Playing high-quality CDs and SACDs through the DVD-2900 revealed it to be a poised and articulate sonic performer. It projected a very good sense of musical momentum, especially in such dramatically scaled works as Gordon…
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The disc-loading system is conventional, but table-of-contents loadup and track-access times are a bit on the slow side. One peculiarity is that you don't seem to be able to use the front-panel "next track" button to page through a CD's tracks unless Play has already been pushed. Apart from these minor quibbles, the DVD-2900 performed its tasks without fuss or complaint.
Sidebar: "Cold Cold Heart" SACD vs CD
When John Marks told me about his experience with Come Away With Me, I had just bought the SACD from Acoustic Sounds. I already had the CD, so I compared the two using a Musical Fidelity Tri-Vista SACD player. John was correct, if there was a difference between the CD and the two-channel SACD, it was beyond my ability to discern. I therefore examined the data on the two discs, using the Adobe Audition program running on a PC.
I ripped the audio data for "Cold Cold Heart" from the CD using Exact Audio Copy and upsampled it to a 24-bit file…
TOM WAITS: Beautiful Maladies
Island 314-524 519-2 (CD). 1998. Various prods., engs. AAD? TT: 74:00
Performance *****
Sonics ****?
Island 314-524 519-2 (CD). 1998. Various prods., engs. AAD? TT: 74:00
Performance *****
Sonics ****?
Born in a moving taxicab (at least that's his story), famed for his greasy, growling vaudevillian piano-player performances, and now an actor who can tattoo the fly-scarfing Renfield in Dracula with eerie memorability, the many facets of Tom Waits can be summed up in one rare appellation: genius.
Of course, I'd put William Faulkner in that same category, which doesn't do a damned thing for his readability. Waits is similarly…
The Mark Levinson No.30 has enjoyed a continuing residence in Class A of Stereophile's "Recommended Components" listing since it was reviewed in our February 1992 issue (Vol.15 No.2). Madrigal includes the No.30 in its "Reference" series, by which they mean that the unit will not become obsolete. Thus, when new technology became available, the No.30.5 update was introduced, consisting of a single digital-receiver printed circuit board to replace the original's three boards, and a new digital-filtering board. This revision was favorably reviewed by Stereophile in October 1994 (Vol.17 No.10…
It's easy for reviewers to exaggerate the degree of sonic differences they hear, so don't infer from this description that the No.30.6 "blew away" the '30.5. It didn't. In absolute terms, the differences were small—but they were still important. I recommend '30.5 owners upgrade their processors as soon as budget and the factory's schedule allow. And this is without considering the fact that the new version decodes high-sample-rate material.
As I mentioned in this issue's "As We See It," I was working on the next Stereophile CD project during the preparation of this Follow-Up: 88.2kHz-…
Sidebar 1: Associated Equipment
Digital sources: Mark Levinson No.31.5 CD transport; California Audio Labs CL-20 and Denon DVD-5000 DVD players; Nagra-D and Tascam DA-38/Prismsound MR-2024T digital recorders; Madrigal, Illuminations Orchid, and Canare 110 ohm AES/EBU cables; dCS 972 to upsample CDs to 96kHz and convert the Nagra's and Tascam/Prismsound's 96kHz and 88.2kHz dual-AES/EBU data outputs to single, double-speed AES/EBU format.
Comparison components: Mark Levinson No.30.5, Wadia 27ix, Muse Model 296.
Line preamplifier: Mark Levinson No.32.
Power amplifiers: Mark…
Sidebar 2: Measurements
The No.30.6 didn't invert polarity from either set of outputs (the XLRs are wired with pin 2 hot). Its unbalanced source impedance was a very low 5.5 ohms in the midband; balanced was 14 ohms. Maximum output level was 2V unbalanced, 4V balanced, and the channel matching was within an excellent 0.05dB across the band. Crosstalk was unmeasurable.
The frequency response was essentially flat across the audioband from both outputs, while the de-emphasis correction added an imperceptible (-0.05dB) swayback in the mid-treble. The processor locked on to all sample…
I usually test D/A linearity by measuring the analog output level with a narrow bandpass filter while a dithered, 16-bit 500Hz tone is swept down from 0dBFS to -120dBFS. The No.30.6 performed almost perfectly on this test, so I raised the bar, driving it with dithered 24-bit data down to -140dBFS. The result is shown in fig.3: the error is less than 1dB down to -130dBFS! Basically, this processor can extract music from the roots of the universe. With its superb linearity and low noise floor, it comes as no surprise that the '30.6's reproduction of an undithered 1kHz tone at -90.31dBFS (fig.4…
Distortion was very low, there being just a trace (0.001%) of third harmonic apparent with a full-level 50Hz tone (not shown). Similarly, the Levinson's performance on the punishing high-frequency intermodulation test was excellent (fig.6).
Fig.6 Mark Levinson No.30.6, HF intermodulation spectrum, DC-22kHz, 19+20kHz at 0dBFS, 100k ohm load (linear frequency scale, 20dB/vertical div.).
In fig.7, I have tried not only to reveal the harmonics present in the Levinson's output, but also to show how close it comes to state-of-the-art resolution. The blue trace in this graph is a…
Sonus Faber was founded in 1981 by Franco Serblin. Real wood has always featured strongly in the construction of this company's evolving range of costly, compact loudspeaker systems (footnote 1). The first was called the Parva, now in its FM4 form. This was followed by the Minima, a Tablette-sized model. The upmarket Electa came through in the last few years, followed by the Amator-Electa. This series increases in size and weight with each new introduction—for example, the Minima weighed 6kg, the Electa 12kg, the latest Extrema a massive 40kg or 88 lbs.
The Extrema represents one of the…