Inevitably, any Presley biography comes to the point where the singer's decline began to gain momentum. The question then to be addressed is, Why? In Guralnick's view, a complex amalgam of forces…
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"Elvis didn't care if anyone else took them or not. He was getting off on them. He loved to sit there high and wiggle in the chair, just wiggle his legs with a big pitcher of ice water in front of him—he'd drink tons of water 'cause you could see it dehydrating him—just sit there and watch TV. He didn't give a damn whether you did anything. He was going to do what he wanted anyway." (p.240)
In my column for Stereophile's March issue, I criticized a handful of records for combining very good sound with very bad music. A few readers expressed dismay, wondering what gave me the right to call music good or bad, especially since virtually all music is loved by someone (its mother?). But as far as I know, the magazine received a total of zero letters wondering what gave me the right to call sound good or bad. Hmmm.
Anyway, on re-reading that column, I saw that I'd paid gobs of attention to good recordings of bad music and good recordings of good music, but little to a category…
If I were smart and well-funded enough, I'd leave writing alone and design and build a mass-market solid-state integrated amplifier that could sell for only $300 and still sound better than everything out there, except for perhaps the very, very best. It would have tone controls, a channel-reverse switch, a mono button, and a phono section. Each channel (there would be two) would have its own volume knob, these being tied together with a rubber belt allowing just enough slip for balance adjustments. I'd put the whole kit and caboodle in a nice-looking box and market it direct to college…
Good Music for a Friday
Then there's the comparable integrated amp from Rotel, that other maker of affordable electronics with a reputation for sounding expensive. A mere $499 gets you their RA-02, an amp with a little less power than the NAD (listen to me kvetching about power! Haw!) but some very nice extras: provisions for connecting and switching between two pairs of loudspeakers, and, ta-da, a phono section. Granted, the RA-02's phono section can't handle a low-output moving-coil cartridge; its sensitivity, not to mention its 47k ohm input impedance, wants to see either a moving-…
Then there's the comparable integrated amp from Rotel, that other maker of affordable electronics with a reputation for sounding expensive. A mere $499 gets you their RA-02, an amp with a little less power than the NAD (listen to me kvetching about power! Haw!) but some very nice extras: provisions for connecting and switching between two pairs of loudspeakers, and, ta-da, a phono section. Granted, the RA-02's phono section can't handle a low-output moving-coil cartridge; its sensitivity, not to mention its 47k ohm input impedance, wants to see either a moving-…
The Hartleys I wrote about last month may be the loudspeaker drivers that time forgot, but the venerable Lowthers of Sidcup, England, reign supreme as the horseshoe crabs of the loudspeaker world: strange, ungainly things that have scarcely changed since the days when Franz Schmidt and Robert Johnson walked the earth. Literally.
That's not the only reason the Lowther holds my imagination. Arguably more than any other, the classic 7" full-range Lowther is a driver whose potential has yet to be fully exploited. Surely I'm not the only person who's been charmed by their uncanny presence,…
You'll have to sew them back on first
Tommy Hørning's Lowther driver of choice is the DX2, which uses a compact rare-earth magnet instead of the more generously sized alnico or ceramic magnets of the company's other, older versions. Before fitting a DX2 to a Perikles, Hørning treats the parchment-like cone with a damping compound, then performs an even more drastic modification: He removes the high-frequency whizzer cone altogether. And before you go complaining that a Lowther without the whizzer makes no more sense than bacon without the nitrites, let me remind you that some…
Tommy Hørning's Lowther driver of choice is the DX2, which uses a compact rare-earth magnet instead of the more generously sized alnico or ceramic magnets of the company's other, older versions. Before fitting a DX2 to a Perikles, Hørning treats the parchment-like cone with a damping compound, then performs an even more drastic modification: He removes the high-frequency whizzer cone altogether. And before you go complaining that a Lowther without the whizzer makes no more sense than bacon without the nitrites, let me remind you that some…
PS Audio's Power Plant AC-regeneration devices have taken the audio and home-theater worlds by storm. The P300 was voted 2000 Accessory of the Year in Stereophile (December 2000), and the P600 won the Editors' Choice Platinum Award in Stereophile Guide to Home Theater (January 2001). The Power Plant differs from conventional power-line conditioners (PLCs) in that it doesn't just "clean up" AC but actually synthesizes (or regenerates) it. Each Power Plant is essentially a special-purpose amplifier, producing AC to run the equipment plugged into it, the maximum output wattage indicated by the…
Of course, these advantages will exist only if the balun transformer is "well-designed"—and a great deal of work at PS Audio has gone into determining the right size of balun for this application, selection of the appropriate wire (heavy-gauge Litz), making sure the windings around each half of the donut match exactly, and, in general, selecting all components with optimal audio and video quality as criteria. The UO includes protection from power-line spikes and surges, and its ability to clean up AC is said to be bidirectional, so that noise and harmonics generated by equipment plugged into…
Since the P300 doesn't have enough output to run most amplifiers comfortably, my normal practice is to use it only for the preamp and source components, letting the amplifiers make do with AC from the wall socket. This is the way I initially set up the 47 Laboratory Gaincard (also reviewed in this issue) and the Quicksilver Horn Mono amplifiers (review to come). Running the amplifiers so that they got their power from a UO (I used the 20-amp IEC version) resulted in improvements similar to what I had found when used at the front end (improved clarity, better dynamics), but the effects were…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: Power-line conditioner.
Dimensions: 5" W by 3 1/8" H by 7½" D. Weights: Standard model, 3 lbs; High Current model, 4 lbs.
Prices: Standard, $299; High Current (15-amp IEC or 20-amp IEC connector), $399. Warranty: 3 years parts & labor (transferable). Approximate number of dealers: 85.
Manufacturer: PS Audio, 3050 Broadway, Boulder, CO 80304. Tel: (877) 772-8340, (720) 406-8946. Fax: (720) 406-8946. Web: www.psaudio.com.