It was an interesting experience. One of the first things it did for me was to make me wish I had an M/S (Mid/Side, or "sum and difference") microphone array and a variable M/S matrix. (I hope to return to M/S recording in a future column.) It also made me wish that I had one of those new, ultracool, portable, high…
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I recently spent a few days filling in for a local engineer, recording middle-school and high-school bands and choral ensembles. This was a requirement of the statewide music-educator adjudication process. (Don't laugh; recording high-school bands is how Telarc got its start.)
In the same vein, Bob Saglio, a dealer chum, calls my desert-island pick of Ella Fitzgerald singing Cole Porter's "Easy to Love" "God's gift to the high-end audio industry." He has never heard it sound anything less than listenable. There perhaps is something to be said for having some not-very-good tracks in one's listening pile; an accurate system should make them sound not very good. Suggestions invited.
Be that however it may, Harbeth's HL-3P-ES2s were nothing short of brilliant on a trio of Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab SACD/CD hybrids of mono jazz reissues from 1956, '57, and '58:…
Is it a trend or just a fad? That's what some of us want to know when we stumble over a new way of doing things, the implication being that a trend is somehow better than a fad.
Every endeavor has its own place along fadism's curve. Orthodox Judaism and the study of binomial coefficients are at one end, boy bands and Tiger Beat magazine at the other, and everything else is in the middle. But where does domestic audio fit? I don't know—although I suppose an answer could be had by visiting the homes of all the audiophiles who've bought into various new ideas over the years, and seeing…
My Fi preamp isn't balanced, so I relied exclusively on the Cary's RCA output jacks, driving a meter-long pair of Nordost Valhalla interconnects. I also wound up replacing the power cord of the CD303/300 with my 2m JPS Labs The Digital AC cord, which seemed to make the sound more open and vivid. VPI Bricks, Shakti Stones, Original Cable Jackets, Bedini CD Clarifiers, Gryphon Exorcists, and green magic markers were not used during the course of this review. I did try a Shun Mook Mpingo disc, but this time it did nothing that I could hear.
Listening
Basics first: Set for 44.1kHz and…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: Single-box CD player. Formats supported: CD, CD-R, CD-RW. Maximum output level: 3.0V RMS. Signal/Noise ratio: 127dB at 1kHz. Channel separation: 109dB at 1kHz. Total harmonic distortion: 0.004% at 1kHz. Frequency range: 2Hz–384kHz. Output impedances: 440 ohms (tube), 40 ohms (solid-state). Digital output jacks: RCA, TosLink, XLR. Analog output jacks: RCA, XLR. HDCD compatible.
Dimensions: 18" (460mm) W by 15" (385mm) D by 4" (100mm) H. Weight: 38 lbs (17.2kg).
Serial number of unit reviewed: 0430330135.
Price: $4000. Approximate number of…
Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment
Analog Sources: Linn LP12 turntable, Linn Lingo power supply, Linn Ekos tonearm, Miyabi 47 phono cartridge; Rega Planar 3 turntable, Lyra Helikon Mono cartridge; Audio Note AN-S2, Tamura TKS-83 moving-coil step-up transformers.
Digital Sources: Naim CD5x CD player, Linn Unidisk SC universal player.
Preamplifier: Fi.
Power Amplifiers: Lamm ML2.1 monoblocks, EAR 890.
Loudspeakers: Quad ESL-989.
Cables: Interconnect: Audio Note AN-Vx, Nordost Valhalla, Linn. Speaker: Audio Note AN-SPx, Nordost Valhalla. AC: JPS Labs The Digital (CD players).…
Sidebar 3: Brian Damkroger on '300 vs '200
When I reviewed Cary Audio's CD303/200 CD player for the May 2004 issue of Stereophile, I was impressed by its bold, powerful sound, its mix of excellent definition and huge dynamics, and its truly remarkable bottom end. It also boasted a comprehensive array of features, everything from extensive I/O connectivity and HDCD to user-selectable upsampling rates and voltage output levels. Its presentation wasn't quite as sophisticated as the best players I'd heard, but it was a nice package, and a good value at $3000.
I'll leave the details…
Sidebar 4: Measurements
With its integral volume control and its choices of balanced and unbalanced outputs, tubed and solid-state output circuitry, and 1–17.4x upsampling ratios, Cary's CD303/300 was considerably more complicated to measure than a conventional CD player. To simplify matters, therefore, I set the volume control to its maximum (indicated "73") for all measurements, and mainly checked the measured performance with either no upsampling or the maximum upsampling (768kHz), with additional spot checks.
Assessed with the Pierre Verany Test CD and with me monitoring the…
JGH opens
After having proven that vacuum tubes could do some sonic things better than transistors, Audio Research is now endeavoring to show that transistors can do most things better than tubes—at least in the front end of a power amplifier. The M300 monoblock power amp uses FETS from the inputs through the driver stages; only the output devices are tubes. Audio Research describes it as a hybrid amplifier, which of course is just what it is: it's half tube, half solid-state.
But the description is, in one respect, both ambiguous and misleading. The M300 is claimed to use "the…
I wish more amplifier manufacturers would provide input level-sets. If you feel they impair the sound, you can always leave them full-up, which, apart from the wiper/track contact, takes them out of circuit. But there are times when they come in handy, as when using unusually sensitive speakers, which may make latter-stage preamp noise obtrusive. They are also useful when using preamps with unusually high gain, which tend to crowd everything down into the lowest 45 degrees of volume-control rotation, or when some acoustical anomaly in your listening room causes a persistent channel-balance "…