Description: Three-way design with a 10" polypropylene woofer, 6½" poly midrange, and ¾" soft-dome tweeter. Bass loading: bass-reflex. Midrange loading: acoustic labyrinth line. Frequency response: 23Hz–22kHz, ±3dB. Maximum SPL: 120dB. Sensitivity: 91dB/W/m. Power rating: 25–200W.
Dimensions: 44" x 16" x 18". Weight: 85 lbs each.
Price: $2190/pair (1986); no longer available (2009).
Manufacturer: Fried Products Company, Philadelphia, PA 19151 (1986); Fried Products Corporation, PO Box 680, Gladwyne, PA 19035 (2009). Tel: (610) 649-8774. Web: www.…
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Sidebar: Specifications
Ah me, another year gone by. The rest of my holiday-gift suggestions are at the end of this column, but I wanted to kick off with a hearty recommendation of Aja, a book by Don Breithaupt. You may recall Breithaupt as a co-author (with his brother, Jeff) of the survey Precious and Few: Pop Music in the Early '70s, which cracked me up in my October column.
In a more serious vein, Breithaupt has devoted an entire, albeit small (130pp), book to Steely Dan's magnum opus: their 1977 album, Aja. Breithaupt's Aja is no.46 in the 331/3 series of monographs published by Continuum, each devoted to…
ATC's SCM 11 and Aerial Acoustics' 5B (which I wrote about in June) are variations on the same theme—sealed-box, stand-mounted two-ways costing about $2000/pair—so it seemed reasonable to compare them.
The ATC SCM 11's cabinet measures 15" high by 8.3" wide by 9.8" deep, displaces 1220 in3, and weighs 17.6 lbs. The Aerial 5B measures 13" high by 7.9" wide by 10.8" deep, displaces 1109 in3, and weighs 22 lbs. So the ATC's cabinet is about 10% larger. Perhaps more important—and I keep making a point of this because I think it's both nonintuitive and often overlooked by audiophiles while…
The ATC SCM 11 is a fully-ready-for-prime-time loudspeaker with excellent resolution and dynamics, etc., but, even more important, the ability to create musical involvement. I intended to listen to just one track's worth of Gregorian chant from Consortium Vocale Oslo's Exaudium Eum (SACD, 2L 2L43SACD), and ended up listening to the whole thing. What more can I say? What I can't say is whether the SCM 11 will be the ideal speaker for you. But between it and Aerial's 5B, you have two super-high-value choices in the $2000/pair region.
Denon RCD-CX1 SACD/CD receiver: $1500
To recap the…
The SC-CX303 is a great little speaker. I respected the PSB Imagine B, which I wrote about in February, but I just loved the Denon. I'll be very interested in seeing a comparison of the speakers' measurements. My guess is that the Denon will measure a bit fuller and warmer in the midrange, perhaps even the inverse of the "smile EQ" effect. The SC-CX303 had more of an attractive richness of sound than actual deep bass.
Such things matter more to some than to others, but I think a pair of SC-CX303s look, if not quite like a million bucks, then at least more like $2000 than $1200. There's…
Sidebar: Contacts
ATC Loudspeaker Technology Ltd., Gypsy Lane, Aston Down, Stroud, Gloucestershire GL6 8HR, UK. Tel: (44) (0)1285-760561. Fax: (44) (0)1285-760683. Web: www.atc.gb.net. US distributor: Flat Earth Audio, 98 Main Street, Seymour, CT 06483. Tel: (888) 653-5454, (203) 888-3759. Fax: (203) 888-3769. Web: www.flatearthaudio.com.
Denon Electronics, Corporate Drive, Mahwah, NJ 07430-2041. Tel: (201) 762-6500. Fax: (201) 762-6670. Web: www.usa.denon.com.
She responds as expected to the only sound: hysterical voices!—Brian Eno
It certainly ought to be simple: Put together a music system using the finest components; acclimate yourself to its sound using only the finest recordings; replace one component in the system with something new; listen to the changes; and write about the experience in 10,000 words or more.
That's how it used be done, when audio's alternative press was green in judgment. I remember, in particular, a few seasons' worth of surveys in which kings were crowned and duds dismissed with great grandeur and…
Regardless, I wasn't surprised that the audible distinctions were small: Common sense, which used to grow wild around these parts, would lead one to believe that replacing 5% or 10% of all the cabling in a domestic audio system shouldn't be that noticeable.
In a roundabout sort of way, that point of view is echoed by another cable maker, the New England–based Nordost Corporation. Earlier this year, Roy Gregory—who joined Nordost after departing The Abso!ute Sound and Hi-Fi+, the latter of which he founded some years ago—got in touch to say that he and Nordost founder Joe Reynolds had…
Those cables were all quite affordable by contemporary high-end audio standards. By comparison, the Nordost cables that Gregory and Reynolds left in my system were somewhat more expensive, if not quite at the top of their line: Tyr loudspeaker cable ($4999/2m pair, terminated with low-mass bananas), Tyr shielded interconnect pairs ($1899/1m pair, terminated with WBT locking plugs), and Vishnu AC cords ($549/m, terminated with Wattgate gold-plated plugs). Not meaning to be facetious, it seemed that I could swap my own cables back in without risking too much of a disturbance in the Force, and…
Sidebar: Contacts
Nordost Corporation, 200 Homer Avenue, Ashland, MA 01721. Tel : (800) 836-27501, (508) 881-1116. Fax: (508) 881-6444. Web: www.nordost.com.
Quantum Resonant Technology, 1507 Seventh Street #270, Santa Monica, CA 90401. Web: www.quantumqrt.com.
Teo Audio, 2551 Highway 2 E., Kingston, Ontario K7L 4V1, Canada. Web: www.teoaudio.com. US distributor: Brian Kurtz, 1813 Medio Calle, Austin, TX 78733. Tel: (512) 377-2834. Fax: (512) 233-5399. E-mail: sales@teoaudio.com.
Vertex AQ. Tel: (44) (0)1597-825993. Web: www.vertexaq.com.