Description: Belt-drive turntable with high-mass aluminum plinth, pivoted tonearm, and installed Ortofon Quintet Black moving coil cartridge.
Dimensions: Turntable: 17.24" (438mm) W × 15.55" (395mm) D × 4.23" (108mm) H (not including record weight). Weight: 75lb (34kg).
Tonearm: Pivoted, with 237.8mm pivot-to-spindle distance, effective length of 254mm, and 16.2mm overhang. Offset angle: N/A.
Ortofon Quintet Black: Moving coil phono cartridge. Recommended downforce: 2.1–2.5gm. Recommended load impedance: >20 ohms. Internal impedance: 5 ohms.…
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Sidebar 1: Specifications
Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment
Analog sources: Continuum Audio Labs Caliburn turntable with Castellon stand; OMA K3 direct-drive turntable, SAT CF1-09, CF1Ti-09, Schroeder/OMA, and Kuzma 4Point tonearms; HiFiction X-quisite ST, Lyra Atlas Λ Lambda SL, Ortofon MC Century, Anna Diamond, A95, and A90, Grado Epoch3 and Epoch Mono, and Miyajima Labs Infinity (mono) cartridges.
Digital sources: dCS Vivaldi One SACD player/DAC; Lynx Hilo A/D-D/A converter, Roon Nucleus+; Pure Vinyl and Vinyl Studio software.
Preamplifiers: darTZeel NHB-18NS preamplifier; Ypsilon MC-10L, MC-16L, phono…
George Russell was a major innovator in modern jazz: a pianist-composer-theoretician who profoundly influenced Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Gil Evans, and the "modal revolution" that propelled so much music of the 1960s and beyond. But he's largely been forgotten. He was also the leader of ensembles, big and small, on more than two dozen albums. A few of those albums are acknowledged masterpieces, but they too have been overshadowed by some of his acolytes' classics.
The most ambitious of Russell's masterworks is New York, N.Y., which was recorded in the fall of 1958 and released on Decca…
"I want to redo that painting," the spouse declared. "It's too dark."
"What's wrong with dark?" I responded. "Rembrandt's portraits are often dark. So are the paintings of Courbet and Hobbema. Your color palette represents how you were feeling at the moment. If it's true to you and speaks strongly, why change it?"
Granted, depending upon how dark a painting is, a lack of bright areas may translate into less detail, hazy backgrounds, and a lack of vibrancy. But that doesn't mean that the painting will be less engaging or of less aesthetic value. It all depends upon what the artist…
The back panel, whose left/right layout fans out from the center and reflects the integrated's dual-mono nature, is so chock full of connections as to thumb its nose at the Stones' "You Can't Always Get What You Want": four pairs of single-ended and balanced inputs; two sets of single-ended inputs designed for either high-level signal sources or a turntable; a grounding terminal; one set of single-ended and balanced preamplifier outputs (should you use the PA 3100 HV as a preamp or with active speakers); a tape loop with RCA inputs and outputs; two pairs of easily tightened rhodium-plated…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: Integrated amplifier with class-AB output stage, optional phono stage, room-correction equalizer/ tone controls (not installed), and PS 3000 HV external power supply. Analog inputs: 4 pairs RCA (line), 4 pairs XLR (line), 1 pair RCA phono (for optional phono stage), 1 pair RCA (line), 1 RCA recorder, dedicated input for optional power supply. Analog outputs: 1 pair RCA preamp, 1 pair XLR preamp, 1 pair RCA recorder. ; Nominal input impedance: 20k ohms (RCA); 5k ohms (XLR)Speaker outputs: 2 pairs (A, B, or A+B for biwire). Amp stage: 300Wpc into 8…
Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment
Digital sources: dCS Rossini DAC and Rossini Clock; EMM Labs DV2 Integrated DAC; T+A SD 3100 HV DAC; Synology 5-bay NAS 1019+; Roon Nucleus+ music server, Uptone Audio etherRegen, Small Green Computer Sonore opticalModule, TP-Link gigabit Ethernet media converters (2) with multimode duplex fiberoptic cables, Linksys routers (2), and Arris modem, all powered by HDPlex 200W (1) and 300W (2) four-component linear power supplies; external hard drives, SSD USB sticks, iPad Pro; Apple 2017 Macbook Pro computer with 2.8 GHz Intel i7, SSD, 16GB RAM.
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Sidebar 3: Measurements
I tested the T+A PA 3100 HV with my Audio Precision SYS2722 system (see the January 2008 "As We See It"). The review sample did not have the Tone Control/Room Correction module fitted and neither did it have the optional PS 3000 HV auxiliary power supply. I looked first at its behavior via its line inputs, mostly with the volume control set to its maximum of "99," and then at lower settings. (The volume control operates in accurate 0.5dB steps.) The front-panel meters are correctly calibrated, a power of 1W into 8 ohms being shown as "1W." I preconditioned the…
Robert Schryer returned to the Grandinote Shinai in April 2021 (Vol.44 No.4):
Eight weeks after I'd submitted my review of the 37Wpc Grandinote Shinai integrated amplifier ($15,000), whose return to Reinhard Goerner of importer/distributor Goerner Audio was delayed due to the pandemic lockdown, the Italian integrated amp blew open.
I don't mean that it exploded; I mean its sound exploded: It blew open musically. As good as it was already, the sound went from here up to there, overnight. In 16 hours, the amp underwent a transformation that caused it to sound expressively freer.…
Sound Quality
To my ears, the Ether C Flow is neutral to slightly "U" shape sounding. Measured frequency response shows a headphone that is quite close to the Harman target response. Bass is boosted about 5dB above flat below 150Hz; the boost does not intrude into the mids but is slightly excessive in the mid-bass. Though following the target response quite closely, by ear it sounds somewhat too emphatic in the mid-treble area.
Dynamics are quite good, but not great; imaging is fairly good, a little shallow, but not great; resolving power is fairly good, but not great.…