When I reviewed Audience's original Adept Response power conditioner, in the April 2007 issue, I was impressed. Audience's approach of combining filtering, power-factor correction, and isolation made big improvements in the sound of my system, even though I already had a dedicated subpanel, optimized AC wiring, and top-quality wall outlets, and high-end power cords. The Adept Response handily outperformed my then-reference power conditioners, as well as any others I'd tried up that point. By the time I'd…
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Brian Damkroger wrote about the AdeptResponse aR12-TS in January 2012 (Vol.35 No.1):
Robert J. Reina wrote about the Parasound Halo JC 3 in February 2012 (Vol.35 No.2):
I was intrigued by a sentence in Brian Damkroger's rave review of the Parasound Halo JC 3 phono preamplifier3 in the October 2011 issue: "The simplest way to describe the JC 3 is as a Vendetta SCP-2 [phono preamplifier] executed with integrated rather than discrete circuits." As I've used a Vendetta SCP-2 as my reference phono stage in my most expensive reference system for 22 years now, I thought it would be interesting to get a Halo JC 3 in-house and compare them—especially as both were designed by John…
Years ago, while editing Listener Magazine, I received a call from a record-company publicist with whom I was friendly: The drummer Ginger Baker, whose work I admire, was promoting a new release, and we were offered a 30-minute telephone interview with the artist. I jumped at the chance, but wound up leaving the article in the can—partly because it was so short, partly because its subject was so cranky. As with vacation trips to certain locales, second prize would likely have been 60 minutes with Ginger Baker.
I was reminded of that episode a few weeks ago, when a friend called to say he…
Stereo imaging was disappointing, making it easy to understand why serious audiophiles of the late 1970s and early '80s were so impressed with the spatially more precise (and, one could argue, timbrally more neutral) tube amplifiers being brought to market by Audio Research, Conrad-Johnson, Counterpoint, Quicksilver, and others. Although it produced an unusually large soundfield overall, the 8B, for its part, gave poor presence to such soloists as tenor Peter Pears, in the nice recording he made of Britten's Serenade for Tenor, Horns, and Strings (LP, Angel S-36788). That said, and for…
Sidebar: List of the Month
Last month's list was decidedly negative, so let's take a cheerier view this time out and consider those records whose musical brilliance has dribbled onto their jackets. Needless to say, there exist other great covers (the original cover of Blind Faith's studio album comes to mind), and similarly indispensable recordings abound (Martin Newell's The Greatest Living Englishman and the Du Pré/Barbirolli recording of the Elgar Cello Concerto top my list). But here are the ones of which I know that mate brilliance with brilliance, arranged from good to great:
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The taxonomy of audio products used to be easy. An amp, a preamp, speakers, a disc player or two—done. Now that hard drives, streaming clouds, and computers have entered the scene, unless your world revolves around only an iPod or a disc player, you have choices—lots of choices.
And so a new product type, along with dozens of subtypes, has emerged that helps you keep up with the incoming bits. I like to refer to this branch of the audio kingdom as digital "hubs." Think of a hub as the ultimate audio adapter: whatever you need to connect to or with, the hub makers try to have a port or…
However, there are quite a few apps, some of them free, that let you control your M1 CLiC-NAS library from an iPad, iPhone, etc (footnote 1). Using Linn's free Kinsky app on an iPad2, I now had a more complete touchscreen experience—not quite Sooloos easy, and still a major pain with a large library, but a night-and-day improvement over the M1 CLiC's screen and remote control. However, I found one Kwirk with Kinsky: The track-timing information of high-definition files with sample rates higher than 44kHz was multiplied by as much as four for 24/192 files.
Other than that Kuriosity,…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: Single-box, remote-controlled, network-connectable, analog/digital preamp and DAC. Digital inputs: Supports up to 24-bit/192kHz via front USB, Ethernet, optical, and coax (2) inputs. Supports up to 16-bit/48kHz via USB DAC input and iPod dock connection on rear panel. File formats supported: FLAC (up to 24/192 on wired LAN, up to 24/96 on wireless LAN), WMA/9 (up to 16/48), AAC, HE-AAC (up to 24/96), LPCM (up to 24/192 on wired LAN, up to 24/96 on wireless LAN), Ogg vorbis 1.0 (up to 16/32), MP3 (up to 16/48). Analog inputs: 3 pairs stereo RCA jacks…
Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment
Analog Source: Oracle Delphi 2 turntable modified by Brooks Berdan, Origin Live Encounter tonearm, Soundsmith Aida cartridge.
Digital Sources: Apple MacBook Pro computer (2.66GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4GB RAM, 320GB HDD) running OS 10.6.8, iTunes 10.5, Sonic Studio Amarra 2.2, Songbird 1.9.3, XLD; Oppo BDP-83 universal Blu-ray player; Meridian Sooloos Music Server (Control 15, 3 TwinStores); Apple iPod Touch 1G; Apple iPad2; Resolution Audio Cantata, Benchmark DAC1 USB, Peachtree iDac D/A converters.
Preamplification: Monolithic Sound PS-1 phono…
Sidebar 3: Measurements
I used Stereophile's loan sample of the top-of-the-line Audio Precision SYS2722 system to measure the Musical Fidelity M1CLiC (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, and first updated the M1CLiC's firmware.
Looking first at the M1CLiC's performance as an analog preamplifier, the input impedance was usefully high at close to 100k ohms at low and middle frequencies, dropping inconsequentially to 48k ohms at 20kHz. The…