I feel as if I know you all personally after reading your prose religiously for three and a half years. "Stereophile cutting an LP!" I thought, "This is going to be one heck of a recording!" My copy of Poem arrived on February 17th. Oh, boy! I was so excited, I could hardly wait for it to get dark outside so that I could begin some serious listening. Night fell, and Poem lay on my trusty Well-Tempered Record Player (footnote 1). I lowered the arm into the lead-in groove and the Grado brought forth the first notes of side one. I turned out the lights and settled into my…
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Fifth Runner-Up
Stereophile's initial effort to conceive and produce what it regards as an example of an audiophile LP of definitive quality has been a success from almost any technical perspective. The recording, entitled Poem, reproduces works for solo flute with piano accompaniment.
The sound of the record persuades a listener that it is possible to create a sonic impression of actuality. The superlative surfaces of the record provide such quiet as to approach that of a DDD compact disc. The soundstaging is dramatic, but happily constrained to dimensions commensurate with…
We received the following letter commenting on the release of the second edition of the Poem LP:
A Cause for Celebration
Editor: The cause for celebration is that I've now auditioned the "new" [190gm, one-step] Stereophile Poem album. I say "new" because I feel that it depicts clearly what you set out to do in the first place. That is, to clearly delineate the glorious sound of music in a real space at a given time. You have changed this record enormously—all for the better, but nonetheless it is not the same record as was delivered in December 1989.
I'll get right to the…
Our December 2004 issue honored 56 contemporary audio products that stood out from the pack during the course of the year. Of those 56, fully nine were phonograph components (footnote 1), including one—the Linn Sondek LP12 turntable—that's been on the market for something like a hundred years.
That news would come as a shock to the casual audiophile of only 20 years ago: Imagine going back in time and telling him that the LP will remain viable for decades to come. You might as well tell the car enthusiast of 1984 that Motor Trend will name the Morgan 4/4 Car of the Year for 2004, and…
Apart from that, the Loricraft PRC-3 hews solidly to the Percy Wilson model: a fast-spinning platter on which records are washed, and a quiet and apparently powerful vacuum device for drying them off a little at a time. But the Loricraft PRC-4, which is relatively new to these shores, has two noteworthy refinements: a cabinet with an attractive veneer of English ash, and a vacuum pump that's 40% more powerful than the one in the PRC-3, and that exhibits even greater immunity to overheating. The importer says the new pump makes the PRC-4 even more suitable for constant use, as by archivists…
I am reluctant to call any given transistor power amplifier a "best buy" or "breakthrough." From my talks with designers and other audiophiles, it is clear that the state of the art in power amplifiers is about to change. From where I stand, the Adcom GFA-555 is the first sample of this new wave. It is so clearly superior to past amplifiers in the low- to mid-priced range—not to mention most amplifiers two to three times its pric—that I can unhesitatingly recommend it for even the most demanding high end system.
The GFA-555 does everything well, and most things exceptionally…
J. Gordon Holt compared the Adcom GFA-55 with the the Electron Kinetics Eagle 2 in November 1985 (Vol.8 No.7):
After reading AHC's very positive review of the Adcom amplifier (Vol.8 No.5), I just had to audition it. Not just any old GFA-55, but the GFA-55 reviewed by AHC.
I was initially impressed, but not terribly. A half hour's listening, however, revealed a significantly better sound (by now I should know better than to listen to any amp during the first half hour), so I left it to cook overnight. (The Eagle 2 cooked too, just to make things fair; since then, I've found this…
Guy Lemcoe reviewed the Adcom GFA-555 in December 1989 (Vol.12 No.12):
My editor felt it was time to survey a handful of what might be called "entry-level" high-end amplifiers. These five amps, offering a glimpse of what high-end sound is all about, range in price from just under $400 to slightly less than $1200. Each, in its way, can serve as a vital link in a system which, with carefully chosen associated equipment, will reward the listener with a highly detailed, focused, emotionally involving musical experience. These amplifiers have proven popular with consumers and have received…
Sidebar: Lemcoe's System
The only variable in these listening tests was the particular amplifier under evaluation. All other system components remained constant, with the exception of the loudspeaker: I wanted to listen to each of the amps on both electrostatic and dynamic speakers. My Acoustat Twos satisfied the former need; a pair of Spica TC-50s took care of the latter. My front-end consists of the VPI Mk.II with an ET-2 arm/Talisman S combination. Tracking force is set at 1.8 grams, and loading at the preamp is 100 ohms. Straight Wire Maestro interconnect links TT and preamp. My…
John Atkinson wrote about the Adcom GFA-555 Mk.II in October 1990 (Vol.13 No.10):
Introduced in 1985, the original GFA-555 was the subject of a rave review in Vol.8 No.4 from the patrician Anthony H. Cordesman, who felt that its natural presentation of upper-octave detail and its "extraordinarily holographic" imaging might well make it a "legitimate rival" to the Krells and Audio Researches of this world. Three issues later, in Vol.8 No.7, the venerable JGH pretty much agreed that the '555 was something special, rivaling his then reference, the Electron Kinetics Eagle 2.
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