Audio-Technica US, 1221 Commerce Drive, Stow, OH 44224. Tel: (330) 686-2600. Fax: (330) 688-3752. Web: www.audio-technica.com.
Luxman Overseas Sales: Level Three, Three Pacific Place, 1 Queen's Road East, Hong Kong. Tel: (852) 2584-6218. Fax: (852) 3585-1213. Web: www.luxman.co.jp. US distributor: On a Higher Note, PO Box 698, San Juan Capistrano, CA 92693. Tel: (949) 488-3004. Fax: (949) 488-3284. Web: www.onahighernote.com.
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Sidebar: Contacts
On two occasions I've caught myself wondering how to afford a pair of Wilson Audio loudspeakers. Interestingly, both happened within the past year. The first was in April 2009, at the Son et Image show in Montreal, during a demonstration of the MAXX Series 3. The experience was notable for its blend of genuinely great sound with genuine musicality: Each performance unfolded of its own natural accord, with human randomness and nuance, and without the fussy, mechanical, shallow artifice that attracts some audiophiles in the way a carnivorous plant attracts flies—and, if they're lucky, kills…
Truth told, the latter wasn't a worry: As with any set of Wilson speakers sold by an authorized dealer, my review pair was installed by a factory-trained setup technician—in this case, the estimable Peter McGrath himself. I observed and assisted (mostly observed), and you may rest assured that the process is every bit as systematic, painstaking, and successful as you might have heard: Moving the cabinet as little as half an inch really did have an impact on the sound.
But for now, file that away . . .
House guests
Peter McGrath was our guest near the end of summer, but I…
Other designers would make the same claim, of course. But to my way of thinking there remains a distinction: The whole dead-cabinet thing, like the whole nonresonant-tonearm thing, must be done intelligently, thoroughly, and to the nth degree—or not at all. As with very-high-quality record players, if just one element within the whole is allowed to resonate in a manner that sets it apart from the others, not only is the sound distorted, but it's distorted in a manner significantly less tolerable than if the designer hadn't bothered at all with anti-resonance techniques. If what you have in…
Now that Sony has bought CBS's records division, and the infamous Copycode bill seems to be dying in Congress, the way may be clearing at last for the US introduction of the new Digital Audio Tape system. This has sparked renewed speculation in the industry about the impact DAT will have on existing formats, particularly the fledgling CD. Some are convinced DAT will kill CD, because of its ability to record as well as play digital recordings. Others believe DAT won't even gain a foothold in the market, for the same reason quadraphonic sound laid an egg back in the '70s: The public can't…
Beware of DAT, says Peter W. Mitchell
Beware of DAT. If, despite the limited availability and high cost of digital cassette machines (and their companion tapes), you still feel irresistibly tempted to be the first on your street to invest in the new medium, buy with caution. The analog-to-digital converters in some of the first-generation DAT machines have a linearity defect at moderately low recording levels.
Their performance is fine at high levels (near 0dBFS) and at very low levels (below –70dB). But from –30 to –60dB, the encoding defect in some machines produces distortion…
Peter W. Mitchell Asks: Is DAT Doomed?
The copy-protection debate has created the impression that if DAT recorders are sold without Copycode scanners, everyone could start churning out perfect digital copies of CDs. But in fact the design of DAT already incorporates two basic obstacles to digital CD piracy: copy-protect flags and incompatible sampling. Thus the proposed imposition of Copycode scanners in DAT recorders would seem to be a superfluous third level of protection.
The coding standard for the Compact Disc, established in 1981, provides for an optional copy-protect "flag…
DAT: The RIAA's Position
The proposed action by the Congress of the United States will cripple the DAT machine and eventually make all forms of legal audio copying impossible. Well, since that time the National Bureau of Standards has ruled that the CBS Copycode audibly degrades sonic performance, triggers falsely, and can be easily defeated by someone with a little electronics knowledge. The RIAA reacted to this announcement by quickly abandoning their support for the CBS system, but warned that this retrenchment was not a signal that DAT could now be sold in the US and further stated…
How can you tell when a politician is lying? His lips move. How can you tell when a recording system is perfect? CBS tries to outlaw it.
That is exactly what was happening in Washington in April through June. The American record industry is so horrified at the prospect of a "perfect" home-recording medium—the new DAT system—that they are doing their best to legislate it out of existence. Or, at least, to de-fang it. Believing their own propaganda about "Perfect Sound Forever," they are afraid the new DAT system which the Japanese are poised to unleash in the US will allow their…
Sidebar 1: Copycode Explained
The software encoding of CBS's aptly-named "spoiler" system consists of a very narrow 20–50dB notch in the audio band centered at 3840Hz, between the musical notes B-flat and B. The copy-protection chip in the recorder measures signal energy in that band and compares it with the energy in the adjacent bands, and if it finds a large difference (indicating the presence of the notch), it shuts down the recorder. The chip has no effect at all on DAT playback, since the detection notch is not in the signal circuit, but merely runs parallel to it to feed the…