The company's first LP, Souvenir Part 1, has just been released in the US. Also…
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2L, the Norwegian label that made audiophile history in 2006 when one their early high-resolution SACDs, Immortal NYSTEDT, received Grammy Award nominations for "Best Surround Sound Album" and "Best Choral Performance," has taken a big step back to the future. After releasing a number of recordings packages that feature both hybrid SACD and hi-resolution Blu-ray discs, as well as making their DXD (352.8kHz/24-bit) recordings available for download, 2L has just ventured into the black hole known as vinyl.
The April NYC edition of Classic Album Sundays will take place on Sunday, April 8, 5–8pm, at Bellwether (594 Union Avenue, Brooklyn). As a bit of solace to fans that couldn’t get tickets to the upcoming Kraftwerk performances at the Museum of Modern Art, Classic Album Sundays will present Kraftwerk’s Autobahn in its entirety. Cool.
The system: Rega P9 turntable with Rega Apheta MC phono cartridge, Simaudio Moon 310 phono preamplifier, Simaudio Moon Evolution P7 preamplifier, Mark Levinson No.334 power amplifier, and four mighty Klipschorn loudspeakers.
For more info, visit…
Nine hundred sixty individually cut LPs were used to create the video for Benga’s “I Will Never Change.”
Emma Tucker of CreativeReview quotes the directors, Christopher Barrett and Luke Taylor: “To animate the wave form, we built it and then carefully removed each individual record. This had to be done very gently as any shift in the position of the sculpture would result in the failure of the animation and as we had to literally destroy each piece of vinyl to get it off, there was only one chance to get it right. Once the sculpture was finally built, the animation process took about 30…
John Marks returned to the Bricasti M1 in March 2012 (Vol.35 No.3):
In my coverage of Bricasti Design's $7795 M1 D/A converter in the August 2011 issue (the M1 also graced the cover of the February 2012 issue, which contained John Atkinson's impressions of it), I wrote:
"Violinist Arturo Delmoni's debut recording, Songs My Mother Taught Me, on the aluminum-CD edition remastered by Bob Ludwig (John Marks JMR 1), has never sounded better—sweet, yet realistically resiny. This was one of the albums I relied on as I scrolled through the M1's digital-filter options. I thought that…
John Marks returned to the Bricasti M1 in March 2012 (Vol.35 No.3):
In my coverage of Bricasti Design's $7795 M1 D/A converter in the August 2011 issue (the M1 also graced the cover of the February 2012 issue, which contained John Atkinson's impressions of it), I wrote:
"Violinist Arturo Delmoni's debut recording, Songs My Mother Taught Me, on the aluminum-CD edition remastered by Bob Ludwig (John Marks JMR 1), has never sounded better—sweet, yet realistically resiny. This was one of the albums I relied on as I scrolled through the M1's digital-filter options. I thought that…
Friday–Sunday, April 13–15, 10am–8pm: Stereo Exchange (627 Broadway, New York, NY) will host a weekend-long series of demonstrations from key players in the hi-fi industry including but not limited to an Einstein-haired speaker designer, young gun salesman, and the king of kables. Stereo Exchange will reward attendees with sale prices on new, demo, and used gear.
Curiously, this event falls on the same weekend as the Chester Group’s New York Audio & AV Show at the Waldorf=Astoria. Also occurring on those same days is the Show at Lyric, another series of demos held at an…
There is always a conflict between the needs of reviewers and the realities of the marketplace. Once a reviewer has invested his time and energy in a review, he would like that product to remain in production for all time, which would allow it to be used as a reliable recommendation forever. But whatever the product and whatever the category, sales of a product almost always follow the same triangular curve: a sharp rise at the product's introduction, a maximum reached sometime thereafter, and then a steady decline to a sustained but low plateau. Marketing-minded manufacturers therefore…
The speaker output is taken from a pair of brass binding posts; a third binding post allows for independent grounding of the chassis, if necessary. Very usefully, in light of the M1.2's weight of 68.5 lbs, there is a pair of handles on the rear panel as well as on the front. When the amplifier is turned on, the output is muted and the red front-panel LED flashes while the tube warms up and the circuitry stabilizes. When the M1.2 Reference is ready to handle some music, a relay clicks and this LED glows steadily.
Sonics
I began my auditioning with the BBC LS3/5a's, which are…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: Hybrid monoblock power amplifier with solid-state input stage, tubed driver stage, MOSFET output stage, comprehensive short-circuit protection, and high- and low-impedance bias settings. Tube complement: one 6922. Inputs: balanced on XLR with pin 2 wired hot; 2 single-ended on RCA connectors in parallel with pins 2 and 3 of XLR; 12V trigger. Outputs: 2 sets brass, gold-plated binding posts. Rated output power, high-impedance setting (minimum continuous sinewave power, 20Hz–20kHz): 110W into 8 ohms (20.4dBW) at <0.3% THD, 220W into 4 ohms (20.4dBW…
Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment
Digital Sources: Ayre Acoustics C-5xeMP & DX-5 universal players; Apple G4 Mac mini running OS10.5.8, iTunes 10, Pure Music 1.85; Shuttle PC with Lynx AES16 soundcard & dual-core AMD Athlon processor running Windows 7, Foobar 2000, Adobe Audition 3.0; dCS Debussy, Logitech Transporter, Mark Levinson No.30.6 D/A converters; Halide S/PDIF Bridge, Empirical Audio Off-Ramp4 USB-S/PDIF converters.
Preamplifier: Ayre Acoustics K-5xeMP.
Power Amplifiers: Classé CT-M600, MBL Reference 9007 (both monoblocks).
Loudspeakers: BBC LS3/5a, Sonus…