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Growing up as an audiophile in the 1950s, I always aspired to owning Marantz equipment, and finally attained that status when, late one night in 1974 in Greenwich Village, a friend found a Model 8 amp sitting on a pile of discards on a curb. He quickly ran for his car, and scarfed up the amp and a pair of Acoustic Research AR1 speakers. All turned out to be in perfect working order, though their appearance reflected their history of ill-use. The speakers went into his machine shop—but I got the Model 8! Few products have ever given me so much pleasure and pride; Marantz will always occupy a…
So, after a week without EQ, I dragged out my trusty tripod, affixed to it the provided Audyssey mike, and proceeded with the now-familiar Audyssey MultEQ XT32 process (footnote 2). First, Audyssey's Sub EQ HT prompted me to set the output of each of my two Paradigm subwoofers to 75dB, though they were off by only 1dB or so, and even that varied as I walked between subs to make the adjustments. Beginning the main measurement sequence, Audyssey correctly detected the speakers present and accounted for their levels and distance from my main listening position. A total of eight mike positions…
Our sweepstakes for the Benchmark DAC2 HGC Digital-to-Analog Converter was one of our most popular contests yet receiving a total of 685 entries! You’re telling me that 637 more people wanted Benchmark’s new DAC than were begging for the Fela Kuti LP boxset? Stereophile.com members, your priorities are skewed.
Speaking of priorities, the first question Orson Cheong asked when he heard he won was, “What color?” You audiophiles are incorrigible. Regardless, based on Orson’s subtle smirk, he seems happy to be running his Sennheiser cans through this silver Benchmark DAC2 HGC. It matches your…
While visiting KEF in England (see last month's column), I received an e-mail from the proprietor of HeadphoneCommute.com, a website devoted to electronic, experimental, and instrumental music. My correspondent, who prefers to remain anonymous, described a plan to release a compilation album called . . . and darkness came, all proceeds from which to be donated, for Hurricane Sandy relief, to two charitable organizations: Doctors Without Borders and the Humane Society.
Today, less than a month later, the album is complete and includes work from many of my favorite artists and composers—…
The first thing I noticed about the CLs' sound was that it was big—full-bodied and present in the best possible way. Halle Berry! It had all the low-end impact of the Solo HDs, but added transparency and detail. About 25 seconds into "Money Trees," one of my favorite tracks on Kendrick Lamar's awesome new album, good kid, m.A.A.d. city (CD, Top Dawg/Aftermath Entertainment 1753602), the bass enters. Hard. It's supposed to make you move, screw up your face, squint your eyes, sway your head. It's funky, exaggerated, raw. The Harman/Kardon CLs got this right, and did so without muddying the…
Sidebar: Contacts
Harman/Kardon, Inc., 250 Crossways Park Drive, Woodbury, NY 11797; 8500 Balboa Boulevard, Northridge, CA 91329. Tel: (800) 422-8027 Web: www.harmankardon.com.
Jade Design, Inc., 131 SE Parkway Court, Franklin, TN 37064. Tel: (615) 791-6254. Web: www.jadedesign.com
Advertising Manager Ed DiBenedetto models the Viper Head.
JA tapped my shoulder: “Do you like headphones?”
“You know I do!” I enthused.
“OK. Give me just a second.”
John Atkinson is never this mysterious. It must be something awesome.
He returned with four boxes and plopped them on my desk, “Here you go!” and walked away with an evil smirk. What the dickens?
A British colleague of JA’s had just sent him various samples of Quarkie’s new in-ear headphone collection. These in-ears rest gently inside your ears with fun animals and objects that poke…
Subwoofer technology is moving fast, with automated room equalization and system integration now a reality. A wave of new products has appeared in the past five years, all using different approaches to solving the problems of optimizing subwoofer response in listening rooms.
Subwoofers—including the Digital Drive 18+'s predecessor, the DD-18, and the Revel Ultima SUB-30—first tackled the problem of room optimization by displaying the room response on a PC and having the user adjust virtual sliders. More recently, JL Audio's Fathom f113 and Fathom f212, removed the user from the setup…
The Quad ESL-989s sat 8' apart, 5' from the front wall, and 3' from the sidewalls, slightly toed-in toward my listening chair, and were driven by a Mark Levinson No.334 solid-state amplifier. The DD-18+ was driven from the auxiliary outputs of my Bryston BP-26 preamplifier via two 6m-long, balanced, line-level cables.
I loaded Velodyne's Digital Drive Plus Windows Interface Setup software on my laptop. I removed the DD-18+'s grille in order to connect the Velodyne's USB cable from the mini-USB port on the front of the sub to one of my laptop's USB ports. I then plugged the calibration…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: Powered subwoofer in sealed enclosure with remote control. Drive-unit: 18" forward-firing fiberglass Rohacell-laminate cone with 3" voice-coil and 39.7-lb magnet. Inputs: front panel, USB, microphone (mini XLR); rear panel, mono LFE (RCA), R&L balanced XLR and RCA, Ethernet, RS-232, IR, 12V trigger, speaker (bare wire, banana plugs, or spade lugs). Outputs: rear panel, line-level pass-through (RCA & XLR), high-pass output (RCA & XLR), video output (RCA), RS-232, S-video. Front-panel controls: Volume, Crossover, Auto EQ. Rear-panel…