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The Well-Tempered Arm More RH

Robert Harley wrote about the Well-Tempered Black Arm in April 1993 (Vol.16 No.4):

The Black Well-Tempered Arm is very similar to the original WTA, but with a few changes. The Black Arm features a thicker aluminum (instead of stainless steel) arm tube, a new headshell that has two mounting holes for a more secure mechanical connection to the cartridge, and a single large stainless-steel counterweight. The wiring is also updated, and the terminal block is fitted with higher-quality RCA jacks.

The Black Arm can be bought separately for $900. Owners of the original WTA can have…

The Well-Tempered Arm Robert Harley's 1993 Reference System

Sidebar 1: Robert Harley's 1993 Reference System

The playback system used in all of these evaluations consisted of an Audio Research LS2 line-stage preamplifier fed by John Curl's Vendetta Research SCP2B phono stage and an AudioQuest AQ7000 cartridge. Power amplifiers were VTL 225W Deluxe monoblocks or a Mark Levinson No.23.5, driving Hales System Two Signatures, with and without a Muse Model 18 subwoofer. Interconnects were primarily Expressive Technologies IC-2 in the phono stage and between the LS2 and the power amplifiers. AC power was conditioned by a Tice Power Block and Titan.—…

The Well-Tempered Arm Specifications

Sidebar 2: Specifications

Description: Viscous-damped, unipivot tonearm. Effective mass: 10 grams.
Price: $500 (1984); $900 (1993); $1007–$2112 (2006).
Manufacturer: Well-Tempered Lab, Costa Mesa, CA (1984). Transparent Audio, Rt. 202, Box 117, Hollis, ME 04042 (1993). Stanalog, Inc., PO Box 671, Hagaman, NY 12086. Tel: (518) 843-3070. (2006). Web: stanalog.stores.yahoo.net/index.html

Meridian D600 digital active loudspeaker

In audiophile circles, it is the "Stuart"—electronics designer Bob Stuart of the Boothroyd-Stuart collaboration—who has received most recognition. The contribution of industrial designer and stylist Allen Boothroyd has gone relatively unremarked. Yet as I unpacked Meridian's D600 "Digital Active" loudspeaker, I was struck by Boothroyd's ability to make the humdrum—a rectangular box loudspeaker—seem more than just that. The man has one hell of an eye for proportion. From the first Orpheus loudspeaker of 1975, through the Celestion SL6 and 'SL600 (where AB did the industrial and package design…

Meridian D600 digital active loudspeaker Page 2

I experimented only slightly in siting the D600s. Basically, as with other designs intended for out-in-the-room placement, there are only a limited number of positions in my 20' by 16' listening room where speakers will achieve the optimum balance between precise soundstaging and a neutral transition between the upper bass and lower midrange. The D600s ended up 42" away from the (longer) rear wall (which is faced with books and records) and 6' away from the sidewalls, toed-in toward the listening seat, which is some 8' distant.

The sidewalls have bookcases at the midpoint between the…

Meridian D600 digital active loudspeaker Page 3

One note on the D600's bass is in order. In common with other high-order-LF-alignment speakers, the body of its midbass tone seems to lag a little behind the initial edge of the sound of double-bass and bass drum when compared with a good sealed-box design. This can be alleviated by switching the "Q" to the "Cut" position, though I then felt the balance to lack weight. Shelving up the "Bass" control to "+1" gave, then, a better midbass quality in combination with the "Cut" setting, but still at the expense of ultimate low-bass weight at normal listening levels. The exact bass balance will be…

Meridian D600 digital active loudspeaker Specifications

Sidebar 1: Specifications

Description: "Two-and-a-half-way," reflex-loaded, floor-standing loudspeaker with full infra-red remote control, three integral 70W amplifiers, line-level crossover, tone controls, and 4x-oversampling digital filter with 16-bit D/A converter. Inputs: two analog (balanced/unbalanced) via phono sockets; two digital (S/PDIF standard) via coaxial cable/phono sockets, one digital input via an EIAJ optical connector. Analog sensitivity: 0dBm (775mV). Analog input impedance: 10k ohms. Communications, a) with Meridian 207 CD player and 204 FM tuner, and b) with other…

Meridian D600 digital active loudspeaker System Context

Sidebar 2: System Context

Source components consisted of the Linn Troika/Ekos/LP12 analog record player sitting on a Sound Organisation table, a Revox A77 open-reel recorder, and a Meridian 207 CD player, the latter driving the "Master" D600 from its digital and "Comm." outputs via the supplied Meridian cable, with the "Slave" D600 daisychained to the first, again with Meridian's own cable. (Though the D600 has an optical input, I didn't have long enough optical connectors to use these inputs with another CD transport; the 207 CD player, reviewed by Thomas J. Norton in Vol.11 No.11, only…

Meridian D600 digital active loudspeaker Measurements

Sidebar 3: Measurement

Looking first at the D600's response on the tweeter axis to a 25µs rectangular pulse (fig.1, plotted over a 5ms window), this can be seen to be overlaid with a high degree of ultrasonic ringing, due to the metal-dome tweeter's primary "oil-can" resonance being excited by the wide-bandwidth test signal. Of very high Q or "quality factor," this resonance is still ringing more than 2ms after the stimulus has been and gone, but whether it will produce audible effects downband on music signal is open to question. Certainly with CD replay, the band-limited nature of the…

Acarian Alón IV loudspeaker

My first encounter with the Acarian Alón IV was at the 1992 Las Vegas WCES. I was doing the show report dealing with speakers, and there was already enough advance buzz about the Alón IV that I put it on my "Speakers I Must Listen To" list. And listen I did, at some length, and came away impressed with their open quality and well-defined soundstage. In discussing reviewing assignments with John Atkinson, I told him that the Alón IV was one of the speakers I wouldn't mind spending some time with. (The list also includes the WAMM, the MartinLogan Statement, and the Apogee Grand, but I'm not…