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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…
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…
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.
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…
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.
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…
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…
"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…
While I definitely consider the DAC-1 to be a fine D/A, it's not going to siphon off a lot of sales from its $1000-and-up competitors. Truthfully, it emphasizes midband warmth and has a few tonal irregularities: it "whitens" high-amplitude pitches, causing the coloration to wander. I wasn't particularly bothered by this, since so much of the information that I value passed through comprehensibly and coherently. In its strengths, it offers competition to all comers; but I must also say that such units as the McCormack, MicroMega, and Arcam DACs all added unwavering focus, more uniform tonal…
Sidebar 1: Hearing Aids
Metaphor 5 loudspeakers, the Valve Amplification Company's PA 80/80 power amp, and the McCormack Micro Line Drive or Audio Alchemy's DLC preamps were used for all evaluations. I compared the DAC-1 to Krell's Reference 64, McCormack's DAC, Micromega's DAC, Arcam's Black Box 50, and Audio Alchemy's DAC in the Box (DITB) and DDE v1.1 D/A converters, as well as to the internal DACs in the Audio Research CD-1, Arcam Alpha One, NAD 504, and MicroMega Stage 2—using the transport sections of those units to make the comparisons.
A McCormack Digital Drive supported…
Sidebar 2: Measurements
The Assemblage DAC-1's maximum output level was 1.96V—just under the CD standard of 2V. Output impedance was a low 77 ohms at any audio frequency, and I wasn't able to measure any DC offset at the analog output jacks. The DAC-1 doesn't invert absolute polarity, and had no trouble locking to 32kHz and 48kHz datastreams.
Fig.1 shows the DAC-1's frequency response and de-emphasis error. The response is down 0.35dB at 20kHz—a slightly greater rolloff than the 0.25dB specified in the data sheet. The de-emphasis error was negligible, and about as good as you can…