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List of the Month, Dubious Stuff

Sidebar 1: List of the Month, Dubious Stuff

These eight materials, though not evil in and of themselves, have found their way into disproportionate numbers of audio products that proved to be wrong turns:

1) Sorbothane
2) carbon fiber
3) Kevlar
4) polystyrene
5) polycarbonate
6) chipboard
7) Lucite
8) ester-based poly foam

TDK A73 Life on Record Wireless Boombox

Photos by Ariel Bitran

With its asphalt black casework, divine symmetry, and two front-facing gold-capped passive radiators, the gently-curved TDK Life on Record Wireless boombox screams thick gold chains and Adidas track-suits, but its elegant layout and sleek lines keep the design from being retro. At Pepcom, three whisky-sodas deep, the pulsing passive radiators beckoned me. I know this is Stereophile, a magazine committed to stereo listening, but how could I say no to a boombox I could hold on my shoulder at a basketball game at the Parade Grounds and actually look like I fit in. Well…

Best Jazz Albums of 2012

My column on the best jazz albums of 2012 is up on Slate this morning. Here’s the list (readers will note that I’ve written about all the albums in this space over the past 12 months):

Ravi Coltrane, Spirit Fiction (Blue Note)
Vijay Iyer, Accelerando (ACT)
Fred Hersch, Alive at the Vanguard (Palmetto)
Ted Nash, The Creep (Plastic Sax)
Chick Corea/Eddie Gomez/Paul Motian, Further Explorations (Concord)
Dave Douglas, Be Still (Greenleaf)
Frank Kimbrough, Live at Kitano (Palmetto)
Ron Miles, Quiver (Enja)
Jenny Scheinman, Mischief & Mayhem (Jenny Scheinman…

Remix: Hugsnotdrugs do "Pale Flesh" by Crystal Castles

At its onset, screeching and chopped vocals, a melody cracked off like a piece of firewood from Crystal Castles "Pale Flesh" from their record (III), play catch up with with a deep rubber-band like bass pulse. Crystal Castles' shrieks echo of Lizzi Bougatsos tribal and petrified screams from Gang Gang Dance's Glass Jar, but as the snare guides you to the turnaround and into the verse, a crackling fire-pit of of diced synthesizers and reversed vocal loops, it becomes clear were dealing with something much more electro, something much more IDM-based than the primal screams indicated before…

Grado HP 1 headphones

The name Joseph Grado is certainly not new to the transducer field, but the HP 1 is his first entry into the headphone market. The HP 1s are billed as "Professional Recording Monitor Headphones," and Grado is clearly targeting professional recording engineers and equipment designers in need of an accurate monitoring tool. Joe's designs, whether they be phono cartridges or tonearms, have never been ho-hum also-rans when compared to their competition. His products have invariably shown unique design ingenuity, often radically departing from accepted practice. His Signature Tonearm (the last…

Grado HP 1 headphones Page 2

Most preamps, tape recorders, and integrated amplifiers contain an "all-purpose" headphone jack, often driven by a 4556 or 4560 op-amp. These op-amps are hardly "state of the art," but they will drive a 40 ohm load. Most of these headphone amplifiers also contain a resistor in series with the output, often as high as 600 ohms. This prevents very-low-impedance headphones from exceeding the current capability of the op-amp, but since most of the amplifier's output is dissipated by the resistor, performance is seriously compromised. If a headset has a non-uniform impedance curve, the series…

Grado HP 1 headphones Page 3

As well as Grado's own amplifier performs, I believe the HP 1s were even more impressive when powered by my own amplifier. It is more dynamic and more authoritative, particularly in the bass region. The high end is more extended, and the sound is more detailed throughout the midrange and top. The soundstage is larger, with more precise imaging, and the already spacious sound of the HP 1s improves even further in this regard. I even loaned my amplifier to Joe Grado, who said, "it sounds damn good." Joe found, however, that the midrange on my amplifier was slightly grainy compared to his,…

Grado HP 1 headphones Specifications

Sidebar 1: Specifications

Description: Single-element dynamic headset. Nominal impedance: 40 ohms. Sensitivity: 96dB for 1mW input.
Price: $595. Approximate number of dealers: 500.
Manufacturer: Joseph Grado Signature Products, Westfield, NJ 07090 (1992). Grado Labs, 4614 Seventh Ave. Brooklyn, NY 11220 (2012). Tel: (718) 435-5340. Fax: (718) 633-6941. Web: www.gradolabs.com.

Grado HP 1 headphones JA auditions the Grado & Stax headphones

Sidebar 2: JA auditions the Grado & Stax headphones

I do quite a bit of headphone listening during the day, making use of their convenience to shut out the office hubbub while I get down to serious copy editing. The system I use is modest—a pair of no-longer-available Sennheiser HD420SLs driven by an Advent 300 receiver I bought for $75 from Andrew Main, one of Stereophile's popular production people, with CD source provided by a Denon DCD-1500 II—but I get quite a bit of musical satisfaction from it. It was with great interest, therefore, that I read Gary A. Galo's report on Joseph…

Grado HP 1 headphones Measurements

Sidebar 3: Measurements

Measuring headphones is fraught with practical problems, mainly due to the fact that the target response for a drive-unit that fires straight into the ear canal is anything but flat, given the frequency-response–modifying natures of the pinnae and inner ear canal which are unique for each person. Fig.1, extracted from an excellent 1980 AES paper (footnote 1) from Audio Contributing Editor Jon Sank, shows the envelope of responses he found desirable for conventional headphones to sound flat. For this review, I measured the responses of the headphones both in free…