His debut CD on Blue Note, When the Heart Emerges Glistening, is co-produced by Moran, who heard him play and urged the label’s…
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Every few years, a young jazz musician comes along and sets off some buzz. Usually, the excitement soon cools—the kid can’t sustain the initial stir, he turns out to have more technique than depth—but now and then, it turns out there’s something really going on. In the past decade, Jason Moran has been the most prominent of these upstarts who’s the real thing. The latest, I’m pretty sure, is a trumpeter, just shy of 29 years old, named Ambrose Akinmusire.
Audio reviewers are kinda slutty. Not sexually, of course, but in the way we promiscuously go through equipment. Like the most popular girl in school, or Tiger Woods, we have our choice of any hot thing we want, whenever we want it. Heck, reviewers don't even have to pick up equipment at bars or clubs: the stuff is delivered right to our homes. We use the gear for a few months, then send it packing once the next hottie comes over to play in our room.
One of the dangers of being a sexually promiscuous person, besides strange spots on your privates, is that it can lead to a perpetual state…
That's the Power of Love
Setup was very straightforward: Lug the beast into place, attach the speaker and interconnect cables, select the mode and input, and switch on the main power toggle on the rear panel. The SA-103 turns on in muted standby mode. You then press the Mute button on the front panel; the SA-103 will now play music, but in class-A/B mode. You can also use Mute to swap out input and speaker cables while the amp is on—a nice tool for reviewers. To switch to class-A, hit the button so labeled. I listened to the SA-103 only in balanced stereo mode.
Setup was very straightforward: Lug the beast into place, attach the speaker and interconnect cables, select the mode and input, and switch on the main power toggle on the rear panel. The SA-103 turns on in muted standby mode. You then press the Mute button on the front panel; the SA-103 will now play music, but in class-A/B mode. You can also use Mute to swap out input and speaker cables while the amp is on—a nice tool for reviewers. To switch to class-A, hit the button so labeled. I listened to the SA-103 only in balanced stereo mode.
Plinius intends for…
The Plinius could also give me hell if I wanted it. My wife loves The Knife, but it has taken me a long time to get into the band's sound. I really like their songs and production, but they consistently use octavizers and pitch shifters on the voice of the already shrill-sounding Karin Dreijer-Andersson, and it gives me the willies—she sounds a bit like the Linda Blair character in The Exorcist and makes Bjîrk sound like Leontyne Price. The Plinius actually helped me better understand and appreciate what The Knife was going for in the chaotic studio treatment they gave the vocals on Deep…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: Solid-state, two-channel power amplifier with an output stage that can be operated in either class-A or class-A/B. Maximum output power (both channels driven, 20Hz–20kHz, at <0.05% THD): 125Wpc into 8 ohms (21dBW), 220Wpc into 4 ohms (20.4dBW); switched to bridged mono mode, 400W into 8 ohms (26dBW), 730W into 4 ohms (25.6dBW). Frequency response: 20Hz–20kHz, ±0.2dB, 0dB at 1Hz and –3dB at 70kHz. Distortion: typically <0.05% THD at rated power, 0.1% THD and IM worst case prior to clipping. Current output: 50A short-duration peak per channel.…
Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment
Digital Sources: Theta Digital Miles (S/PDIF output), Bel Canto CD2 (with VBS1 power supply) CD players; Benchmark DAC1 & DAC1 HDR, Bel Canto DAC 3.5VB, CEntrance DACport D/A converters; Sony Vaio laptop computer.
Power Amplifiers: Pass Labs Aleph 3 & XA30.5, Rogue Audio M180
Integrated Amplifiers: Simaudio Moon i3.3, Pass Labs INT-150.
Loudspeakers: Revel Performa F30.
Cables: Digital: Kimber Kable BiFocal X, Stereovox HDVX coaxial, Wireworld Gold Starlight AES/EBU, Silver Sonic D-110 AES/EBU. Interconnect: Sain Line Systems Pure (…
Sidebar 3: Measurements
To perform the measurements on the Plinius SA-103, I used Stereophile's loan sample of the top-of-the-line Audio Precision SYS2722 system (see the January 2008 "As We See It" and www.ap.com). As Erick Lichte listened to the SA-103 only in balanced stereo mode, I didn't test the amplifier in bridged mono mode.
Before doing the testing, I ran the Plinius SA-103 at one-third its rated power for 60 minutes, which thermally is the worst case for an amplifier with a class-A/B output stage. At the end of that period the chassis was only slightly warm, with a…
It's asked all the time, wherever audiophiles gather to grumble: "Everybody knows about Ferrari, Rolex, and Leica. But why hasn't anyone heard of . . ."
The last word is up for grabs: Wilson? Levinson? Linn? Maybe. But for me, whenever I'm in pissing-and-moaning mode, the choice is easy: Why hasn't the average consumer heard of the Audio Note Ongaku?
After all, the Ongaku was, for a while, the most expensive amplifier you could buy: £30,000 in 1988, the year of its release. Just as important, the Ongaku was good—in many ways, the best I've ever heard. Other audiofolk appear to…
As with all of the Kondo or Kondo-derived designs I've seen from Audio Note over the years, my review sample of the Jinro was completely handmade, and quite well, at that. The proprietary power-supply choke and drive-stage transformers were obviously labors of love—the sorts of thing one sees less and less these days, in any field of endeavor. Parts are fastened to the chassis rigidly and ruggedly, and while there exist some separate boards for certain parts, they aren't PCBs: Everything in the Jinro is hand-wired, point to point. My only complaint is that I preferred the chassis design of…
To some observers, I suppose one or another of those qualities is attributable to one or another departure from perfectly flat frequency response: a point of view to which anyone is entitled, wrong though it seems to me. That said, it struck me that the Jinro worked with my Audio Note AN-Es to produce the most timbrally realistic performance I've heard from those speakers. The brass instruments in Sir Adrian Boult and the London Symphony Orchestra's great-sounding recording of Vaughan Williams's Job (LP, EMI ASD 2673) sounded just plain right; and in the recording by Nicole Henriot-…