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Recommended Components Addendum Power Accessories, Stands, Racks, etc

Power-Line Accessories

Acrolink 6N-NCT 30A Isolation Transformer: $27,500
The expensive dual-transformer 6N-NCT effectively isolates components from the outside world and can also isolate one component from another, allowing users to plug in both analog and digital devices. Adding the 6N-NCT to his suburban system, MF heard a "somewhat deeper, richer, and more solid" sound. A more profound difference might be heard in an urban apartment complex. (Vol.29 No.6)

APC AV S15: $1499 w/battery backup
The S15 is a comprehensive power source, conditioner, and controller that…

A Matter of Measurements

Beginning with this issue, Stereophile readers will notice that more of the subjective equipment reviews are augmented with technical reports describing certain aspects of the component's measured performance. Although test data have lately been increasingly included in reviews, Stereophile has recently made a major commitment to providing readers with relevant measurements of products under review. We have just finished building an audio test laboratory featuring the Audio Precision System One, a sophisticated, computer-based audio test measurement system.

"Measurements?", I can hear…

Music in the Round #35

I've been enthusiastically tracking the development of Bel Canto's class-D amplifiers, from their original TriPath-based models to their more recent designs based on Bang & Olufsen's ICEpower modules. With each step, Bel Canto has improved their amps' sound quality and reliability.

Still, two characteristics remained that might be problematic for some listeners. First, the dullness of the upper midrange and lower treble, which I find common in many switching amps, was so reduced in the original Ref1000 monoblock power amp that it was a problem with only a few recordings and/…

Music in the Round #35 Page 2

The midrange and, particularly, voices were convincingly natural, and whatever residuum of grayness or dullness I'd heard in the earlier amps was gone. Because the midrange was where I could most easily hear the differences and divine my preferences among the original Refs and the best conventional, nonswitching, analog amps, the Mk.II iteration makes the Ref1000 now competitive in every parameter. The extreme treble, too, sounded cleaner, perhaps because of its better balance with the now-improved midrange. Power and dynamics were more than sufficient for any of the challenges I could set…

Music in the Round #35 Page 3

The second new feature is one that permits the user to modify the target curves provided by Audyssey. This is important, not so much because it lets you construct any weird frequency-response curve that suits your fancy while still correcting for the major room modes, but because some implementations of MultEQ have limited options. For example, the Integra DTC-9.8 and some other preamplifier-processors offer only three curves with different degrees of high-frequency rolloff, but don't offer a flat response curve (footnote 2). With MultEQ Pro3.0, you can select a target curve for one or more…

Music in the Round #35 Contacts

Sidebar 1: Contacts

Audyssey Laboratories, Inc., 350 S. Figueroa St., Suite 233, Los Angeles, CA 90071. Tel: (213) 625-4300. Fax: (213) 625-4383. Web: www.audyssey.com.
Bel Canto Design, 221 N. First Street, Minneapolis, MN 55401. Tel: (612) 317-4550. Fax: (612) 359-9358. Web: www.belcantodesign.com.
Pioneer Electronics USA, P.O. Box 1540, Long Beach, CA 90810. Tel: (800) 746-6337. Web: www.pioneerelectronics.com.

Music in the Round #35 Recordings In The Round

Sidebar 2 Recordings In The Round

All vocal, all baroque, all-around wonderful

J.S. BACH: Christmas Oratorio, BWV 248
Bernhard Landauer, countertenor; Charles Daniels, tenor; Klaus Mertens, bass; Swiss Radio Chorus, I Barocchisti; Diego Fasolis, conductor
Arts Music 47744-8 (2 SACD/CDs)
HANDEL: Ode for St. Cecilia's Day, Organ Concerto 13, Coronation Anthem 1
Julia Gooding, soprano; Jeremy Ovenden,†tenor; Duilio Galfetti, violin; Francesco Cera, organ; Swiss Radio Chorus, I Barocchisti; Diego Fasolis, conductor
Arts Music 47738-8 (SACD/CD)

A double…

Recordings of February 1991: <I>Surf's Up</I>, etc.

THE BEACH BOYS: Sunflower
Caribou/Brother/Epic ZK 46950. Stephen W. Desper, eng. TT: 36:48
THE BEACH BOYS: Surf's Up
Caribou/Brother/Epic ZK 46951. Stephen W. Desper, eng. TT: 33:36
THE BEACH BOYS: Holland
Caribou/Brother/Epic ZK 46952. Stephen Moffitt, Rob Fraboni, engs. TT: 48:13
All three: CD only. The Beach Boys, prods. Digitally remastered by Joe Gastwirt. AAD.

Late August, 1965, Westminster Lake, New York—those of you who grew up Presbyterian in New York in the '60s might recognize the name of the Northern Synod Church Camp where I'd just finished my yearly…

Recordings of February 1991: <I>Surf's Up</I>, etc. Page 2

It's hardly surprising that the first batch of Baby Boomers was able to sense the immense wave of denial on which surfed their immediate predecessors, the Beach Boys, and which was to nearly drown this crippled family when the tensions of the lie became too much to bear. Brian, Dennis, and Carl Wilson, eternally trying to please their abusive, unpleasable father Murry Wilson, used their relentlessly upbeat, really-nothing's-wrong vision of light not to illuminate their own dark side, but to blind themselves to its existence. And this was their tragedy: to be so blessed with so much musical…

Parts Connection Assemblage DAC-1 D/A converter kit

"Dinner's fried chicken, honey."

"And I hay-ulped!"

Gap-toothed and demented-looking, the Shake'n'Bake urchin comes to mind every time I regard the Assemblage DAC-1—which I built. Like that insanely happy child-actor, my true participation was rather limited: the DAC-1 comes with a fully assembled circuit board, requiring only that the AC filter, three LEDs, three RCA jacks, and the feet be attached. Oh yeah, you also have to screw the top down and plug it in. Which brings us to a couple of key questions: Why a kit? and Why so basic a kit?

Kits may seem exotic to…