Thomas J. Norton compared the Aerial 8 with the Wilson CUB in April 1998 (Vol.21 No.4): Shortly after finishing my audition of the Wilson CUB, I set up the very same pair of Aerial Acoustics 8s recently reviewed for Stereophile by Michael Fremer (January 1998). This loudspeaker will cost you approximately $1000/pair less than the Wilson, depending on finish and the price of the stands you choose for the CUB.
The Aerial is a little more open-sounding on top, with a less vivid overall balance than the CUB. I never heard any recognizable midrange coloration from it. It goes very…
Thomas J. Norton wrote again about the Aerial 8 in November 1998 (Vol.21 No.11): When the Aerial Acoustics Model 8 loudspeakers reviewed by Michael Fremer (Stereophile, January '98) arrived in Santa Fe, I had them delivered to my listening room for an audition immediately after John Atkinson had finished measuring them. My room is considerably larger than MF's, and less sensitive to the sometimes difficult-to-accommodate bass of big loudspeakers, if not exactly immune to it—for a long time I favored room-diagonal positioning for many loudspeakers. But the addition of several SWALS…
I don't know how many of you buy disposable diapers, but while Harry (now 6) and Emily (now 5) were still toddlers, diapers played a large role in my life. I can still remember my panic when I first saw the miles of drugstore shelves devoted to Pampers and Huggies—not just large, medium, and small, but such a variety that it could almost have been possible that each child had a diaper tailored for him or her. I'm sure that even the weirdly shaped backside of Tommy Pickles could have been securely wrapped. According to a recent article in The Economist (footnote 1), the explosion in…
I am writing this copy on a venerable Radio Shack TRS-100 portable computer while flying via TWA from St. Louis to Albuquerque, the very fact of doing so having reminded me of what I wanted to write about in this month's column: hardware reliability. J. Gordon Holt touched on this subject in last June's "As We See It," but I felt it worth readdressing in light of recent events.
As a writer and editor, I was relatively quick to appreciate the advantages offered by word processors over typewriters, and have built up quite a body of experience over the last nine years with a variety of…
Back in my bass-player days in the 1970s, I used to do a regular cabaret gig, providing musical support for sundry British stand-up comic acts. I flashed back on those days when I recently watched Fierce Creatures, the John Cleese/Jamie Lee Curtis/Kevin Kline/Michael Palin vehicle, on satellite. There, playing the part of a zookeeper, was pint-size comedian Ronnie Corbett, whom I backed a few times. (He always bought the band a bottle of Scotch—you remember stuff like that!) Ronnie used to open his act with the old "They said Thomas Edison was crazy...they said Henry Ford was crazy...they…
By contrast, Wadia's DigiMaster filter looks at a number of samples and calculates what the shape of the curve should be between them using a "spline" algorithm. This has a much simpler impulse response (fig.2), and it can be seen that it is free from almost all the pre- and post-ringing. This better-behaved time-domain behavior, this better representation of transient information, is the raison d'être of the Wadia filter. Figs.1 and 2 were generated using special digital data—digital "black" with a single sample high. In practice, all transients on a CD will have passed through an A/D…
But this historic album appeared to have been recorded by what in the UK we used to refer to as "jobsworths"—as in "It's more than my job's worth to let you into Mr. Corbett's dressing room to say thank you for the Scotch," or "It's more than my job's worth to take any special or extra care over this recording." "Play It Loud," says an inset in the CD jewelcase, and I wish I could without wincing, so offputting is the recording's combination of tape overload and aggressive instrumental sounds. But once the Wadia's playback level had been set at an acceptable volume, within very few minutes I…
Against the No.39
The $5995 Mark Levinson No.39 was reviewed by Wes Phillips in the November 1997 issue of Stereophile. Like the Wadia, the Levinson has a built-in volume control, except that it operates in the analog domain. It also has digital inputs and outputs, so I compared the D/A sections by driving the Wadia from the No.39 via the 0.5m length of Mod Squad Wonderlink I. Again, levels were matched at 1kHz. I found differences much harder to detect than with the BAT player, which is not surprising given that both solid-state players use similar DAC and output op-amp chips. The…
Sidebar 1: Specifications Description: Single-box CD player with remote control, digital-domain volume control, 32x-oversampling DigiMaster decoding software operating with 24-bit precision, and balanced and unbalanced analog outputs. Digital inputs and outputs are optional. Digital resolution: 21 bits. Maximum output level: adjustable from 250mV to 4.4V to optimize volume-control action (4.4V RMS default). Measured frequency response: -3dB at 20kHz. Output impedance: <15 ohms. Power consumption: 25W.
Dimensions: 17" W by 7" H (including 0.5" spiked feet) by 16" D. Weight: 42 lbs.…
Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment The Wadia 850 was auditioned in a system featuring primarily Thiel CS6 loudspeakers driven by a pair of Mark Levinson No.33H monoblocks. I also used B&W Silver Signatures driven by a Pass Labs Aleph 3. Comparison digital sources were a Mark Levinson No.30.5 HDCD D/A processor driven by a Mark Levinson No.31.5 transport via an Illuminati AES/EBU cable, and Balanced Audio Technology VK-D5 and Mark Levinson No.39 CD players. Line preamplifier (when used) was a Mark Levinson No.380S.
The interconnects used were all balanced: Madrigal CZ Gel-1 and…
