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Many of David Wilson's highly acclaimed, long out-of-print recordings are poised to make old and new generations of audiophiles very happy. On August 1, the first two of a selected batch of Wilson Audiophile Recordings will return to circulation as high-resolution (176.4kHz/24-bit), CD-quality, and MP3 downloads. Distributed by Naxos via a host of mass-market and hi-res digital music stores, including Chandos' "The Classical Shoppe," eClassical24bit, HDMusic, HDTracks, HiResAudio, Linn Records, Onkyo, and Qobuz24bit, the first titles in the series are Recital, James B. Welch's disc of four…
John Parks of Hurst, Texas is the winner of Stereophile.com's Monitor Audio Airstream WS100 Sweepstakes. The Monitor Audio Airstream WS100 are desktop speakers that receive a wireless audio signal transmitted on the 2.4GHz band via USB dongle.
John is befuddled. While he has these awesome and convenient desktop speakers, he has no desk! We do not have any desk sweepstakes coming up soon.
Congrats on your win John, and thanks for playing! Hope you find a suitable surface.
Bill Frisell’s new CD, Big Sur (Sony Masterworks/OKeh Records), is at once a reprise and a departure. It features the string musicians from his 858 Quartet, last heard two years ago on Sign of Life—Frisell on guitar, Jenny Scheinman on violin, Eyvind Kang on viola, Hank Roberts, cello—this time augmented by the versatile young drummer Rudy Royston. The album also features 19 new Frisell compositions, lithe and lyrical, yet laced with more complex harmonies—subtler, darker, and more sinuous—than anything I’ve heard from him before.
The music from the quartet’s first album, 858 Richter,…
Register to win one of four sets of Audiofly Headphones (MSRP $30 - $200) we are giving away.
Made with high quality materials and precision manufacturing, the AF33 will play its heart out every time and astonish you with its sound quality. It arrives equipped with a custom voiced 9mm dynamic driver for detailed sound reproduction across the entire sonic spectrum.
According to the company:
AF33
Made with high quality materials and precision manufacturing, the AF33 will play its heart out every time and astonish you with its sound quality. It arrives equipped with a custom voiced 9mm dynamic driver for detailed sound reproduction across the entire sonic spectrum.
AF45
Born out of obsession, the AF45 delivers clear, honest tones. Well-defined mids groove with a punchy bass and blend with stunning highs that chime like a church bell…
It seems I'm always reviewing an integrated amplifier from Creek Audio. It started in the late 1980s, when I fell in love with the capabilities of inexpensive, well-designed audio equipment, sparked by the spectacular sound of a pair of Celestion 5 bookshelf speakers at a Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago. I was reading an issue of Hi Fi Heretic (now defunct), for which my friend Art Dudley wrote, and it included a survey of various inexpensive British integrated amplifiers, some of them made by Creek. I was already familiar with the company, but hadn't listened to affordable British…
With percussion recordings, the Evolution 50A demonstrated its ability to unravel dense, complex clusters of high-frequency textures. In George Crumb's Spanish Songbook 1: The Ghosts of Alhambra, from The Complete Crumb Edition Vol. 15 (CD, Bridge 9335), percussionist Daniel Druckman plays a wide range of mallet instruments, bells, chimes, and cymbals; the 50A was able to easily unravel the extended, crystalline, subtle details of these instruments' sounds. The Creek's ability to unravel transients without a sense of dulling or artificial sharpness also made percussion recordings sound more…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: Solid-state integrated amplifier. Power output: >55Wpc into 8 ohms, >85Wpc into 4 ohms. THD: <0.005%, 20Hz–20kHz. Frequency response: 10Hz–100kHz, –2dB (unbalanced); 10Hz–50kHz, –2dB (balanced). Slew rate: >30V/µs. Gain: 33.3dB (x46), unbalanced; 27.0dB (x22.5), balanced. Input sensitivity: 410mV. Max input voltage: 5.4V and 10.8V RMS. Channel separation: –80dB. Signal/noise: >102dB. Output impedance: <0.1 ohm at 1kHz.
Dimensions: 16.8" (430mm) W by 2.3" (60mm) H by 10.9" (280mm) D. Weight: 16.5 lbs (7.5kg).
Serial number…
Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment
Analog Sources: VPI TNT IV, Rega Planar 3 turntables; Immedia, Syrinx PU-3 tonearms; Koetsu Urushi, Clearaudio Virtuoso Wood cartridges.
Digital Sources: Lector CDP-7T, Creek Destiny CD players.
Preamplification: Vendetta Research SCP2D phono preamplifier.
Integrated Amplifiers: Creek 5350SE & Destiny.
Loudspeakers: Epos M16i.
Cables: Interconnect (all MIT): Magnum M3, MI-330SG Terminator, MI-350 CVTwin Terminator. Speaker: Acarian Systems Black Orpheus.
Accessories: Various by ASC, Bright Star, Celestion, Echo Busters,…
Sidebar 3: Measurements
I measured the Creek Evolution 50A using Stereophile's loan sample of the top-of-the-line Audio Precision SYS2722 system (see the January 2008 "As We See It" and www.ap.com). Before performing any measurements on an amplifier, I run it for an hour with both channels driven at 1/3 its rated power into 8 ohms; this is the level at which the maximum amount of power is dissipated in the output devices with a class-A/B topology. However, when I tried this with the Creek Evolution 50A, the amplifier turned itself off after 20 minutes, its front-panel display showing the…
Boston Acoustics made its name in the early 1980s with the A40, an inexpensive two-way bookshelf design that became one of that decade's best-selling speakers. Stephen Mejias was impressed by the A40's spiritual descendant, the Boston Acoustics A25 bookshelf speaker ($299.98/pair), when he reviewed it in November 2011, and I was similarly impressed when I had the speaker on the test bench for measurement. So when, in the fall of 2012, Boston's soon-to-be-departing PR representative Sara Trujillo let me know that the company was introducing a range of more expensive speakers, I asked to…