Sidebar 2: Review System
The dedicated listening room has optimum dimensional ratios for room-mode distribution. The Snell loudspeakers were driven by VTL 225W Deluxe monoblocks or a Threshold S/550e through 10' runs of bi-wired AudioQuest Green Hyperlitz. Preamplification was provided by an Audio Research SP-11 Mk.II, which drove the amplifier(s) through AudioQuest Lapis.
The analog front end was a Well-Tempered Turntable and Tonearm fitted with a Signet O-9C moving-coil cartridge. The arm has been modified by LP Research and Development Lab. An Expressive Technologies SU-1 step…
Sidebar 3: Measurements
The LEDR test on the Chesky Test CD produced a fairly good "up" impression, but with the image turning inward toward the top of its extension. The "over" and "lateral" tests were reproduced quite well, with solid images moving between the loudspeakers. Driving the Type C/IV with a sinewave oscillator revealed cabinet resonances at 65Hz, 200Hz, 500Hz, and 660Hz, the last being the strongest.
Even in the worst case, with the HF control at maximum and the rear tweeter on, the Type C/IV presents a fairly easy load to a power amplifier, evinced by the impedance…
Sunday, February 27, 12-6pm: Brooklyn Bowl (61 Wythe Avenue, Williamsburg) will host the Collect-i-Bowl Record Show. In addition to two full bars, mind-numbingly delicious comfort foods (think Cajun shrimp, fried chicken, and mac & cheese), DJ Uncle Mike spinning tons of cool vinyl, and 16 lanes of bowling fun, Collect-i-Bowl will be home to more than 25 vinyl dealers “from all over the east coast…and beyond!”
Mingle with the beautiful people, the cool kids, the music nerds. You might even meet your soul mate, or at least find an amazing record.
Admission…
Clogs in the snow. Photo: Tamara Bogolasky.
Saturday, March 12, 7:30pm: Clogs, Shara Worden, and the Brooklyn Youth Chorus will perform at Merkin Concert Hall (129 West 67th Street, New York). The performance is part of Merkin’s inaugural Ecstatic Music Festival. Stereophile readers who have enjoyed John Atkinson’s 2007 recording, Attention Screen: Live at Merkin Hall (available here), will be familiar with the rich, inviting sound of the space.
On March 12, Clogs (Bryce Dessner, guitar; Rachael Elliott, bassoon; Thomas Kozumplik, percussion; Padma Newsome, viola) will present…
Mogwai’s latest album, the band’s seventh full-length studio release, due in stores next Tuesday, February 15th, is called Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will. I just found out about this today. Stephanie Scola of KEF told me because she knows I like Mogwai. Thank you, Stephanie. My reaction to this news was simple and unambiguous: With a name like Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will, the album had already earned my blind and stupid love. That’s right: Before ever even hearing this record, I knew that I was going to own it and I was going to love it. That’s the kind of guy I am. If…
Illustration: Jeff Wong
John Atkinson and I were On the Road, whistling down I-95 in a big, Kona Blue Metallic 2011 Ford Edge Ltd with voice-command everything. To paraphrase Raoul Duke at the very beginning of Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, we were somewhere around Princeton, New Jersey—not quite the edge of the desert—when the drugs began to take hold. Just as in the original text, "there was a terrible roar all around us, and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car . . ." I decided that there was no…
On the Road
The Edge's female voice directed us to I-95 South, toward Washington, DC, and the Ring Road West, then west again on I-66 to Strasburg, Virginia, where we picked up I-81, heading south into the Shenandoah Valley. We played no music till we'd reached Manassas, instead relaxing into the rhythm of the drive, munching miles with maximum momentum. I ignored the adaptive cruise control for now, testing the Edge's dynamic capabilities. The front-wheel-drive Edge is no sports car, but its big chassis comports itself well with no unseemly lurching about, and it's equipped with every…
Once we turned off I-40W on I-75S to Chattanooga, JA countered with Snowflake's Live Volume 1, tracks 4 and 5; "Scorpio" and "The Message" from Grandmaster Flash ("Don't push me 'cuz I'm close to the (Ford) Edge!" we sang); Trentemoller's "Nightwalker" (very cool); Van Van Van Morrison Morrison Morrison's Astral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl; and John McLaughlin's ground-breaking 1969 album, Extrapolation. The Ford's Sony system spread the music out before us in an enveloping, appealing, coherent way—not to mention the rather astounding two-guys-on-a-road-trip big-bass fundamentals we…
What other treasures? Oh, just the complete catalog of Deutsche Grammophon's Archiv Produktion label—every single recording—and every Telefunken Das Alte Werk recording, from first to last. Then there's the original "Archive" collection going back to the 1940s, filled with richly musical mono recordings. And did I mention the complete L'Oiseau Lyre Florilegium series—or the collection of operas on LP, which of course requires enormous space? It was dizzying.
Thoroughly impressed, I asked Tam, as we padded back to the listening room, what drove him to spend seven years raising the $1…
Sidebar: The Ford Edge Ltd
When Ford's PR company offered to loan me a fully tricked-out Ford Edge Ltd for our trip to the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, it didn't take me a New York minute to say "Yes please." My regular ride is a 1984 Mercedes-Benz 500SEC coupe, and as much as I love that car and its five-liter V8, automotive technology has made major strides since it left the Stuttgart production line.
The standard Ford Edge starts at $34,220. The Ltd that arrived ($39,995, per Ford's website) was fitted with all the trimmings: a 12-speaker, 390W Sony…
