Bass, like sex, is something most young men desire in excess: To the novice, quantity trumps quality, and as long as he can hear from his playback system the deepest sounds of an orchestral bass drum or five-string electric bass (low string tuned to B-0 or C-1), he is completely satisfied. Meanwhile, bass texture, bass color, bass momentum, bass nuance, bass tension, and, especially, bass feel have now joined the short-nosed…
search
Beethoven understood the pathos of the gap between idea and realization, and the sense of strain put on the listener's imagination is essential.—Charles Rosen
The thing is: There are a lot of bass-reflex loudspeakers out there, but not a whole lot of musical instruments that propagate soundwaves by pumping away at the air with such extreme excursions that the naked eye can follow them. The other thing is: There are a whole lot of musical instruments out there that propagate soundwaves by means of large resonating surfaces and very minute excitations, but not a whole lot of loudspeakers that mimic those same qualities.
Is it just me, or is there some sort of disconnect here?
They all compress and rarify but they don't all suck
…
Sidebar 1: Contents Expired
10 pop albums that sounded fresh in the 1970s but stink out loud today:
1) David Bowie: Diamond Dogs
2) Jethro Tull: War Child
3) Lou Reed: Rock n Roll Animal
4) Paul Simon: There Goes Rhymin' Simon
5) Eric Clapton: 461 Ocean Boulevard
6) Bruce Springsteen: Born to Run
7) Neil Young Band: On the Beach
8) James Taylor: Gorilla
9) Alice Cooper: Billion Dollar Babies
10) The Clash: Give 'Em Enough Rope
11) Oasis: (What's the Story) Morning Glory? (Honorable Mention: it might as well have been made in the '70s)
"While the selection and fine tuning of exhilarating-sounding vintage audio equipment is an exciting, often life-long search, let's not forget it's ultimately the music that matters—mankind's mysterious mastery of making air move in esthetically & emotionally thrilling ways. Most importantly, remember to ask yourself the age-old question: Can I dance to it?"
This has always been the conundrum of being an audiophile: Are you in it for the gear or for the music? And while it's perfectly acceptable, even preferable, to choose both, for many the choice is stark.
For Yves Beauvais…
"After a year of me doing A&R, [Ahmet] called me in and said, 'I know you have very good taste, but I have this sense that so far you are only signing artists that you like or that you love. That's not your job. Your job is to sign artists that the American public wants to buy. Who cares if you love them or not? My favorite singer of all time is Fred Astaire, but I don't make Fred Astaire records at Atlantic. I make AC/DC records, and with AC/DC money I buy Fred Astaire records.'
"I completely freaked out upon hearing this. I cannot cynically guess . . . I do not have that sense,…
I bought a Slim Devices Squeezebox network player in the spring of 2006 and my life changed. Having audio files on a server and being able to play them through my high-end rig via the Squeezebox's S/PDIF output liberated my music from the tyranny of a physical medium. As I wrote in my review, "physical discs seem so 20th century!" After Wes Phillips reviewed the Squeezebox's big brother, the Transporter, in February 2007, I bought the review sample and lived happily ever after in the world of bits rather than atoms—at least until the summer of 2010, when Slim Devices' new owner, Logitech,…
The Mirage's Config page has a tab labeled Content, which is used to choose the music to be played and synchronized with the MMS-5A. The music files on my NAS drive showed up, but my Mac mini, which I wanted to use with the Mirage and was on the same network, wasn't recognized. The solution, according to the manual, was to go to the Firmware tab, and download and install on the Mac the Media Sync utility (a Windows version is available). This I did, and it allowed me to copy my iTunes library to the Music folder on the MMS-5A's internal drive using the Mac's Finder. (This is not the…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: Remote-controlled, Ethernet-connected media server. Digital outputs: one S/PDIF on coaxial RCA (also 5.1-channel output), one digital 7.1-channel output, USB. Analog outputs: four pairs unbalanced on RCAs, individually assignable. Streaming services supported: Last.fm, Pandora Internet radio, Rhapsody, SiriusXM Internet Radio, Spotify, TuneIn; add-on URLs for radio stations; guest computer/device streaming via AirPlay. Audio file formats supported: .aif, .aifc, .aiff, .au, .cda, .flac, .m4a, .m4p, .mp2, .mp3, .mpa, .rmi, .snd, .wav, .wma, .wpl.…
Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment
Digital Sources: Ayre Acoustics C-5xeMP universal player; Apple 2.7GHz i7 Mac mini laptop running OS10.7, iTunes 10, Pure Music 1.86; Mark Levinson No.30.6, Arcam FMJ D33 D/A converters; Ayre Acoustics QA-9 USB A/D converter.
Preamplification: Pass Labs XP-30 line preamplifier.
Power Amplifiers: Classé CT-M600, Lamm M1.2 Reference (both monoblocks).
Loudspeakers: Vandersteen Treo, Joseph Audio Perspective.
Cables: Digital: AudioQuest SVT-4 (S/PDIF), DH Labs Silver Sonic. AES/EBU: AudioQuest Coffee, Belkin Gold USB. FireWire: AudioQuest…
Sidebar 3: Measurements
I examined the behavior of the Autonomic Controls Mirage MMS-5A's analog and digital outputs 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").
The most important characteristic of an S/PDIF output is that it have low datastream jitter. With streamed data, once jitter is introduced, it can only be low-pass filtered, not eliminated; the lower the level of jitter from the outset, the better. With the MMS-5A's S/PDIF output connected to the SYS2722 with a 6'-long Apature…