That's what happened with Finite-Elemente's equipment racks and component feet. The first time I heard the claims of sonic improvements, I didn't give them much thought, even when they were validated by the generally sane Allen Perkins…
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About once a week, I hear about some new audio accessory heralded by breathless claims of stunning performance gains that "you've got to hear for yourself." Most of these I ignore, and of those I do consider, nearly all wither when subjected to logical engineering analysis. Every so often, however, one of these wonder widgets finds its way into my system.
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Pagode Master Reference Hd07 Equipment Rack: Four-shelf audio equipment rack with integral vibration damping. High-strength aluminum uprights, Canadian maple shelves and supports, stainless-steel hardware.
Cera Component Isolation Feet: Three-section component feet made of composite structures of high-hardness ceramic and aluminum (Ceraball) or stainless steel (Cerapuc, Cerabase).
Dimensions: Pagode HD07 rack: 34" (860mm) W by 33" (850mm) H by 23" (590mm) D. Shelf: 26" (665mm) W by 18" (465mm) D. Load capacities: upper shelves, 130 lbs (60kg); bottom shelf…
Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment
Analog Source: VPI HR-X turntable & tonearm, Lyra Titan cartridge.
Digital Sources: Simaudio Andromeda, Cary CD303/300 CD players; EMM Labs CDSD SACD/CD transport, DCC2 preamplifier-processor.
Preamplification: VTL TL-7.5 Reference, Placette, Sonic Euphoria line stages; Halcro dm10 preamplifier; Ensemble Fonobrio, Sutherland PhD phono preamplifiers.
Power Amplifiers: Halcro dm58, VTL Ichiban, Mark Levinson No.20.6 monoblocks; VTL S-400.
Loudspeakers: Thiel CS6.
Cables: Shunyata Antares & Orion, Synergistic Research Designers'…
Now that we've gained a basic understanding of speaker setup, cable dressing and hygiene, and electrical theory, it's time to consider where and how to site your equipment. I've seen all sorts of weird, jerry-rigged shelves and poor component placement, some of the worst in pricey systems whose owners really should have known better. But you can achieve a stunning level of improvement from a haphazardly set-up system---even an entry-level one---when it's rearranged so as to let the components breathe.
How do components breathe? Well, for starters, let's understand that the end table,…
"Why do rhythms and melodies, which are composed of sound, resemble the feelings; while this is not the case for tastes, colors, or smells?"---Aristotle
I claim no originality for the following idea, which could possibly answer Aristotle's question (footnote 1); I first saw it expounded in a letter from one John Lambshead, published in the English magazine Hi-Fi Review (footnote 2). Nevertheless, it ties in so closely with my own experience of digital audio that it struck me like a satori.
Before continuing, I should explain what is meant by the word "fractal." In a nutshell,…
This fact was brought home to me some eight years ago, when I bought Ry Cooder's Bop Till You Drop CD (Warner Bros. 03358-2), which was recorded in 1979 with an early 3M digital machine. The opening guitar figures to "I think it's going to work out fine" have a distinctively comb'n'papery sound; the somewhat granular background noise can be heard to "pump," changing its tone quality with the level of the guitar---a classic description of quantization distortion, the distortion that accompanies signals that have been converted to digital with too few bits. That 3M machine used 16-bit encoding…
Hurt not the earth, neither the sea nor trees...—Revelation 7:3
Not long ago, my wife and I were sitting around the kitchen table—actually one of those huge, empty cable spools, which we stole from a construction site, brought home, and decorated with a candle in a Chianti bottle—thumbing through our old copies of Mother Jones, The Nation, and Listener and talking about how much we miss Al Gore. After a while, the conversation shifted to our jobs, and as I scratched my goatee and adjusted the beret that covers my bald spot, I wondered aloud: "What else do you suppose I could do to annoy…
But the A3.2's remarkable clarity and extended top end created something of an obstacle to enjoying indifferently recorded rock. On World Party's Bang (Ensign/Chrysalis 321991 2)—which is only moderately badly recorded, and not terrible by any means—the crisper guitar lines, cymbals, and even vocal sibilants were harder to take than with my usual single-ended triodes or vintage Naim amps.
Nor was the A3.2 any better than average in its ability to keep bass notes from pulling back on and even lagging behind the beat—which is to say, even allowing for the Quads' own shortcoming in this…
To be blunt, the distinction was lost on some people, who were sure they wanted something bigger, more powerful, and more expensive than the Nait. Of course, looked at another way, it's equally fair to say that a lot of malcontents like me bought the Nait just because it went against the grain. In that sense, it also helped that it was ugly, and it helped that the 16Wpc Nait was "underpowered."
And there you have it: The first pre-SET blow against the empire of excessive power, itself another bit of oily residue from the 1960s and '70s. That era left some people believing that…
When it comes to delivering audio/video programming to the home, there's no substitute for bandwidth. Typically measured in megahertz (MHz) for analog signals or megabits per second (Mbps) for digital datastreams, the amount of bandwidth your system can access determines how much programming you can receive and at what level of quality.
Bandwidth can be piped into the home using a variety of media, including telephone, coaxial, and fiber-optic cable as well as a rooftop antenna. But the most effective and practical way for most people to access a lot of bandwidth today is with a…