Scheduled for Friday June 1–Sunday June 3 in sunny Orange County, California's red state within a blue state, the second annual T.H.E. Show Newport Beach has already expanded from the Hilton Hotel, right across the street…
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"Bigger, bigger, bigger...more, more, more!" That's how Richard Beers, President of The Home Entertainment Show Newport Beach, aka T.H.E. Show Newport Beach, describes the second installment of what he and co-conspirator Bob Levi, President of the Los Angeles and Orange County Audio Society (LA&OC Audio Society), wryly call "An Audio Tradition...Since Last Year."
Krzysztof Penderecki/Jonny Greenwood
Threnody for the victims of Hiroshima, Popcorn Superhet Receiver, Polymorphia, 48 Responses to Polymorphia
Aukso Orchestra, Penderecki, Marek Mos, conductors
Nonesuch 530223-2 (CD) Filip Berkowicz, Michal Merczynski, prods. Barbara Orzechowska, associate prod. Ewa Guziotek-Tubelewicz, Pitor Witkowski, engs. Performance ***** Sonics *****
Threnody for the victims of Hiroshima, Popcorn Superhet Receiver, Polymorphia, 48 Responses to Polymorphia
Aukso Orchestra, Penderecki, Marek Mos, conductors
Nonesuch 530223-2 (CD) Filip Berkowicz, Michal Merczynski, prods. Barbara Orzechowska, associate prod. Ewa Guziotek-Tubelewicz, Pitor Witkowski, engs. Performance ***** Sonics *****
For the past two decades, the "C" word in classical music— crossover—has been a bone of both hope and contention. Lured by the supposed riches that lurk amongst classical fans who want to slum it and…
Portland, Maine, my hometown for the better part of two decades, is a pretty hip place. We are not, for the most part, innovators in fashion, but we are early adopters of the more interesting latest styles.
For years now, what I take to be a Brooklyn style has been prevalent among the local twentysomething crowd. The hipper restaurants are full of pretty young women and bearded men in plaid shirts who, on the one hand, seem ready for the woodlot but who, on the other hand, seem too skinny to lift a decent-size chainsaw. Likely as not, they arrived on single-speed racing bikes converted…
I had had it in the back of my mind for some time to try to hear the Wilson Duette, if only because celebrated classical recording engineer Tony Faulkner had, some time ago, shared with me his opinion that the Duette's simpler crossover made it the most coherent speaker in Wilson's line. Faulkner told me that when a cramped recording venue makes it impossible for him to use his favorite Quad electrostatic speakers for monitoring, he uses Duettes.
In a recent e-mail, Faulkner elaborated on the benefits of two-way speakers in general and the Duette in particular, saying that most three-…
Like all Wilson speakers, the Duette is available only in spray-painted automotive finishes—no wood veneers. The standard colors are nonmetallic black and three metallic shades: a very dark gray, silver, and what I call champagne. Wilson calls these: Diamond Black, Dark Titanium, Desert Silver, and Argento Silver Twelve. "Upgrade Colors" are available by special order. Four of these are what I call Rich Guy Famous Italian Car Colors (nonmetallic red, yellow, blue, and white), but I think the others look much better. I've seen Macadamia, a rich brown with gold metallic flecks, on a pair of…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Specifications: Two-way, reflex-loaded bookshelf loudspeaker with separate crossover enclosure. Drive-units: 8" cone woofer, 1" silk-dome tweeter. Sensitivity: 90dB/W/m/kHz. Nominal impedance: 4 ohms. Minimum impedance: 3.96 ohms at 3.1kHz. Recommended amplifier power: >20W.
Dimensions: 18.4" H by 9.4" W by 13.75" D. Weight: 39 lbs.
Finish: Automotive paints in non-metallic black, Diamond Black, Dark Titanium, Desert Silver, and Argento Silver Twelve.
Price: $13,900/pair plus $1795/pair for matching stands. Approximate number of dealers: 50.…
Sidebar 2: Review System
The associated equipment was primarily Luxman's C-600f solid-state preamplifier, MQ-88 tubed power amplifier, and D-05 SACD/CD player, with Bricasti Design's M1 DAC D/A converter. The Bricasti was fed a digital signal either from my Apple iMac running Amarra's music-server software via a Musical Fidelity V-Link, or a Denon DN-961-FA CD player (retired from a radio station) as an AES/EBU transport, later replaced by a Musical Fidelity CDT transport. I also used Parasound's Halo JC 2 preamplifier and Halo JC 1 solid-state, 400W monoblocks. Connecting it all were…
Sidebar 3: Measurements
A mid-March visit John Marks and I made to Derry, New Hampshire, retailer Fidelis provided an opportunity for me to give the Wilson Audio Duettes a listen in John's Rhode Island room on my way back to New York. As I'd taken along my portable speaker-measuring gear—Earthworks QTC-40 microphone, Metric Halo ULN-2 FireWire audio interface, and MacBook laptop running SMUG Software's FuzzMeasure program—I also examined the Duettes' in-room response. The speakers were driven by the Parasound Halo JC 1 monoblocks, as they had been for some of JM's auditioning.
I…
Oswalds Mill Audio, the Pennsylvania-based company that designs, manufactures, imports, and sells a range of vintage-inspired and mostly bespoke domestic playback gear, has opened a showroom in New York City. OMA Dumbo, named for its historic neighborhood (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass), now occupies the entire top floor of an industrial building at 110 Bridge Street in Brooklyn, walkable from either the Brooklyn or Manhattan Bridge.
Jonathan Weiss, the founder of Oswalds Mill Audio and pictured above, first used this industrial loft space as a film studio, most…
Teen is Teeny Lieberson (guitars, keys, vox), Lizzie Lieberson (key and vox), Jane Herships (bass and vox), and Katherine Lieberson (drums and vox). The band's debut full-length, In Limbo, will be released on August 28th by Carpark Records.
The video for "Better" uses footage from that 1986 classic Quicksilver, featuring Kevin Bacon, of course. I'd almost completely forgotten about that weird bicycle/ballet scene. Children all over the US tried, unsuccessfully, to recreate this scene in their parents' living rooms. (Or maybe that was just me.)
Can anyone identify the big…