search

After an exhausting but educational day at NYC’s In Living Stereo setting up my new Rega RB101 tonearm with the Audio Technica AT95E phono cartridge, I hailed a taxi while balancing the turntable on one hand. Thirty minutes later, the yellow cab stopped at the doorstep of my quaint Brooklyn duplex, which I share with three other roommates, a Chartreux cat named Larry, and three friendly Pakistani families.

Upon my return home with the P1, the roommates were ecstatic. Jared analyzed, “I dig its minimalist…

For many people, the Internet means access to email, social networking sites, weblogs, forums, countless apps and other crap. For me, the Internet will inevitably mean Computer Audio.

And when the time comes for me to dive into Computer…

What a bizarre marriage it was, then, to pair the new Infinity Composition Prelude P-FR…

I auditioned the Composition system as an entire Home Theater package (with the matching center-channel and surround loudspeakers) with three A/V receivers and one A/V amplifier: the Onkyo TX-SV919THX, Yamaha RX-V590, Pioneer VSX-D704S, and the Arcam Xeta One, respectively. For pure music-listening, I drove the Preludes in my music room with Audio Research VT150 tubed monoblock power amplifiers and an Audio Research LS5 Mk.II preamp.

The digital front-end was a Mark Levinson No.31 Reference CD transport feeding the Spectral SDR-2000 Pro processor (HDCD-equipped…

JA performed the measurements, supplying me with the results after I had finished my auditioning. The Prelude's B-weighted sensitivity measured 95.5dB—slightly lower than the claimed 96dB figure. Still, 95.5dB is an amazingly high sensitivity, particularly for a loudspeaker as flat in response as the Prelude (as we'll see later). Looking at the impedance-magnitude and phase-angle plots (fig.1), we can see that the Prelude's impedance is closer to 5 ohms nominal than the specified 6 ohms nominal. The impedance dips to 4 ohms (at 1.2kHz) and is less than 6 ohms…

"You're listening to the Jadis SE300B amplifiers with the Infinity Composition speakers?" a certain Stereophile reviewer asked, with a touch of disapproval in his voice.

"Yes, why not. Very efficient. Recommended for use with amplifiers with as little as 10 watts of power. What's more, the Jadis amplifiers and the Infinity speakers look very elegant together."

"Well, I don't know. But those Jadis amplifiers are very soigné, shall we say, and they would seem to demand equally refined speakers…

Description: Four-way dynamic loudspeaker with integral woofer amplifier. Driver complement: 12" woofer, four 5.25" lower-midrange units, two 4" upper-midrange drivers, 1" soft-dome tweeter. Crossover frequencies: 110Hz, 350Hz, and 3kHz. Frequency response: 25Hz–20kHz ($*–6dB at 25Hz); 35Hz–20kHz ±2dB. Sensitivity: 96dB/2.83V/1m (anechoic). Nominal impedance: 6 ohms. Amplifier requirements: 10–150W.
Dimensions: 7.5" W by 19.5" D by 54.75" H. Weight: 78 lbs each.
Serial numbers of units reviewed: 01082L/R.
Price: $3000/pair (1995); no longer available…

I listened to music using my Rega P3-24 turntable, NAD C 515BEE CD player, Parasound Zphono•USB phono preamplifier, NAD C 316BEE integrated amplifier, and Kimber Kable 8VS speaker cables and PBJ interconnects—a pretty rad system, if I do say so myself. The DefTech StudioMonitor 45s were secured with small globs of Blu-Tack to 24"-tall Target stands, while the components rested on my Polycrystal equipment rack. Source components and amplifiers were plugged into a Furutech e-TP60 power conditioner, itself plugged into a Furutech GTX wall receptacle via an AudioQuest NRG-…

I examined the performance of one of the DefTech speakers with DRA Labs' MLSSA system. I used a calibrated DPA 4006 microphone to measure the speaker's frequency response in the farfield, and an Earthworks QTC-40 mike for the nearfield responses. I estimated the SM 45's voltage sensitivity at 86dB(B)/2.83V/m, which is typical for a small speaker like this but well below the specified 90dB. The nominal impedance is specified at 8 ohms; while the plot of impedance magnitude against frequency (fig.1, solid trace) remains above 8 ohms in the upper midrange and treble…