Sidebar 3: Measurements
Regarding measurements, I use a mixture of nearfield, in-room, and quasi-anechoic FFT techniques (using the MLSSA system from DRA Labs) to investigate objective factors that might explain the sound heard. (Stereophile's measuring microphone is a calibrated B&K 4006.) The speakers' impedance phase and magnitude were measured using Stereophile's Audio Precision System One.
Looking first at the Monitor 7's impedance (fig.1), the port tuning is indicated by the minimum in the solid trace at 65Hz, which implies that the speaker will not offer much bass below…
I love two-channel stereo. A great stereo recording can produce such a full-bodied, three-dimensional soundstage that surround sound seems superfluous. Multichannel is just peachy for home theater, but good ol' stereo suits music just fine, thanks very much.
This fall sees the tenth anniversary of the launch of Super Audio CD by Sony and Philips. Thanks to the format's generous data capacity, a single SACD could contain stereo and 5.1-channel surround mixes. Not only that, dual-layer, hybrid SACD/CDs were backward-compatible with standard CD players. The future looked bright back in…
Allen Toussaint: The Bright Mississippi
Nonesuch 480380-2 (CD). 2009. Joe Henry, prod.; Kevin Killen, eng.; Anthony Ruotolo, asst. eng. AAD? TT: 61:31
Performance ****½
Sonics ****
Thanks to Dixieland bands, and the musical flotsam and jetsam that musically populated Bourbon Street before Katrina, traditional New Orleans jazz had largely become a garish cartoon in which spinning umbrellas and an obligatory finale of "When the Saints Go Marching In" made anyone familiar with this rich canon want to retch. But as many a famous song lyric goes—performances by Alison Kraus and…
In the early to mid-1980s, I read every high-end hi-fi magazine I could get my hands on. Among the consequences was my discovery that the Grado Signature Seven phono cartridge—which was better and cheaper than the Signatures One through Six—was the cartridge that God wanted me to have. So I cut back on all manner of luxuries, saved every dollar I could save, and a few months later brought a walletful of cash to Harvey Sound in midtown Manhattan, where an unpleasant man with a bad comb-over handed me a little pill bottle of a plastic tube.
"You mean this is my handmade phono…
Indeed, the Grado Prestige Gold1 sounded best with the Rega 'table and arm, and that pairing formed the basis for all the performance comments that follow. But there's one more caveat: The Grado was susceptible to mild hum as the tonearm moved closer to the turntable's motor. It was hum-free at the outermost groove of any given LP, with hum then building to a level I considered still unobjectionable by the end of the modulated area. From that point inward, across the record label, was where the hum really gained in strength.
The Grado's healthy output and relatively high internal…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: Moving-iron phono cartridge. Stylus: elliptical diamond. Frequency range: 20Hz–60kHz. Output: 5mV. Compliance: 20cu. Channel separation: >35dB (1kHz). Internal resistance: 475 ohms. Recommended load: 47k ohms. Recommended downforce: 1.5gm.
Weight: 5.5gm.
Serial Number Of Unit Reviewed: none found.
Price: $220. Approximate number of dealers: 495.
Manufacturer: Grado Labs, 4614 Seventh Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11220. Tel: (718) 435-5340. Web: www.gradolabs.com.
Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment
Analog Sources: Rega Planar 3 turntable & RB300 tonearm; Linn LP12 turntable, Naim Aro tonearm; Thorens TD-124 Mk.II turntable, EMT 997 tonearm; Denon DL-103, EMT OFD 25 & OFD 65, Ortofon SPU 90th Anniversary, Rega Exact, Shindo SPU cartridges.
Digital Sources: Sony SCD-777ES SACD/CD player, Wavelength Cosecant v3 USB DAC (with Apple iMac).
Preamplification: Auditorium 23 Hommage T1 step-up transformer, Shindo Masseto preamplifier.
Power Amplifiers: Shindo Corton-Charlemagne & Haut-Brion.
Loudspeakers: Audio Note AN-E/SPe HE.
…
As we approach the end of the 21st century's "oughts" decade, many feel that playing music from a discrete physical medium is positively 20th century. Much of my own music enjoyment now comes from computer files, often high-resolution, streamed to my high-end rig via a Logitech Transporter or Bel Canto USB Link 24/96. It is perhaps a paradox, therefore, that high-end audio companies are still devoting so much effort to developing expensive, state-of-the-art disc players. In April I very favorably reviewed Meridian's superb 808i.2 CD player–preamplifier, which costs $16,995 as reviewed, and…
The final card, shielded to prevent RF interference, carries an embedded PC running the Linux operating system. (An external display hooked up to the 1021's VGA output will display the boot routine before mirroring the front-panel display.) This PC handles all the display and user-interface chores, and manages the embedded disc database. The final operation at the factory before packing up a 1021 for shipping is to load its non-volatile memory with the most recent version of the database. (Other than noting that it doesn't appear to be the Gracenote/CDDB database, I'm not sure which the…
I sat back to listen, but something was wrong. Instead of the first track being the dark-hued chorus "Kommt, ihr Tüchter, helft mir klagen," it was the Evangelist's recitative "Da Jesus diese Rede vollendet hatte," which is actually the second track. The first file was on the disc but had not been recognized. I encountered missing files with other DVD-Rs I burned. The most extreme example was with the Charles Mackerras performance of the late Mozart symphonies that I had purchased from the Linn website and burned to disc; of the four symphonies, the only files the Boulder could identify and…
