It was a dark day when Spendor stopped making their first and finest loudspeaker—or so I used to think. I got over it when I heard the Spendor SP100 in the early 1990s, and when I admitted…
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I'm never more conservative than when the subject turns to home audio. And at the end of the day, I want little more than to preserve the hobby's finest institutions: Alnico magnets. Parchment cones. Mono. Sonata form. Ballads that actually tell stories. Give me tubes. Give me vinyl. Give me thin-walled hardwood cabinets, obsolete tweeters, and handmade polypropylene woofers. Give me the Spendor BC1.
The Spendors arrived with nary a scratch, thanks to their well-designed cartons, and the newly designed MDF bases permitted easy installation and adjustment of their pointed feet (four per speaker). The feet, which are somewhat larger than one usually finds on a speaker of this size, can also be used to increase the S5e's effective height by a little more than an inch—a useful thing for tall listeners. Removable grilles of the usual sort are provided, although I preferred listening to the Spendors without them. Construction quality is evidently very good. The cabinets were cleanly made…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: "2½-way," reflex-loaded, floorstanding loudspeaker. Drive-units: 1" fabric-dome tweeter, 5" polymer-cone midbass unit, 5" homopolymer-cone woofer. Crossover frequencies: 700Hz, 4.5kHz. Impedance: 8 ohms nominal, 4.4 ohms minimum. Sensitivity: 87dB/W/m. Frequency response: 52Hz-20kHz, ±3dB; -6dB at 40Hz.
Dimensions: 30" H by 6.5" W by 10" D. Weight: 35 lbs.
Finishes: Cherry, maple, rosenut, black ash.
Serial numbers of units reviewed: 303A00339, 303A00340.
Price: $1649/pair. Approximate number of dealers: 45.
Manufacturer: Spendor…
Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment
Analog sources: Linn LP12 turntable, Naim Armageddon power supply, Naim Aro tonearm; Lyra Helikon Mono, Miyabi 47, Linn Akiva cartridges.
Digital sources: Sony SCD-777ES SACD player.
Preamplification: Audio Note AN-S2, Tamura TKS-83 step-up transformers; Fi, Naim NAC32-5 preamplifiers.
Power amplifiers: EAR 890, Naim NAP110.
Loudspeakers: Quad ESL-989.
Cables: Interconnect: Audio Note AN-Vx, Nordost Valhalla, Naim, homemades. Speaker: Audio Note AN-SPx, Nordost Valhalla, Naim NACA5, homemades. AC: JPS Labs Digital (Sony CD player), all…
Sidebar 3: Measurements
With its small drive-units, the Spendor S5e exhibited the expected low sensitivity. I estimated a value of 82.5dB(B)/2.83V/m, which is significantly less than specified. Its impedance plot (fig.1) was unusual in that it had a much higher magnitude in the treble than in the midrange. While the latter ranged between 3.9 and 9 ohms, the impedance above 1kHz didn't drop below 10 ohms, and for much of the time remained above 20 ohms. As a result, if a tube amplifier with a typically high source impedance is used with the Spendor, the speaker's frequency balance will…
Editor's Note: This article is now only available as an Audio Engineering Society preprint, under the title "The Role of Critical Listening in Evaluating Audio Equipment Quality," preprint number 3176. The price is $4.00 for AES members, and $5.00 for non-members; it can be ordered (currently on paper only, not as a downloadable pdf) by entering the number in the appropriate field on the preprint search page at the AES website.
SHELBY LYNNE: Love, Shelby
Island ISLF 15426-2 (CD). 2001. Glen Ballard, prod.; Scott Campbell, eng.; Bob Clearmountain, mix. ADD? TT: 42:19
Performance ****?
Sonics ****
Island ISLF 15426-2 (CD). 2001. Glen Ballard, prod.; Scott Campbell, eng.; Bob Clearmountain, mix. ADD? TT: 42:19
Performance ****?
Sonics ****
After memorable songs, genuine talent, and a clearheaded vision of what its future will be like without copyright protection, what the music business ca 2002 most lacks is characters. You know, larger-than-life pirates like the "My Way" Frank Sinatra, the "Light My Fire" Jim Morrison, with talent bright enough to let them get away with, if not exactly murder, then any other felony you can name.
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"Everyone I know used to sit in front of the stereo and listen to music...Now no one I know, except for us lunatics, listens to music the way one would watch a movie on TV."—from The Audiophile Network
A topic that gets a lot of ink spilled on it in this issue is the High End's limited market penetration. Michael Fremer covers the subject in "Analog Corner" (p.59); Mondial's Tony Federici reveals some strong ideas on it in my interview with him (p.83); and a number of readers—including Steven R. Rochlin, who harvests a number of ideas posted on CompuServe's CEAUDIO forum—get heavily into…
Steven R. Rochlin's letter from May 1996
Sharing our love...enjoy the music!!!
Editor: My love of music began at the ripe ol' age of five. That's when my dad, an avid music lover himself, took me to hear the 1812 Overture performed by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra live (including blasting caps to substitute for the cannon blasts!). Since then, my love for music has continued to this very day. So what can we do to improve the visibility of higher quality music reproduction?
In a roundabout way, I posed that question to others on CompuServe's CEAUDIO forum. Here are a few…
Sometimes, taking what looks like the easy route turns out to be a bust. The line for cabs outside the Alexis Park Resort Hotel in Las Vegas, home of the high-end audio exhibits at the 2002 Consumer Electronics Show, must have been at least 50 people long. So much for the post-9/11 forecasts of doom that had preceded the convention: last fall's Comdex may have been a bust, but the official CES visitor count of 100,307, if a little lower than the past two years' attendances, still seemed respectable (and surpassed 1999's total of 97,370).
I had wanted to go to the newly opened Tuscany…