JASON ISBELL: Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit
Lightning Rod/Thirty Tigers LRR-99682 (CD). 2009. Jason Isbell, prod.; Matt Pence, prod., eng. AAD? TT: 52:09
Performance ****½
Sonics ****
It always starts with some chick. She saves him. Or she breaks 'im in two. And suddenly a song that will define some singer-songwriter's career jumps out of his head, trickles down his arm, out of his fingers, onto paper, and across the strings.
For Jason Isbell, that woman "smelled like cigarettes and wine / and she kept me happy all the time." And in a quatrain where Isbell separates…
A couple months back, a question from a dealer set me back in my chair: "Are you guys really going to put out Stereophile on a monthly basis?" I was surprised—when he put the question, we were just starting production work on the issue you hold in your hands, the twelfth to hit the stands since we started publishing monthly. Beginning with Vol.10 No.5 in August 1987, a Stereophile has gone in the mail every month, pretty much on time despite having gone through the trauma of changing printers last December on one issue's notice.
I'd just like to take this opportunity to say thanks to…
Gordon makes a good case. Recently, however, he and I paid a visit to San Francisco, where VMPS's Brian Cheney had asked us to play some of our recordings to the local Audio Engineering Society chapter. Before the meeting, we spent an interesting afternoon listening to two systems: Brian's Super Tower IIa/R SE speakers in his completely live-end/dead-end treated listening room, where I felt they sounded much better, driven by Meitner electronics, than they did in JGH's listening room (footnote 3) (though Brian's new Yamaha grand piano sounded considerably better still); and David Wilson's…
It's been a while since I auditioned a Meridian CD player in my system. I had enthusiastically reviewed the English company's groundbreaking Pro-MCD player in early 1986, and over the years had kept up with the progress they were making in digital playback, either through my own reviews or by performing the measurements to accompany reviews by other Stereophile writers. The 508-24 player, reviewed by Wes Phillips in May 1998, was one of the finest digital products of the 1990s, I thought. But when Meridian began promoting surround sound and DVD-Audio at the turn of the century, their goals…
The apodizing filter used in the 808.2 and 808i.2 was optimized using listening tests. It is realized using a DSP chip operating at 150MIPs with 48-bit precision that also performs the upsampling. It appears that the CD data are first upsampled to 88.2kHz, then processed by the apodizing filter which has a null at 22.05kHz. This is the datastream that is fed to the Meridian's SpeakerLink digital output. The DSP chip then further upsamples the data to 176.4kHz to feed the player's DAC chips.
Sound
For this review, I focused on the Meridian 808i.2's performance as a standalone CD…
For my first comparison I used Robert Silverman's performance of Liszt's Liebestraum, from Editor's Choice (CD, Stereophile STPH015-2). The result wasn't what I was expecting from my prior auditioning of this track with the CD played in the Meridian, in that the piano now sounded a touch more bright and not as palpable. The Ayre was clearly preferable. I checked the setting of the dCS. Ah...I'd forgotten to change the 972's output frequency from 96kHz to 44.1kHz, meaning that the dCS was upsampling the CD data before sending it to the Meridian, an additional variable that worked against the…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: Upsampling CD player with wireless IR remote control, volume control, and 24-bit DACs operating at 176.4kHz. Plays CD, CD-R, CD-RW media. Digital outputs: S/PDIF via RCA, AES/EBU via RJ45 for connection to other Meridian equipment. Analog outputs: 1 pair balanced (XLR), 1 pair single-ended (RCA). Digital inputs (808i.2 preamplifier version only): 3 S/PDIF via RCA, 2 S/PDIF via TosLink. Analog inputs (808i.2 preamplifier version only): 6 single-ended pairs via RCA. Comms: RS-232 port via 9-pin D-subminiature connector, 2 five-pin DIN jacks for…
Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment
Digital Sources: Ayre C-5xe universal player; Benchmark DAC 1 D/A converter; Logitech (Slim Devices) Transporter WiFi music player with Apple Mac mini for media storage; dCS 972 digital/digital converter.
Preamplifiers: Simaudio Moon Evolution P-7, Parasound Halo JC 2.
Power Amplifiers: Musical Fidelity 750K Supercharger monoblocks, Simaudio Moon Evolution W-7.
Loudspeakers: PSB Synchrony One, Revel Ultima Salon2, Verity Sarastro II.
Cables: Digital: Kimber Illuminations Orchid AES/EBU, Stereovox CV2 electrical S/PDIF, AudioQuest OptiLink-5 S/…
Sidebar 3: Measurements
I examined the measured behavior of the Meridian 808i.2 Signature Reference using the Audio Precision SYS2722 system (see www.ap.com and "As We See It" in the January 2008 issue), as well as, for some tests, our Audio Precision System One and the Miller Audio Research Jitter Analyzer. For this review, I looked only at the Meridian's performance as a CD player/digital processor. Its measurements as a preamplifier will be included in the Follow-Up discussed in the main body of the review.
With the Meridian set to operate as a player with a fixed output, its…
After Fred Kaplan reviewed Boulder Amplifiers' 810 line preamplifier and 860 power amplifier for the December 2007 Stereophile, John Atkinson requested that I listen to the 860 in my own system for a while. Never having reviewed any Boulder kit, I was curious.
Suffice it to say that I was so impressed by that brief interlude that I wanted to know more about Boulder. I went to the company's factory in Boulder, Colorado, and watched them mill metalwork, stuff circuit boards, and assemble components—all in-house. The impressively clean facility clearly represented millions in…
