search
I walked home from Nicole and Natalie’s place late Sunday night, during the height of the blizzard. It was a stupid thing to do. Normally a pleasant five-minute walk, that short stretch from their place to mine turned into the most painful and unpleasant experience I’ve ever endured, the fierce wind shooting little daggers of ice into my face and covering my body in snow. Somewhere around the corner of Newark Avenue and Second Street, I thought about just giving up and dying in it. It was so pretty. When I finally made it home, panting uncontrollably and hoping I hadn’t caused some…
While high-priced equipment can easily acquire stature on grounds of outright performance and physical appearance, we critics have more admiration for genuine achievement at lower price levels. One such product was the all-triode SP8 preamplifier from Audio Research, launched back in 1982 and priced at $1400. This classically tasteful preamplifier came equipped with a medium-sensitivity phono equalizer and the usual tape and line inputs.
In my review of the SP8 in the February 1983 edition of Hi-Fi News & Record Review, I described a topnotch performer that was equally adept at…
The use of two gain stages in series provides correct signal polarity, while a cathode-follower output confers wide bandwidth and low output impedance—in this case, a claimed 200 ohms. FETs are also used for interfacing and for constant-current duty.
In ARC's earlier preamplifier designs, the input section used a hardwired selector switch and rotary, track-type level controls. Adopting later practice from the more costly, remote-controllable Audio Research preamps, the manually operated LS8 uses a FET-switched attenuator chip for volume, hence the finite input headroom. The input…
Sidebar 1: Sound Quality Ratings
Longtime readers of my work in Stereophile, and especially in Hi-Fi News & Record Review, know my propensity for attempting to apply a numeric rating to a product's overall sound quality. Some feel that I should keep these numbers to myself and simply describe their value in the subjective language of sound quality. However, overwhelming feedback indicates that readers value the ratings as a more accurate gauge than words alone. In the light of advancing performances, the original 0–10 scale has become open-ended. As a rough guide, the finest…
Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment
Analog source: Linn LP12 turntable with Lingo power supply, Naim ARO tonearm, Koetsu RS11 phono cartridge.
CD players: Krell KPS-20i and KPS-25s.
Preamplification: Conrad-Johnson Premier Fifteen phono equalizer, ART, Premier Sixteen, PV102/l; Audio Research LS7; Audio Synthesis Passion passive controller.
Power amplifiers: Cary 300SE LX20, Audio Research VT50, Krell FPB 650.
Loudspeakers: Wilson Audio WITT II, Quad ESL-63, Sonus Faber Electa Amator II, Cadence (India) Anina.
Cables: Siltech, van den Hul, Transparent.—Martin Colloms
Sidebar 3: Measurements
Generally, the engineering design of Audio Research products is beyond reproach; the LS8's very good lab results for response flatness, distortion, and noise hardly came as a surprise. There is hardly any point in printing a frequency-response graph that is perfect from 10Hz to 30kHz, –0.5dB, at better than 5Hz and 45kHz, –3dB down, or better than 1Hz and 118kHz (a bit less than claimed, but of course these results are output-cable–dependent).
I did investigate the output impedance variation with frequency to explore the dynamic range of the feedback-…
Sidebar 4: Specifications
Description: Tubed line preamplifier with digitally controlled volume control, five inputs, and two outputs. Tube complement: four 6922 dual triodes. Maximum gain: 12.2dB. Input impedance: 50k ohms. Maximum input level: 3.5V. Input sensitivity: 500mV for a rated output of 2V. Frequency response: 0.5Hz–100kHz, ±0.5dB, 0.1Hz–250kHz, –3dB. Distortion: –80dB, or 0.01%.
Price: 1495 (1999); no longer available (2010). Approximate number of dealers: 65.
Manufacturer: Audio Research High Definition, Minnetonka, MN 55343-4424 (1999). Audio Research Corporation,…
Elvis Costello: Spike
Warner Bros. 25848-1 (LP), -2 (CD*). Kevin Killen, eng.; Killen, Costello, T Bone Burnett, prods. AAA/AAD. TTs: 61:17, 64:34*
Warner Bros. 25848-1 (LP), -2 (CD*). Kevin Killen, eng.; Killen, Costello, T Bone Burnett, prods. AAA/AAD. TTs: 61:17, 64:34*
The ideal rock singer/songwriter? Someone who addresses adult issues with all the passion of adolescence (than which, believe me, there is none more monomaniacal—there's no righteous indignation like a teenager's). Someone who can sing about him- or herself and strike the universal; someone who can tell a story of what the swells call "the human condition," or of some social injustice, in terms of how it affects a single life in all that…
Though one of the largest consumer electronics companies in the world, Philips until recently has been content to hide its American face behind a bevy of other brandnames: Magnavox, Sylvania, and Philco (all originally US companies but now part of the Philips empire). Audiophiles will be most familiar with the company's inexpensive Magnavox CD players, but when Philips decided to move upmarket with their audio products, they decided to launch the Philips brand here in the US with a range of CD players, a CD-Video player, a number of integrated amplifiers and receivers, a cassette deck, and…