My relatively small room in Santa Fe measures around 19' by 16.5', with a 9' 3" ceiling broken up by 9" vigas—raw pine logs. The room is carpeted, and there are patches of Sonex foam on the ceiling to damp primary reflections of the sound. The other wall has RPG Abffusors behind the listening seat to absorb and diffuse what would otherwise be early rear-wall reflections of the sound that might blur the stereo imaging precision. Tube Traps are used in the room corners to even out the room's bass resonances, the result being a relatively uniform reverberation…
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Sidebar 3: Measurements
The SS-M9 will go quite loud with only a few amplifier watts; its B-weighted sensitivity weighed in at a calculated 89dB/2.83V/m, the same as specified. However, its impedance (fig.1) remains between 4 ohms and 6 ohms through almost all the bass and midrange, and drops to 3 ohms and below above the audioband, meaning that the matching amplifier should not be fazed by low impedances. The small rise in the magnitude trace just below 200Hz is due to the crossover between the dual woofers and the midrange unit; the slight saddle at 24Hz is a clue to the tuning of the…
Obviously, no one wants to listen to exaggerated bass, italicized highs, or colored mids. But if you (as I have in the past few months) plug in several high-quality integrated amplifiers, each designed to a different price point, into the same basic signal chain, you'll experience a wide disparity of sound signatures.
But isn't sonic neutrality supposed to represent the ultimate measure of the designer's art? Though high-end designers may, by and large, have abandoned tone controls, the manner in which each of us perceives tonal quality cuts to the heart of the issue of individual…
Randall Smith's sonic triumph is that he has designed an integrated amplifier that addresses head on the notion of what truly constitutes the live music experience and what represents quality music reproduction. That's because, while the Mesa Tigris certainly isn't colored, it ain't exactly neutral either. The Tigris has a definite point of view—several, in fact. It's a veritable tone machine that allows listeners the flexibility to have it their way—that is, to determine for themselves what constitutes the ideal sonic perspective and tonal balance.
It offers listeners an aural parfait…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: Class-A push-pull dual-monoblock vacuum-tube integrated amplifier with auto-bias. Tube complement per side: two 12AX7, two 6V6, four EL84. Inputs: four line-level. Outputs: one fixed, one variable buffered with dedicated attenuator. Adjustable negative feedback from Zero Feedback to Stage III (5dB–8dB–12dB in full pentode, 4dB–7dB–10dB in two-thirds pentode, 3dB–5dB–8dB in two-thirds triode). Eight-pole industrial switch converts amplifier into dedicated headphone amplifier using entire array of output power tubes. Patented Tandem State Imaging;r…
Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment
Analog source: Rega Planar 3 turntable and RB300 tonearm, Grado Reference Master cartridge, EAR 834P tube phono preamp.
Digital source: CAL CL-15 CD player, CAL Delta transport, CAL Alpha 24/96 tube D/A converter.
Loudspeakers: Celestion A3, Joseph RM22si.
Cables: Synergistic Research and JPS Labs interconnects, speaker cables, power cords.
Accessories: Argent RoomLenses, EchoBusters room treatments, PolyCrystal brass speaker spikes, Shakti Stones, Upscale Audio NOS 6V6 and EL84 power tubes.—Chip Stern
Sidebar 3: Measurements
A complete set of measurements of the Mesa Tigris was made in the two-thirds pentode, Stage I feedback configuration. Additional selected measurements were made with other settings, but, unless noted otherwise, these results refer to operation in two-thirds pentode/Stage I.
The Mesa's voltage gain at maximum level measured 40.3dB. For the measurements I set the level control somewhat lower, at a position that produced 34dB gain (approximately 2:00 o'clock with Stage I feedback/two-thirds pentode). The amplifier's gain depends heavily, however, on its…
I was once in a sushi bar in Osaka; sitting next to me was a live abalone, stoically awaiting its fate. It stuck its siphon out of its shell, the waiter tapped the tip with a spoon, the siphon withdrew. Again the siphon appeared, again the waiter tapped it with a spoon, again it withdrew.
I was reminded of that abalone's blind persistence at Hi-Fi '94, Stereophile's recent High-End Hi-Fi Show in Miami, when the subject of blind listening tests once again raised its head in one of the "Ask the Editors" sessions (see Barry Willis's report on p.74).
Like Chuck Butler in this issue's…
The AES Workshop on Data Compression, January 1992 (Vol.15 No.1)
The 91st Convention of the Audio Engineering Society held in New York on October 4–8 1991 had an unusual theme: "Audio Fact and Fantasy: Reckoning with the Realities." Although anti-audiophile expression occurs at every AES function, this was the first time an entire convention appeared to be devoted to it. The event seemed like a kind of showdown where the audio engineering establishment would once and for all discredit those who use their ears to judge reproduced audio quality.
However, I was encouraged by the tenor…
Conventional wisdom has it that the perfect sculpture is present, but hidden within the raw material. And the same conventional wisdom similarly applies to magazine editing: all it needs is careful chipping away at the extraneous material in the raw text files we receive from our authors—sometimes the barest degree of reshaping, repointing, and restructuring—and you have a finished product that both maximally communicates the writer's message and makes the anonymous artisan-editor proud of a job well done.
Perhaps it's because of the similarity between editing text and editing music that…