Last weekend, I went to see the bluesman Tom Petty for myself at an outdoor shed in Pittsburgh. I was accompanied by my nephew who’d never been to a rock concert before…
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When Sound + Vision splashed Tom Petty’s still remarkably vital mug across a recent cover it caught my attention. Inside, across 12 pages, they basically anointed his new record Mojo, as disc of the year. So Petty’s blues record, one that was a long time comin’, is the best album of 2010? No offense to Mike Mettler and Ken Richardson, both of whom I consider friends, but the whole thing seemed like a stretch to me.
August is here, which means it’s time for The Cable Company’s Annual “Summer Against Hunger” fundraiser. This marks the 15th year that The Cable Company collaborates with CARE, a leading humanitarian effort battling global poverty, with a dollar for dollar donation on purchases of sponsored products in the month of August.
The Cable Company donates a percentage of sales which are matched by sponsoring manufacturers. The 1:1 minimum donation is guaranteed by the generous participation of an anonymous audiophile donor, who is providing a funding match for total Cable Company, plus…
Well, all the cool kids are going to want one of these. Rega strikes back with their new RP-1 turntable.
For now, all I know is what you know. Click here for the pretty pictures, a nice new logo, and a list of appetizing features.
But I'll tell you this:
Rega's new RP-1 turntable might just be the perfect source for Stereophile's new monthly column, "The Entry Level." But, we'll see about that.
Things were all a bustle as the California Audio Show got underway at the Hilton in Emeryville, right below Berkeley and Oakland, and across the bay from San Francisco. Happily surprised by a number of last-minute exhibitors, promoters Ann and Constantine Soo had lost count at "something over 100 exhibitors/brands" and 34 exhibit rooms.
Equally last-minute were the online registrants who, at midnight on the 29th, had decided to save $5 in registration fees by taking advantage of the last-minute pre-show registration discount. With pre-registrants numbering at least 510, and…
Every new venue presents new acoustic challenges for exhibitors. Deniz Daldal of Design Interaction in Emerald Hills (part of unincorporated San Mateo county, near Redwood City), wondered if the bass ringing in his room was due to the cement in the floor and back walls. "We need more stuff," he told me, but there was no more stuff at his disposal.
Problems were also manifesting in the light fixtures, which were rattling due to the prodigious bass of the JBL DD-66000 Everest loudspeakers. Here, one of his associates, Grayson Wolf, is engaged in an act of creative desperation, trying…
On ground level in the Design Interaction room, a pair of JBL DD-66000 Everest loudspeakers ($60,000/pair) were especially imposing in the bass department. Driven by the Mark Levinson No.326 preamp ($10,000), Levinson No.512 SACD player ($15,000), a discontinued Levinson No.433 ($11,000) on the bass, a Pass Labs XVR01 for the crossover, and a Pass Labs XA30.5 30Wpc class-A amplifier on the horns, all connected by MIT cabling, the system had great authority. The presentation had the characteristically dark Levinson sound, with some curious extra bass resonance on the voice of mezzo…
Award-winning sound engineer Cookie Marenco had so much to offer audiophiles that it was hard to know where to start. Each day at 11 and 4, she is presenting live acoustic recording sessions with a host of different solo performers, duos and trio, complete with discussions on how to download files. Cookie promised that the recordings would be available for downloading from www.bluecoastrecords.com/freedownloads within 24 hours.
Key to this live-download miracle was the presence of Gus Skinas of the Super Audio Center. As a key participant in the early development of DSD, Gus was…
Given how enthused my fellow Stereophile editors were over the sound of the Legacy Audio speakers at this year's Axpona Show, I was really looking forward to hearing them. I was also looking forward to hearing the pricey, eye-catching Win Analog SET electronics, which had not fared well at a recent demo for the Bay Area Audiophile Society (BAAS).
Unfortunately, the mammoth Legacy Audio Whisper XD ($20,000/pair), which boasts 94dB sensitivity and comes complete with DSP-implemeneted crossover, was not a good match with the Win Analog V series amps ($75,000/each). Given their…
When I entered the Audio Note UK room, someone was in the midst of auditioning a CD of exotic Chinese instruments. The strings sounded beautiful, the highs lovely. On solo piano, the system had a very quiet, enticingly crystalline purity. Soprano Elly Ameling's voice sounded equally beautiful, the voice clear and radiant, even though her piano accompaniment was strangely bloated and over-emphasized. That was no doubt due to room problems that other exhibitors tried to tame with ASC Tube Traps.
Auditioned were the Audio Note CD4.1 x ($9500), Jinro 211 SE integrated amplifier ($21,…
Acoustic Science Corp's Chris Klein had his work cut out for him. His Tube Traps were in eight rooms at the show.
"We were slated to be in three rooms, but I knew people would encounter serious bass problems," he explained. "So I brought a whole truckload of products down from Eugene, Oregon, and I could have brought a second truck and dispensed all those products as well."
The main problems Chris encountered were bass loading in the smaller rooms and flutter echo in the larger ones. Most rooms, he explained, needed six to eight Tube Traps, many placed right alongside the…