"With the exception of power amps that require big heatsinks and large transformers, every other component does not need to be housed in a big box," Antony continued by phone. "Manufacturers try to fill the box with stuff which looks impressive and powerful, but it's meaningless with low-level signals…
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Most high-end components' front panels, or faceplates, represent 30% of the build cost, averred Antony. This squares with what another well-known manufacturer told me many years ago, off the record: that he could reduce his retail prices by 40% if he didn't offer them as hi-fi jewelry.
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Dimensions: 6.7" (170mm) long by 3.75" (95mm) wide by 1.7" (40mm) high, including all feet and terminals.
Price: $299.
Manufacturer: Musical Fidelity, Units 24-26, Fulton Road, Wembley HA9 0TF, England, UK. Tel: (44) (0)20-8900-2866. Fax: (44) (0)20-8900-2983. Web: www.musicalfidelity.com. US distributor: KEF America at time of review; Tempo Sales & Marketing, P.O. Box 541443, Waltham, MA 02454. Tel: (617) 314-9296. Fax: (617) 336-3486.
Sidebar 2: System
Digital Source: Marantz CD63 Special Edition and Denon DCD-1650AR CD players, Cambridge Audio DacMagic D/A processor.
Integrated amplifier: LFD Integrated Zero Mk.III.
Headphone amplifier: Musical Fidelity V-CAN.
Headphones: Audio-Technica ATH-AD700.
Loudspeakers: Harbeth Compact 7ES3.
Digital cable: Analysis Plus Digital Oval S/PDIF.—Sam Tellig
Sidebar 3: Measurements
The V-DAC offers bare-bones construction. The power supply is a separate wall wart. A plain, black-painted box of extruded aluminum carries a single printed-circuit board, with the input jacks (TosLink, coaxial, USB) at one end and a single pair of RCA output jacks at the other. Other than three surface-mount LSI chips, the circuitry is based on traditional through-hole components, and local voltage regulation appears to be performed with the usual ±5V chips. The USB input feeds the ubiquitous Burr-Brown PCM2706 receiver chip, which is limited to 16-bit data and…
"Turntable Wars" was the phrase used by Anthony H. Cordesman to head his review of the Oracle, SOTA, and VPI turntables in Vol.9 No.4. To judge from the reaction of the manufacturers at CES to this innocent phraseology, you would have thought that Stereophile had been warmongering, rather than publishing what were actually pretty positive opinions of the products concerned. So enraged was Jacques Riendeau of Oracle, and concerned that the record be put straight, that he insisted on a "right to reply" to AHC's review; as it happened, Ivor Tiefenbrun and Charlie Brennan of Linn (right in…
John Atkinson: But that's why people buy magazines with reviews—they want to purchase the "best," absolute, not just the best for them
Ivor Tiefenbrun: We live in an age when everyone is saying "Tell me who to marry!," "Tell me what to buy!," "Tell me what to do!" To me it doesn't matter what the person buys; what matters is that they chose whatever it is. That's what the component audio business is all about. And what I've always tried to do is get the retailer to demonstrate the product so that the customer can exercise his own judgment, and know why he's bought whatever he's bought…
Riendau: And you will then hear people say "I think you should use a clamp, as the inside of the record really sounds bad!"
Brennan: The problem with many reviews is that they don't tell me what I'm going to get in terms of extra satisfaction from my music. The description should make people interested in learning more about that product. People will buy a magazine that has articles that express confidence in good products and say that it's really a good idea to have a good hi-fi system. I remember when it was first discovered that turntables affected sound quality—the fact that a…
I listened to one of our sales guys talking about product to a guy who came in the room, and he did the same thing we accuse the magazines of doing. Before he's told the guy what it is, or what we built it for, or what we think people could possibly use this thing for, he's into talking about the material, the platter and the bearing, things that I feel we should get away from. Now we've never published specifications on our products, but that doesn't mean we don't have any. I think that the whole industry can get into this loop, when you've got the customer saying "Should I buy this or not…
Ivor's mention of audible differences brought the conversation back to AHC's review, specifically his statement that "While the sonic differences between the best turntables are important, they are not as important as the differences between cartridges and speakers." Not surprisingly, this had raised eyebrows amongst this group of rotary evangelists:
Tiefenbrun: If this guy doesn't know that a turntable makes a bigger difference than anything downstream can, then someone should demonstrate it to him. It sounds cuckoo so he doesn't believe it—there's a whole industry out there saying…
We often create that contention ourselves. SOTA called me a "crude mechanic," the nicest thing that's ever been said about me. But we contribute to that as well, because we do things in isolation. We also tend to compete internally instead of going out there and telling the rest of the marketplace that have never heard about Linn or SOTA or Oracle or whatever. My favorite story is about a guy in my company who went to a hi-fi shop where he used to work, and a customer came in with a prototype Syrinx tonearm. "Who sold you that piece of fucking crap?" my employee asked the guy. The guy said…