The following choices of the venerable—and venerated—staff of this fine mag represent to them the best of their music collections. Variety and whim happily abound. And by revealing what they most like to listen to, our writers tell us who, in some ways, they are. Everyone is…
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Much as we audiophiles love a good format war—nothing like a dustup over the tactility of vinyl vs the convenience of downloads—not to mention all the ever-evolving gear, the base of this pursuit is still the music. Which is why February is the month least cruel, and time again for our annual "Records To Die For."
"My life would be worthless without music," says one young member of the Landfill Harmonic, a music program for the children of Cateura, Paraguay.
Cateura is recognized as one of the poorest slums of Latin America—a town built atop a massive dump. Children there are born into poverty, surrounded by violence and drugs. They are lucky to have music teacher Favio Chavez, who helps his students find beauty and magic in the world around them. Together, they turn garbage into musical instruments.
For more information, visit The Landfill Harmonic on Facebook or at the…
For the past few years, one of Stereophile's go-to recommendations for affordable high-performance D/A processors has been the M1DAC from British company Musical Fidelity. The M1DAC was enthusiastically reviewed by Sam Tellig in March 2011, and I wrote about the most recent version in January 2013. "Purity of tone was exceptional," decided Mr. T., which I found to be accompanied by superb measured performance, all at a very reasonable price: $749.
So when I learned, at the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show, of Musical Fidelity's new M6DAC, intended to offer "reference quality" performance…
Out of the box, my first impression of the M6DAC's character was its natural-sounding midrange. The late mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson's rich, creamy-toned performance of "E Viva Ancora," from Handel's opera Ariodante (ALC file ripped from CD, Wigmore Hall Live 0013), sounded both superbly natural and free from treble grain. Accompanist Roger Vignoles's piano was set back in the supportive Wigmore Hall acoustic, a venue I used to attend regularly when I lived in England.
But the M6DAC's forceful low frequencies emerged as a consistent factor in my auditioning, reminding me of my…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: Remote-controlled D/A processor with two user-selectable digital filters. DAC: dual-differential, 8x-oversampling, 24-bit delta-sigma with asynchronous upsampling on all inputs to 192kHz. Digital inputs: AES/EBU on XLR, 1 S/PDIF on coax, 1 S/PDIF on TosLink, 1 asynchronous USB 2.0 on USB type B connector, 1 Bluetooth antenna (aptX decoding). Analog outputs: 1 pair balanced on XLRs, 1 pair unbalanced on RCAs. Frequency response: <2Hz–90kHz, +0dB/–3dB with data sampled at 192kHz. Channel separation: >105dB. Signal/noise: >120dB (A-weighted).…
Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment
Analog Source: Linn Sondek LP12 turntable with Lingo power supply, Linn Ekos tonearm, Linn Arkiv B phono cartridge.
Digital Sources: Ayre Acoustics C-5xeMP universal player; Apple 2.7GHz i7 Mac mini laptop running OS10.7, iTunes 10, Pure Music 1.86; Arcam FMJ D33, Musical Fidelity M1DAC, M2Tech Young & Palmer, Mark Levinson No.30.6 D/A converters; Ayre Acoustics QA-9 USB A/D converter.
Preamplification: Liberty B2B-1 phono preamplifier, Pass Labs XP-30 line preamplifier.
Power Amplifiers: Classé CT-M600, Lamm M1.2 Reference, MBL Reference…
Sidebar 3: Measurements
I examined the Musical Fidelity M6DAC's electrical performance with Stereophile's loan sample of the top-of-the-line Audio Precision SYS2722 system (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. The TosLink input locked to datastreams with sample rates up to 96kHz; the coaxial, AES/EBU, and USB inputs all worked with data sampled at rates up to 192kHz, including 88.2 and 176.4kHz. The Macintosh USB Prober utility revealed that the M6DAC's USB 2.0 input does operate in the…
Photo by Bowers & Wilkins
On Thursday, June 13th, British hi-fi mainstay Bowers & Wilkins and Italian luxury car manufacturer Maserati brought their Seven Notes World Tour to the Industria Superstudio in New York City’s Meatpacking District. The event presented the B&W-designed in-car audio system, the new B&W 805 Maserati Edition loudspeaker, and a performance from Howie B.
At the entrance, exquisite women in wavy, knee-cut, blue-gray dresses granted permission to enter via iPad guest-lists. Diamond ear-pierced, broad-collared male fashionistas and evenly tanned…
I threw away all of the original jewel cases to my CDs. The CDs themselves are in a Case Logic CD Binder. Before throwing the cases away, I adored each title’s artwork and reminisced on each album’s place in my personal history.
It was hard to say goodbye, but the cases were taking up too much space.
Peter Tosh’s Live & Dangerous: Boston 1976 was bought at the now-defunct Union Square Virgin Megastore. My jaw-dropped when I heard how painfully out-of-tune Tosh’s guitar was. How high was he? The hazy cover photograph of Tosh’s preoccupied mindset told the whole story.
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Swiss Precision: The Story of the Thorens TD 124 and Other Classic Turntables (2007), by Joachim Bung (reviewed in April 2008) also tells the story of Fritz and Marie Laeng, the couple who founded Lenco, Switzerland's other turntable company. Thanks in equal parts to Fritz's engineering talents and Marie's business acumen—her idea to sell turntables through a popular book-and-record club is remembered as the company's turnaround point—Lenco swiftly became one of the most successful and well-regarded makers of hi-fi turntables through the 1960s and early '70s. Then, almost as swiftly, Lenco…