I've asked a lot of people these questions in my…
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Just what is the absolute sound, and how do you get there from here? What the heck are we looking for as we endure the mirth of others while purposefully setting up our high-end systems? Is it, indeed, the sanctified sound of acoustic instruments in real space? Can we ever really achieve that? Or is it the accurate realization of the signal on the master tape? Or—as was recently suggested at the New York Noise single-ended lovefest, covered in this issue's "Industry Update"—are some of us looking for the emotion and the artist's intent?
Almost 30 years ago, Columbia records issued a unique disc called The Art of Jonathan and Darlene Edwards. Darlene sang and Jonathan played piano, and the jacket notes rhapsodized about the depth of feeling they brought to their duos, despite some imperfections of technique.
Those imperfections, it turned out, amounted to spectacular technical incompetence. Darlene's voice swooped, broke, went falsetto during high passages, and was painfully off-pitch about 60% of the time. Jonathan, who had an impeccable sense of timing and phrasing, on occasion staying precisely in step with Darlene,…
Now I am aware that logic is anathema to the manic perfectionist who treats the more abstruse aspects of his "hobby" as revealed religious truth; this treatise is not addressed to him. I speak instead to the person who still approaches audio as a means for the realistic reproduction of music the person who still has at least one and a half feet placed firmly on the ground.
The middle range is the home of perhaps 85% of the music we listen to. The bass in a musical composition is usually nothing more than a rhythmic or harmonic underpinning to the "melody," which is traditionally scored…
Letters in response appeared in Vol.9 No.2, February 1986.
Mary Who?
Editor: In "Getting the Notes Right" (Vol.8 No.7, p.5), JGH got one of his own notes wrong. The vocalist (and real-life spouse of Paul Weston) on The Art of Jonathan and Darlene Edwards was not Mary Ford, but Jo Stafford. The late Mary Ford was married to Les Paul.
God! I finally caught JGH out on something. You made my day!—Arthur Barnes, Des Plaines, IL
For more good days, just watch these pages!—JGH
Remarkably Terrible Performances Editor: The thing that made the terrible performances on…
Unless you've recently returned from a five-year tour of Tibetan monasteries, the odds are pretty good you've heard about the Nautilus revision of B&W's classic three-way floorstanding monitor, the 801. Having sold 30,000 of the earlier 801, the Matrix, B&W recently revised this classic to incorporate some design features of its $40,000, four-way concept speaker, the Nautilus. Wes Phillips reviewed the new Nautilus 801 in the January 1999 Stereophile (p.107) and found it "incredibly dynamic, images and soundstages like crazy, and has that special magic that marks it as one of the…
Sitting just below the mid/bass driver, and almost as large, is the double-flared—one internal flare, one external—reflex port. This has a 2" outlet, twice the diameter of the 805 Matrix's vent. Its surface is dotted with molded "golf ball" dimples to smooth air flow and avoid the chuffing sounds sometimes generated by reflex designs. While the Nautilus 805 does not use the Nautilus 801's 1.5"-thick, 24-lamina birch cabinet, its curved-profile, 0.75"-thick MDF walls add stiffness to reduce cabinet resonances and to break up internal standing waves. Inside, its interlocking cells prevent the…
Sound
Sitting in the nearfield of the Nautilus 805s in my large blue velvet chair, I listened to classical, country-western, jazz, vocal, pipe-organ, and soundtrack CDs. The Nautilus 805s quickly swept me into the music, and I found myself listening with my eyes closed. It was as if a special light had been switched on in my mind: "This is a terrific loudspeaker, and an example of what I really love about high-end audio."
Sitting in the nearfield of the Nautilus 805s in my large blue velvet chair, I listened to classical, country-western, jazz, vocal, pipe-organ, and soundtrack CDs. The Nautilus 805s quickly swept me into the music, and I found myself listening with my eyes closed. It was as if a special light had been switched on in my mind: "This is a terrific loudspeaker, and an example of what I really love about high-end audio."
Right off the bat, I was impressed with the Nautilus 805's taut, punchy midbass response. That, coupled with the rest of the speaker's sonic profile—transparent…
The speaker's uncolored sonic presentation is evident on Emmylou Harris' "Prayer in Open D" (Spyboy, Eminent EM-25001-2), rendering an exquisitely translucent but warm sonic image of Harris' voice, backed by crystalline guitar chords. Even so, the 805 could not quite equal the Revel Salon's ability to capture the dark, rich, slightly nasal timbre of Harris singing her a cappella version of "Calling My Children Home."
The Nautilus 805s did a superb job of generating a palpable soundstage, often "disappearing" when I listened with my eyes open. If I closed my eyes, the 805 tricked me into…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: Two-way, stand-mounted, reflex-loaded dynamic loudspeaker. Drive-units: one 1" (25mm) metal-dome cooled tweeter, one 6.5" (165mm) woven-Kevlar bass/midrange cone with 1.24" (32mm) voice-coil. Crossover frequency: 3kHz. Crossover slopes: third-order Butterworth alignment with 49Hz cutoff. Frequency response: 49Hz-22kHz, ±3dB. Sensitivity: 88dB/W/m (2.83V). Nominal impedance: 8 ohms (minimum: 4.6 ohms). Amplifier requirements: 50W minimum, 120W maximum. Maximum recommended cable impedance: 0.2 ohms.
Dimensions: 16.3" (415mm) H by 9.4" (238mm) W by…
Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment
Analog source: Linn Sondek LP12/Lingo turntable, Linn Ittok tonearm, Spectral cartridge.
Digital source: Krell MD-1 CD transport, Adcom GDA-700 DAC.
FM tuners: Day-Sequerra FM Reference Classic, Rotel RH-10, Magnum Dynalab MD-108 and MD-102, Myryad T-100; Magnum Dynalab Model 205 Sleuth RF amplifier.
Preamplification: Krell KBL, Mark Levinson ML-7A (with L-2 phono module) preamplifiers; Duntech MX-10 head amplifier; Margules solid-state phono stage.
Power amplifiers: Bryston 4B-ST, Mark Levinson No.334.
Loudspeakers: Dynaudio Contour 3.0,…