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I've gone from futile attempts at maintaining order in my living room to futile attempts at reconfiguring my listening room to accommodate all my new vinyl. The television is long gone. The turntable is Rega's P3-24, in high-gloss white, the latest iteration of a timeless design. Although Art Dudley's classic Denon DL-103 moving-coil cartridge is waiting patiently to be installed, my current cartridge is Rega's Elys 2 in Rega's RB-301 tonearm, the latest version of a similarly enduring piece of art. John Atkinson has loaned me a DB Systems DBP-10 phono alignment protractor, an indispensable…
David Murray doesn’t play with a big band much these days, but he’s got one at Birdland in midtown Manhattan through Saturday, so if you’re in the area, check it out.
In the mid-1990s, Murray fronted a big band every Monday night at the Knitting Factory in TriBeCa (in addition to the various quartets and octet he played with all over the city). Then he moved to Paris and experimented with African and Caribbean music, but when he comes back to New York, he usually returns to his distinctive style of jazz.
He started Wednesday night’s early set with an original, “Hong Kong Nights,”…
I’ve been listening to Kompakt’s excellent Pop Ambient 2011 compilation, which opens with ANBB’s arresting “Bernsteinzimmer” from their album, Mimikry, and ends with Thomas Fehlmann’s interpretation of Gustav Mahler’s magnificent Symphony No.1. This is heavy stuff, and it forms the perfect bridge from the chaos of Las Vegas and the Consumer Electronics Show to the cold misery of mid-January in New York City. There’s warmth in this music, and it has a sort of transportational power. Meaning: It gets me the hell out of here.
It’s also perfect for compiling the “Recommended Components”…
While I know through reading all about Don Kirshner’s work at the Brill Building during its glory years with King and Goffin, Mann and Weil, Neil Diamond, Neil Sedaka and the rest, my own personal memory of the late rock promoter who died on January 17th, has nothing do with that or his work with the Monkees or in discovering Kansas. Yes, “It Takes a Woman’s Love to Make a Man” Kansas.
My memories center on that hilariously one dimensional voice that came out of those terrible one dimensional built–in speakers that all TV's in the seventies had. Kirshner was something less than dynamic…
Don't have $80,000 to drop on dCS's four-component Scarlatti SACD stack that I reviewed in August 2009, or $17,999 for their Puccini SACD/CD player that John Atkinson raved about in December 2009? Even if you do, the new Debussy D/A processor ($10,999) might be a better fit for your 21st-century audio system. Sure, you don't get an SACD transport—or any kind of disc play, for that matter—but the odds today are that you already have a player you like that's got an S/PDIF output that can feed the Debussy.
On the other hand, if you're already moving toward server-based digital playback, you…
Mastering and recording engineer Barry Diament sent me 24-bit/96kHz WAV files of Equinox, the latest purist recording on his Soundkeeper Recordings label. This recording is available in multiple formats and resolutions (see www.soundkeeperrecordings.com) and features percussionist Markus Schwartz and three Haitian musicians on trumpet, electric guitar, and acoustic bass, among other instruments recorded live. I can't imagine the spacious three-dimensionality of this recording surviving a CD transfer intact. The hi-rez files of this tuneful, percussive music produced an enormous, airy space…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: Multi-input D/A processor with digital volume control and upsampling of CD data to proprietary Ring-DAC format. Digital inputs: 2 S/PDIF, (1 RCA, 1 BNC), 2 AES/EBU, USB. Word clock in on 75-ohm BNC jack. Analog outputs: balanced (XLR), unbalanced (RCA). Maximum output level: 2V or 6V (selectable). Output impedance: 3 ohms balanced, 52 ohms unbalanced. Frequency responses (Sharp filter): 10Hz–20kHz, ±0.1dB (Fs: 44.1 or 48kHz); 10Hz–20kHz, ±0.1dB, –3dB at >38kHz (Fs: 88.2 or 96kHz). Channel separation: >80dB, 20Hz–20kHz. Noise: below–110dB, 20Hz…
Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment
Analog Sources: Continuum Audio Labs Caliburn, Cobra, Castellon turntable, tonearm, stand; Graham Phantom II tonearm; Miyajima Premium BE mono, Ortofon MC-A90, Lyra Titan i, cartridges.
Digital Sources: Ayre Acoustics DX-5 universal player, Playback Designs MPS-5 SACD/CD player, Audio Alchemy DDSPro CD transport, BPT-modified Alesis Masterlink hard-disk recorder, Benchmark ADC1 A/D converter, Sooloos music server, Pure Music software.
Preamplifier: darTZeel NHB-18NS.
Power Amplifier: Musical Fidelity Titan.
Loudspeakers: Wilson Audio…
Sidebar 3: Measurements
I mostly used Stereophile's loan sample of the top-of-the-line Audio Precision SYS2722 system to perform the measurements on the dCS Debussy (see www.ap.com and the January 2008 "As We See It"); for some tests, I also used my vintage Audio Precision System One Dual Domain and the Miller Audio Research Jitter Analyzer. To test the Debussy's performance via its USB input, I used my MacBook running OS10.6 and Bias Peak Pro 6 to play WAV files of the various test signals I use. Apple's USB Prober utility identified the Debussy as being a "dCS Debussy\000\000\000\000\…
There's home cooking on one side of the hedge and fast food on the other, and the world moves farther from the former and nearer to the latter with each passing day. So it goes in domestic audio, where virtually every new milestone of the past quarter-century has pointed far more toward convenience than toward quality.
Depressed? Don't be. Those of us in the perfectionist community have a history of dealing with such things, howsoever slowly and inefficiently. (footnote 1). We're getting better at it, too, year by year. An example: Chord Electronics, of sunny southern England, has now…