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Stereophile's Products of 2013 Overall Component of 2013

Overall Component of 2013

KEF LS50 50th Anniversary Model loudspeaker ($1499.99/pair; reviewed by John Atkinson, December 2012, Vol.35 No.12 review)

This is the first time since . . . um . . . Hold on a sec. I have to consult the archives . . .

Well. Yes. This is the first time ever that our Budget Component of the Year has also been our Overall Component of the Year.

Have we mentioned that the components in our Budget category are awesome? Have we mentioned that the KEF LS50 is especially awesome?

The rave reviews began with the speaker's official debut…

Stereophile's Products of 2013 Editors' Choices

Editors' Choices

Pioneer SP-BS22-LR loudspeaker ($129.99/pair; reviewed by Robert J. Reina and Stephen Mejias, July & September 2013, Vol.36 Nos. 7 & 9 Review)

In almost any other year, the Pioneer SP-BS22-LR loudspeaker would have easily walked away with the award for Budget Component of the Year. Despite an unusually strong group of contenders, it did well in the category, winning three first-place votes, including my own. That the Pioneer also stole four total votes, including one first-place vote (from [ahem] Bob Reina) in our Loudspeaker category, is further…

Parasound Halo CD 1 CD player

In his August 2008 Follow-Up to Jon Iverson's and Kalman Rubinson's coverage of Sooloos's Source:One (which was the component in the Sooloos system of the time that output an analog audio signal), John Atkinson wrote: "Looking at the [inside of the] Source:One, at the front center you have the network interface card; on the left you have a switching power supply; at the rear center is an industrial PC with its familiar but unused I/O jacks at the front and its vertically mounted RAM board at the back; and at the right is the RME Hammerfall soundcard plugged into the PC's PCI slot. . . . The…

Parasound Halo CD 1 CD player Sam Tellig

Sam Tellig reviewed the Halo CD 1 in July 2013 (Vol.36 No.7):

John Marks wrote about Parasound's Halo CD 1 player last month. The CD 1 is far less retrograde than it first appears. Yes, it looks to the past, and 30 years of perfect sound forever. Billions of CDs sold worldwide. The most successful audio format in history.

For $4500, the CD 1 plays CDs. Period. This includes recordable discs, CD-R and CD-RW. It also includes the CD layer of SACDs. It does not play MP3 files burned to CD-R. (It did play MP3s that I converted to AAC and burned to CD-R on my Mac mini.)

The…

Parasound Halo CD 1 CD player Specifications

Sidebar 1: Specifications

Description: Single-box CD player with remote control.
Dimensions: 17.25" (437mm) W by 4.125" (105mm) H by 13.75" (350mm) D. Weight: 18 lbs (8.2kg).
Serial number of review sample: 01049.
Price: $4500.
Manufacturer: Parasound Products Inc., 2250 McKinnon Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94124. Tel: (415) 397-7100. Tel: (415) 397-0144. Web: www.parasound.com.

Parasound Halo CD 1 CD player Measurements

Sidebar 2: Measurements

At a time when CD players have morphed into all-purpose digital source/preamplifiers, it seemed anachronistic for San Francisco–based Parasound to introduce a CD player in 2013 that was nothing but a CD player (footnote 3) However, the Halo CD 1 ($4500) is more than it seems. Its CD-ROM drive spins CDs at four times the usual speed, controlled by software from Holm Acoustics, so that every bit is read at least twice before being sent to a large RAM buffer. Playback is thus from memory, not directly from the spinning disc.

John Marks reviewed the Halo CD 1…

Listening #132

Memory mitigates adversity.—Lucius Lactantius (ca 240–ca 320 AD)

Pity the aging perfectionist, the happy diversions of whose younger days—washing records, oiling turntables, leveling equipment racks, cleaning tube pins—have now become hated chores. And this from a man who used to redo his Roksan Xerxes setup every few months, just for "fun."

Sad irony, then, that an interest in mono LPs and shellacs came upon me so late in life, for it is a field in which the experts, among whose number I count God, would have me use different stylus profiles, different tonearm setups, different…

Listening #132 Page 2

Charming the air to produce a sound
Even before I ventured beyond the RIAA settings, with a Miyajima Premium BE II mono cartridge in my tonearm, I was impressed with the Monophonic. Its sound was stunningly clear, yet very colorful and well textured. The string tone in the recording by Eduard van Beinum and the Concertgebouw of Britten's The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra (London LL-917) was superb, as were the woodwinds and percussion. And throughout Artur Rubinstein's 1955 collection of Chopin's 14 Waltzes (RCA 30,018), the piano purred, richly and convincingly.

…

Simaudio Moon Evolution 850P line preamplifier

When I reviewed Simaudio's Moon Evolution 880M monoblock amplifier for the June 2013 issue, I communicated via phone and e-mail with the company's VP of marketing, Lionel Goodfield. When the topic of hearing the 880Ms at their best came up, I could almost imagine him shrugging as he said, "Just use it with the most transparent, revealing preamp you can find." Not surprisingly, he then went on to say that Simaudio's own Moon Evolution 850P would serve nicely in that role. My cynical side might normally have discounted any such suggestion from a marketing man, but I'd been hearing the same…

Simaudio Moon Evolution 850P line preamplifier Page 2

I hadn't heard Acoustic through the 850P-880M combo before, and certainly the 880Ms were major contributors to the dramatic difference I was hearing. So, too, were the changes I'd made to my listening room. By swapping components in and out, however, I was able to conclude that the 850P was also an important piece of the puzzle. Listening to several other preamps showed me that the 850P was, in comparison, essentially transparent, and was simply letting through more of the recorded information. By removing the smoothness I'd always heard from Acoustic, the 850P showed that it had been due…