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Recording of October 2011: <I>The Time of the Sun</I>

Tom Harrell: The Time of the Sun
Tom Harrell, trumpet, flugelhorn; Wayne Escoffery, tenor saxophone; Danny Grissett, piano, Fender Rhodes; Ugonna Okegwo, bass; Johnathan Blake, drums
High Note HCD7222 (CD). 2011. Tom Harrell, Wayne Escoffery, Angela Harrell, prods.; Joe Fields, exec. prod.; Mike Marciano, eng. AAD? TT: 62:12
Performance ****½
Sonics ****½

Trumpeters use their horns to search for truth. At least that's the folk tale. Somehow, that pure, ringing tone that most strive for at some point in their career—think Louis Armstrong, Clifford Brown, Miles Davis—…

Are You Goin' to (an) Audio Fair?

When I was a young music lover, I'd often listen to Simon and Garfunkel's Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme LP, specifically the song "Scarborough Fair/Canticle."

Are you goin' to Scarborough Fair?
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme.
Remember me to one who lives there,
She once was a true love of mine.

That memory came back during the e-mail exchanges I had with John Atkinson and Stephen Mejias about the positives and negatives of the proliferation of regional audio shows. (JA's reflections on these shows were the subject of last month's "As We See It.")

Annual…

New Music: Suun’s “Bambi” & “Red Song”

I’ve been enjoying “Bambi” and “Red Song,” two new pulsing, angular, seductive tracks from Montreal’s Suuns.

Suuns - Bambi b/w Red Song by DOJAGSC

The band explains:

With a couple weeks off this summer in Montreal, we thought we’d take a crack at a few new songs. Stark and futuristic, these are extended jams that may or may not materialize as condensed versions of themselves on records to come. Open air textures, repetition and exploration were the name of the game for us on this one, and the finished product is a refined mining of the ideas that came out. “…

2011 Rocky Mountain Audio Fest: Bigger Than Ever

The 2011 Rocky Mountain Audio Fest, which runs October 14–16 at the Denver Marriott Tech Center, promises more exhibits than ever before. With 480 exhibitors spread over 176 hotel rooms and three vendor areas, and advance attendance figures indicating at least 3500 attendees, the show continues to attract even more of the industry and public despite the economic slowdown. While the proportion of East and West Coast attendees remains stable, you'll see more international attendees, including folks from Thailand, India, Japan, Australia, Argentina, Singapore, Brazil, Canada, Finland, New…

Sandro Perri’s <i>Impossible Spaces</i>

On the surface, Sandro Perri’s Impossible Spaces is an ordinary pop album: We hear pleasant guitar, intelligent percussion, and a voice that, while lovely, is easily appreciated, palatable, unchallenging. But there’s a depth and darkness to this music that begs to be uncovered.

It’s the sweetness of the voice and the liquid tone of the guitar that draw me in, but the subtle shifts in key, the clever instrumentation, the aching cello and odd flute, the broken lines and strangely abbreviated melodies that make me listen again, confuse and enchant, charm and intoxicate.

With…

Wavelength Audio Proton USB D/A converter

I don't remember where I was when the Berlin Wall came down, and I already don't remember what I was doing when Liz Taylor died. (I suppose I was busy not thinking about Liz Taylor.) But I do remember when USB-based computer audio became a serious medium: That was when Gordon Rankin, of Wavelength Audio, introduced asynchronous data streaming, with his proprietary Streamlength software. After that, things picked up speed.

Without asynchronous streaming, USB audio functions in adaptive mode: the computer establishes the data-transfer clock, forcing any outboard digital-to-analog converter…

Wavelength Audio Proton USB D/A converter Page 2

I set the review sample on a light, sturdy pinewood table of my own construction, never more than 1.5m from my computer, never with interconnects shorter than 5m. Although its front panel looked nice enough, I tended to orient the Proton in such a way that its rear panel—and the LEDs thereon—were in easy view. Playback software was Stephen Booth's Decibel (v1.0.2) on an Apple iMac G5 (OS 10.6.7), playing a selection of AIFF and WAV files of resolutions up to 24-bit/176.4kHz.

During use, the Proton's sample-rate indicators were consistent in correctly signaling the sample-rate families…

Wavelength Audio Proton USB D/A converter Specifications

Sidebar 1: Specifications

Description: Single-box digital/analog converter. Digital input jack: USB (type B plug) only. Analog output jacks: RCA. Formats supported: all PCM-output audio codecs (AIFF, FLAC, WAV, MP3, etc.). Sampling rates supported: 44.1, 48, 88.2, 96kHz. Word lengths supported: 16, 24 bits. Maximum line-level output: 1.8V. Output impedances: 100 ohms (line), 1 ohm (headphones). Frequency response: 5Hz–20kHz, –1.0dB.
Dimensions: 4" (100mm) W by 2.5" (60mm) H by 5.75" (150mm) D. Weight: 3 lbs (1.4kg).
Serial Number Of Unit Reviewed: 29-0086.
Price: $900.…

Wavelength Audio Proton USB D/A converter Associated Equipment

Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment

Analog Sources: Garrard 301, Thorens TD 124 turntables; EMT 997, Schick tonearms; Ortofon SPU, EMT OFD 25 & OFD 65 pickup heads.
Digital Sources: Furutech GT40, Ayre Acoustics QB-9 USB D/A converters; Apple iMac G5 computer running Apple iTunes v10.2.2, Decibel v1.0.2 playback software; Sony SCD-777ES SACD/CD player.
Preamplification: Auditorium 23 Standard (SPU version), Silvercore One-to-Ten step-up transformers; Shindo Masseto preamplifier.
Power Amplifiers: Shindo Corton-Charlemagne, Fi 421A.
Loudspeakers: Audio Note AN-E/SPe HE.…

Wavelength Audio Proton USB D/A converter Measurements

Sidebar 3: Measurements

I used Stereophile's loan sample of the top-of-the-line Audio Precision SYS2722 system to perform the measurements on the Wavelength Proton (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. Source for the test files was my MacBook, fitted with 4GB of RAM and running Mac OS10.6.8 and Pure Music V1.8.

Wavelength warns that the Proton's line-level output will clip with full-scale signals, and advises owners to set the Proton's…