OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG!
Sadly, I won't be able to get down to Princeton any time soon, but, if you're interested in 20th Century classical, experimental, avant-garde, drone, minimal synth, noise, and Fluxus-related stuff, now's the time to visit the Princeton Record Exchange!
We were saddened to hear of the passing, on December 10,of Audio Research founder William "Bill" Zane Johnson. Bill, who founded Audio Research in 1970 and became its Chairman Emeritus in 2008, is survived by his wife Nancy (left in photo) and family. We are preparing a tribute to Bill, to be published in the March 2012 issue of Stereophile, but meanwhile, we are reprinting here an interview Paul Messenger and I conducted with Bill that was originally published in the June 1983 issue of Hi-Fi News. (My thanks to HFN editor Paul Miller for permission. Stereophile's 1994 interview with Bill can…
Messenger: I think there was a crucial element behind the changeover from vacuum tube to solid-state: at last you could get rid of the output transformer, which was a known limiting factor in tube design. With the transistor, you at last have a device that you can directly couple to your loudspeakers, to control them better, if that's what you want to do. Alternatively, by coupling the transistor directly to the speaker, you're giving it a much harder time than ever the valve had with a transformer in the way.
Johnson: There are trade-offs with all technologies. For example, with a…
I've been reading a fascinating book, Leonard Shlain's The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image (New York: Viking, 1998). Shlain's thesis is that the invention of the alphabet was the cause of immense changes in primitive society, upsetting previously widespread norms of gender equality and horizontal (rather than hierarchical) social relations in general.
Shlain believes that the very way people thought was transformed by the alphabet's demands to break concepts down and express them reductively, linearly, and abstractly, rather than perceive them concretely…
The biggest news is that the m903 is not only a USB 2.0 device, and plug'n'play on a Macintosh up to 192kHz (to go above 96kHz with Windows requires installation of a driver, available free from Grace's website), but, equally as important, its USB module is an asynchronous-mode USB converter using technology licensed from Wavelength Audio that was developed by Gordon Rankin—the same technology behind Ayre Acoustics' well-regarded QB-9 USB-only DAC. As one would expect, Grace's implementation of the USB upgrade is impressive: the m903's USB port is isolated from the audio ground, to prevent…
Sidebar: Contacts
Arcam, Pembroke Avenue, Waterbeach, Cambridge CB25 9QR, England, UK. Tel: (44) (0)1223-203200. Fax: (44) (0)1223-863384. Web: www.arcam.co.uk. US distributor: American Audio & Video. Tel: (866) 916-4667. Web: www.americanaudiovideo.com.
Grace Design, 2434 30th Street, Boulder, CO 80301; PO Box 204, Boulder, CO 80306-0204. Tel: (303) 443-7454. Fax: (303) 444-4634. Web: www.gracedesign.com.
Howard Leight by Honeywell, Sperian Hearing Protection, LLC, 7828 Waterville Road, San Diego, CA 92154. Tel: (800) 430-5490. Fax: (401) 232-3110. Web: www.howardleight.com…
For the musically prolific, releasing too many records too close together can be problematic or worse. Just because you can make a record every week in your home studio doesn't mean you should. The impulse to commit every golden thought and performance to tape without self-editing or even pausing to reflect screams narcissism run amok. Asking listeners—even dedicated fans—to then buy and spend time listening to half-baked nonsense that might have become something, given more time and care, is a sure career destroyer. There's truth in the old saw about building demand, avoiding saturation,…
Happy New Year! The January 2012 issue of Stereophile is now on newsstands. In this issue, you’ll find in-depth reviews of loudspeakers from TAD, Sonus Faber, Nola, and Dynaudio; amplification components from Sutherland, Fi, and Anthem; D/A processors from Weiss, Bel Canto, dCS, and Musical Fidelity; power conditioning from Audience, AudioQuest, and Shunyata; and CD players from Emotiva and Sony.
In “As We See It,” Bob Deutsch offers five ways to determine whether a “tweak” is worth our time and money. In “Letters,” readers tell us why they listen, and offer memories of audio…
If you follow jazz, you know that Ella & Louis, the 1956 Verve album of duets with Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong, is one of the most delightful vocal recordings ever.
If you're an audiophile, you've read that Chad Kassem, proprietor of Acoustic Sounds, in Salina, Kansas, has bought the finest vinyl-pressing equipment, hired some of the hottest engineers to modify and operate it, and come up with a new line of LPs called QRP, for Quality Records Pressings.
One of his first QRP products is a 45rpm, 200-gram pressing of Ella & Louis. If you're a jazz-following…
I must admit that, for a long time, I found it difficult to accept the idea that a major portion of one's audio budget should be spent on the preamplifier. Speakers, yes—they produce the sound; amps drive the speakers, so they're important. And source components? Well, everyone knows it's garbage in/garbage out. But a preamp? Even the name suggests something that's not quite the real thing, like pre-school, pre-med, or premature. Unlike amplifiers, they don't have to contend with loads that sometimes approach a short circuit, and heat dissipation is not normally a problem. What's the big deal…
