W by 19" (485mm) D. Weight: 122 lbs (55.5kg…
Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment
Digital Sources: Ayre C-5xe & Muse Polyhymnia universal players; McIntosh MS750 music server.
Preamplifiers: Ayre K-1xe, Krell Evolution 202.
Power Amplifiers: Ayre MX-R, Krell Evolution 600, Portal Paladin (all monoblocks); Boulder 860.
Loudspeakers: Wilson Audio Specialties WATT/Puppy 8.
Cables: Interconnect: Shunyata Research Aries & Antar. Speaker: Shunyata Research Lyra.
Accessories: Ayre L-5xe line filter, Furutech eTP-609 distribution box,
APC APCS15 AC line conditioner; Furutech RDP panels, RealTraps Mini & Mondo Traps.—…
Sidebar 3: Measurements
Like the plain-Jane fabric Quatro, the Quatro Wood's voltage sensitivity was well below average, at an estimated 83.5dB/2.83V/m. Its impedance, however, remains above 8 ohms at almost all frequencies, and the electrical phase angle is mild (fig.1), meaning that the speaker will be very easy to drive. The peak of 24 ohms at 60Hz suggests that this is the tuning frequency of the front-facing woofer, although, as with the Quatro, the use of an in-line high-pass filter in the amplifier feed will roll off the output above this frequency.
Fig.1…
It is the audio writer's nightmare that the combination of the large number of exhibitors at a Consumer Electronics Show and the very limited amount of time the Show's doors are open will lead him to miss the event's biggest story. I came close to living that nightmare last January, at the 2007 CES, when I realized that I had missed an entire floor of Las Vegas's Venetian Hotel. And it was, of course, the floor where, among other high-profile high-end companies, Sumiko was debuting the Cremona Elipsa from Italian speaker manufacturer Sonus Faber.
I rushed up to the Venetian's…