Dunlavy: No. I think there will always be separate speaker/amplifier/cable components. I do think, for those leaning toward acquiring the most accurate…
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Atkinson: Any sort of active speaker—by "active," I mean a speaker that includes an amplifier and/or, as in the Meridian models, a digital processor—has had an uphill commercial struggle in the United States. This is, I believe, because it attempts to change the paradigm of what the owner's system should comprise. Do you see the days of having a separate amplifier, a separate D/A converter, and a separate loudspeaker, as being numbered?
With Super Audio CD and DVD-Audio four years old as established media this fall, the two-decades-old Compact Disc medium is still well-established as the primary carrier for recorded music. (Yes, it is experiencing a significant threat from downloadable music files, but that is outside my bailiwick as a hardware reviewer.) Stereophile has therefore been paying attention to the high-performance one-box CD players that are available. In May, I wrote about my positive experiences with the $2950 Ayre CX-7 and Brian Damkroger favorably reviewed the $2999 GamuT CD1, after having followed up his…
Not that the CDP-10 was any slouch when it came to soundstaging. During the auditioning period I was preparing test mixes of a new recording I had made in May of male-voice choir Cantus in the Washington Pavilion for the Arts and Sciences in downtown Sioux Falls, South Dakota. I had used three pairs of mikes—my usual mix of ORTF cardioids and spaced omnis—but this time with an additional pair of omnis farther back from the choir, to give me the option of using more of the delicious hall acoustic in the mix. I made my original mixing choices playing back the 24-bit data from my Sonic…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: Integrated CD player with HDCD decoding, 8x-oversampling digital filter, DC trigger output, IR control input and output, and remote control. Analog outputs: 1 pair unbalanced (RCA), 1 pair balanced (XLR). Digital outputs: 1 S/PDIF (RCA). Measured maximum output level: 3.96V RMS at 1kHz (balanced), 1.98V RMS (unbalanced). Frequency response: DC-20kHz, +0.1dB, -1.4dB. S/N ratio: 100dB. Channel separation: <100dB at 1kHz. THD+N: <90dB at 1kHz. Power consumption: 18W. Wow & flutter: "below measurement limits." DC offset: ±0.005V.
Dimensions…
Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment
Digital sources: Mark Levinson No.31.5 CD transport & No.30.6 D/A processor; dCS 972 upsampler; Ayre CX-7, Musical Fidelity Nu-Vista 3D CD players; Musical Fidelity Tri-Vista SACD player; Technics DVD-A10 DVD-Audio player.
Preamplification: Mark Levinson No.380S.
Power amplifiers: Mark Levinson No.33H monoblocks.
Loudspeakers: Dynaudio Confidence C4, EarthWorks Sigma 6.2, Monitor Audio Silver S2.
Cables: Datalinks: Kimber Illuminations Orchid AES/EBU, AudioQuest SVD-4 S/PDIF. Interconnect: Madrigal CZ Gel-1 (Classé, balanced), Ayre…
Sidebar 3: Measurements
At 1.98V, the Classé CDP-10's maximum output level at 1kHz from the unbalanced outputs basically conformed to the 2V CD standard, this exactly doubling from the balanced jacks, as expected. Neither output inverted signal polarity, the XLRs being wired with pin 2 hot, and the output impedance was respectably low, at 47.8 ohms (unbalanced) and 95.1 ohms (balanced). (Both figures include the series resistance of 6' of interconnect cable.) Error correction was superb, the player coping with gaps in the data spiral of up to 1.5mm in length without audible dropouts.…
There's nothing groundbreaking about the technology included in Naim's new $22,400, two-box, remote-controllable, top-of-the-line NAC 552 preamplifier. Still, the inclusion of two sets of RCA input jacks is a departure from Naim's tradition of DIN jacks, and the NAC 552's programmability is unusual for a high-end two-channel audio product. And you can order RCA output jacks at no extra cost, which is how my review sample was configured.
Naim has always made a big issue of the quality of the power supplied to their electronics, and this preamplifier is no exception. The NAC 552PS…
According to design team leader Roy George, careful listening has convinced Naim's designers that microphonics have a profound effect on sound quality, even in solid-state gear—which won't be surprising to most Stereophile readers. After careful listening, they've concluded that suspending the circuit boards on springs has an audibly positive effect. Removing four transit screws allows the four boards, arranged in vertical pairs and separated by pillars, to float on spring suspensions. The boards are attached to heavy brass plates that add sufficient mass to lower the resonant frequency of…
Tighten Up!
I started with the NAC 552's volume control at approximately 10 o'clock and put Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon SACD in the dCS Verdi's drawer. The familiar heartbeats shook the room with what struck me as noticeably tighter and more controlled definition than I'd become accustomed to through my reference Hovland HP-100 preamplifier.
I started with the NAC 552's volume control at approximately 10 o'clock and put Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon SACD in the dCS Verdi's drawer. The familiar heartbeats shook the room with what struck me as noticeably tighter and more controlled definition than I'd become accustomed to through my reference Hovland HP-100 preamplifier.
Then the first blast hit with hurricane force. Ten o'clock was loud—way louder than my Hovland, or what I was expecting, and way too loud to tolerate. Below 9 o'clock was still rockin' loud, and throughout the review period, no source…
When I compared the Dark Side of the Moon SACD directly out of the dCS and then through the Naim, the preamp won hands down: more weight, more punch, more body, and, mostly, more control. Purists would argue that the preamp was "adding" these things, but what I think I heard was the NAC 552 allowing the power amp to get a much better grip on the speakers from top to bottom. If there was a slight loss of transparency, it was so minor I didn't notice it with this kind of music.
I dragged out the UK Decca box of the Beethoven Piano Concertos with Vladimir Askenazy, Georg Solti, and the…