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The Gospel According to Mark Levinson

Nothing at 41 E. 62nd Street in Manhattan offers any clue as to what sort of business that takes place inside. The waiting room feels vaguely monastic: straw mats on the floor, a row of shoes near the door. Like a day spa offering acupuncture and shiatsu. There's no corporate name, no logo, no mission statement.

A clock running six and a half hours late hangs above a receptionist's unoccupied desk. An enormous white dog is asleep under framed pictures of old blues artists: Son Thomas, Etta Baker, Pernell King, Cora Fluker, Big Joe Williams.

An energetic young woman named Elizabeth…

The Gospel According to Mark Levinson Page 2

That's the essence of his famous "boxes" speech, one that might be called the Levinson Leitmotif. It goes like this: "Most [dealers and manufacturers] aren't selling musical instruments; they're selling boxes. And what they need to do to stay in business is to sell more boxes. That's why audio products have these ridiculous revisions and upgrades—to keep the customer coming back. Manufacturers exploit the customer's basic insecurity. They need to keep him feeling that really satisfying performance is just a step away, the next model up, whatever it is that's just out of his reach. The…

Ulrik Poulsen and his Amazing Alpha-Core Cables

Jonathan Scull: How long have you been making cables, Ulrik?

Ulrik Poulsen: It's actually close to three years now...It's a spinoff from other products we make. Actually, Alpha-Core manufactures magnetic cores and various materials and components for transformers...And we have a daughter company called Tortran that manufactures toroidal transformers. Anyway, five years ago we introduced a new product called Laminax. It's a combination of copper and aluminum with various kinds of dielectrics. This is laminated together continuously in various fashions to produce a material that's used as…

Nelson-Reed 1204 subwoofer

I was so impressed by the Nelson-Reed 8-04/B loudspeaker's low-end range that I seriously doubted the add-on subwoofers could add enough of significance to be cost-effective.

I was wrong.

Two of the subwoofers were provided, along with the necessary electronic crossover unit. Each 1204 unit contains four 12" woofers in a very solid sealed enclosure, with two facing to the front and two facing the rear. The electronic crossover has three controls, besides the AC power switch: a hardwire (footnote 1) bypass switch, a stereo/mono switch, and a subwoofer level control. In the stereo…

Nelson-Reed 1204 subwoofer Specifications

Sidebar: Specifications

Description: Floor-standing dynamic subwoofer system. Drivers: four 12" cones. Nominal impedance: 8 ohms, 6 ohms minimum. Frequency response: 16–65Hz ±3dB. Sensitivity: 93dB, 16 to 60Hz. Maximum acoustic output: 120dB.
Dimensions: 39" H by 18" W by 18" D. Weight: 120 lbs.
Price: $1200 each (1988); no longer available (2012).

Model AC-1204 electronic crossover: Crossover frequency: 62Hz. Crossover slopes: 6dB initial, 18dB final. Gain: 1dB.
Dimensions: 19" W by 2" H by 10" D.
Price: $570 (1988); no longer available (2012).

Common to…

Music in the Round #56

Late in May, Dolby Laboratories held a two-day press event, Fidelity Forum 2.0, to announce a new feature added to the production tools included in their flagship codec, TrueHD. While I could not attend, Jason Victor Serinus reported all the details for Stereophile.

Briefly, while TrueHD has always supported 24-bit/96kHz resolution, the great majority of Blu-ray discs carry audio of no higher resolution than 24-bit/48kHz-barely better than what's found on CDs. That these audio tracks typically sound better than CD, may be due to better attention to production efforts, the use of the 24-…

Music in the Round #56 Page 2

Between the Channel 3 group and the right handle are the fuse post, AC switch, and IEC power connection. Between the Channel 1 group and the left handle are 12V loop-through jacks, a switch for selecting the turn-on option, and a control for Turn On Threshold. I chose to use the audio-controlled, automatic on-off option, and it worked flawlessly.

I switched the power cord, XLR interconnects, and speaker cables to the Halo A 31 from the McIntosh MC303 three-channel amp, which fairly loomed over the new arrival. I switched on the A 31 and just lived with it for a week or so, listening…

Music in the Round #56 Contacts

Sidebar: Contacts

Dolby Laboratories, Inc., 100 Potrero Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94103-4813. Tel: (415) 558-0200. Fax: (415) 645-4000. Web: www.dolby.com

MSR Acoustics, Inc., 61 Galli Drive, Suite A, Novato, CA 94949. Tel: (800) 497-2087, (415) 883-8053. Fax: (415) 883-8147. Web: www.msr-inc.com

Parasound Products, Inc., 2250 McKinnon Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94124. Tel: (415) 397-7100. Fax: (415) 397-0144. Web: www.parasound.com

Loudspeaker Pioneer Bill Hecht Passes at 89

A press release issued by MSE Audio September 13 announced that William (Bill) Hecht, a died Tuesday September 11 in New York after a brief illness. He was 89 years old. In 1955 Hecht founded United Speaker Systems, an OEM manufacturer of speakers and related electronics, and also founded Phase Technology Corporation with his son Ken. (See Stereophile's positive review of the Phase Technology PC80 speaker here.) Phase Technology was later acquired by MSE Audio.

Hecht's contributions to the consumer electronics industry were numerous. He invented the true soft-dome tweeter (patented in…

Mark Levinson's Milestone Year

Mark Levinson, born December 11, 1946, celebrates an important anniversary in 2002. Exactly 30 years ago he jogged onto the playing field of high-end audio, so early in the game that fans, then few and far between, could count the players on their fingers.

The high-fidelity industry seems a logical home for a jazz musician like Levinson, who once envisioned a career playing flugelhorn and double bass, but his voyage into audio was a detour that could be said to have begun at age 22, when he took a job working on a film about Joan Baez. "It was a joy to find people willing to pay me to do…