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Recording of November 2003: <I>Heartbreak Hill</I>

ALBERT LEE: Heartbreak Hill
Sugar Hill SUG-CD-3977A (CD). 2003. Albert Lee, Steve Fishell, prods.; Dave Sinko, Larry Getz, engs. AAD? TT: 43:51
Performance ****½
Sonics ****

Back in the mid-1970s, when someone at Warner Bros. Records told Emmylou Harris to get herself a "hot band," she went out and, using her talent—prodigious even then—as bait, cajoled and, oh yeah, paid the best players she could find to join her ascent. The result was one of the most storied backup bands in country-rock history.

Nobody's fool, this girl—she went straight for Elvis' band. Let's face…

Recording of February 2003: Beethoven: Complete Violin Sonatas

BEETHOVEN: Complete Violin Sonatas
Augustin Dumay, violin; Maria João Pires, piano
Deutsche Grammophon 471 495-2 (CD). 2002. Helmut Burk, prod.; Wolf-Dieter Karwatky, eng. DDD. TT: 3:54:01
Performance *****
Sonics ****

For the past half century, Deutsche Grammophon has released roughly one cycle of Beethoven's violin sonatas per decade, from Wolfgang Schneiderhan's mono edition and Yehudi Menuhin's stereo remakes (both with pianist Wilhelm Kempff) to the partnership of Gidon Kremer and Martha Argerich to, most recently, Anne-Sophie Mutter's cycle with Lambert Orkis, on CD…

Gradient Revolution loudspeaker

A.C. Wente of Bell Telephone Labs was apparently the first person to get the bright idea (in the 1930s) of measuring sound transmission in a small room. A loudspeaker at one point reproducing pure tones of constant power, and a microphone at another point measuring sound-pressure levels, gave him the means to assess the room's impact on sound quality. The measured frequency response was so ragged that I'm positive the venturesome Dr. Wente was duly shocked.

The perceptual effects of early reflections and standing waves in small rooms are still being actively investigated. For example,…

Gradient Revolution loudspeaker Page 2

A unique feature of the Finnish Revolution is its ability to rotate the bass enclosure relative to the top enclosure. Since the cabinet's cross-section is triangular, it's possible to aim the bass enclosure at the listening seat, or toward either of the side walls—the last of which is particularly useful if you want to place the speaker against a wall. The owner's manual sufficiently describes all possible deployments. The bottom line? Greatly enhanced flexibility in the ability to control standing waves in real-world listening rooms.

Preliminaries
The stated sensitivity of the…

Gradient Revolution loudspeaker Page 3

The soundstage in the early listening was veiled, almost hazy. I found it difficult to step into the original acoustic of the performance. The decay of transients was obscured, so it was tough to hear far into the soundstage. Soundstage transparency improved gradually as the Revolution continued to break-in. This speaker requires a long break-in period—on the order of 100 hours. While it never reached electrostatic-like transparency or even matched the best dynamic designs in this regard, at least with a good tube amp I did not find its level of performance here an obstacle to musical…

Gradient Revolution loudspeaker Specifications

Sidebar 1: Specifications

Description: Three-way dynamic loudspeaker with a dipole bass dispersion pattern and a cardioid treble and midrange pattern. Frequency response: 50Hz-20kHz ±2dB. Minimum impedance: 5 ohms. Sensitivity: 86dB/W/m. Recommended amplifier power: 50-250Wpc into 4 ohms.
Dimensions: 39" H by 18" W by 16" D. Weight: 50 lbs.
Serial numbers of units reviewed: 106/107 (1995), 108/109 (1997).
Price: $3999/pair (1995). Approximate number of dealers: 15.
Manufacturer: Gradient, Ltd., Levyspänkatu 28 FIN-04440, Järvenpää, Finland. Tel: (35) 8-0291-7875. Fax: (35) 8-…

Gradient Revolution loudspeaker Measurements

Sidebar 2: Measurements

DO estimated the Revolution's sensitivity at 82dB/W/m (footnote 1). My B-weighted measurement was a little lower, at 81.7dB/2.83V/m. This speaker will definitely need plenty of watts to come to life—leave your low-powered single-ended tube amplifiers in their shipping cartons! The impedance curve (fig.1) will also make life hard for the accompanying amplifier, dropping to 3 ohms in the power region of the upper bass. The high range of the impedance magnitude—from 3 ohms at 60Hz to 26.5 ohms at 2.1kHz—will also make the tonal balance of the speaker very dependent…

Gradient Revolution loudspeaker John Atkinson March 1997

John Atkinson wrote about the Gradient Revolution in March 1997 (Vol.20 No.3):

When listening critically to a product for review, you can spend so much time trying to detect faults that it only slowly dawns on you that not only is the product doing almost nothing wrong, it is actually performing superbly well. Such was the case when I auditioned the Gradient Revolution loudspeaker. Back in May 1995 (Vol.18 No.5), Dick Olsher raved about the performance of this unusual floorstanding loudspeaker from Finland. Combining an aperiodic mid/treble head-unit featuring a SEAS-sourced concentric…

MSB Platinum Link Plus D/A processor

I have a warm spot in my heart for MSB's approach to product development. They come from a tweaker heritage and still practice the art: MSB will happily install a 24-bit/192kHz upsampler in your CD player, a 5.1-channel input in your DPL amp or receiver, and true 24/96 outputs in your DVD player. Their standalone products, starting with the original Link DAC, are designed from the start to include space for later additions and enhancements.

In fact, the most significant trend I see in the progression from the original Link DAC to the DAC II and DAC III is the ease and…

MSB Platinum Link Plus D/A processor Page 2

The Platinum Link Plus has the same footprint and is twice as high and exactly twice as heavy as the Link DAC III. The Link Plus's built-in power supply is the P1000 Power Base, which I thought was a profound improvement when I reviewed the III in September 2000.

DAC on the Block
I seem to experience a feeding frenzy of DACs every year or two, and the Platinum Link Plus arrived while I was in the midst of the latest one. On the one hand, these frenzies make it easier to set up comparisons that emphasize specific differences; on the other, they make it hard for me to keep an…