Description: TD 124 DD turntable: Direct drive AC motor. Speeds: 33 1/3, 45rpm. Wow and flutter: DIN/WRMS <0.04%. Platter material: aluminum. Platter weight: 7.7lb (3.5kg). Outputs: Balanced stereo (XLR) pair, unbalanced stereo (RCA) pair, ground connection.
TP 124 tonearm: 9" tonearm with adjustable VTA and azimuth, antiskating with a ruby-mounted counterweight. Effective length: 9.17" (232.8mm). Offset angle: 23.66°. Overhang: 17.8mm. Effective mass: 15gm. Bayonet style headshell included.
SPU 124 MC cartridge (not included): Output voltage at…
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Sidebar 1: Specifications
Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment
Analog sources: Kuzma Stabi R turntable and 4Point 11" tonearm; Koetsu Rosewood MC cartridge; Thorens TD 124 and Jelco TS-350S 9" tonearm.
Preamplifiers: PS Audio BHK Signature, Shindo Laboratory Allegro. Tavish Audio Design Adagio and Luxman EQ-500 phono preamplifiers.
Power amplifiers: LKV Research Veros PWR+, Shindo Laboratory Haut-Brion.
Loudspeakers: DeVore Fidelity O/96.
Cables: Interconnect (RCA): Triode Wire Labs Spirit II, Shindo Laboratory. Speaker: AudioQuest Robin Hood. AC: manufacturers' own.
Accessories: IsoTek EVO3…
From my writing chair, I can see about a dozen moderately priced tube and solid state audio amplifiers.
The five stacked next to my desk are First Watt or Pass Labs models designed by Nelson Pass. Across the room is a hybrid tube/class-D Rogue Sphinx V3 integrated. That black Sphinx is standing on its side behind one of the DeVore Fidelity Orangutan O/93 speakers. Next to the Orangutan is a Schiit Aegir. The most conspicuous amp in the room is my BFF, the Line Magnetic LM-518 IA (footnote 1), which breaks the night's darkness with its tall, bright-emitter 845 triodes. Next to that is…
The lesson here is: If you have a tube amp that offers multiple output taps, never assume 8 ohms to 8 ohms, or 4 ohms to 4 ohms. Try them all and choose the one that pleases you most.
My only criticism of the Feliks Arioso was: It never took acid and rolled naked in the Woodstock mud. It played even the raunchiest 1920s blues wearing a crisply pressed Sunday-go-to-meeting shirt.
The Western Electric 300B
The Western Electric Company was founded in 1869 as a pioneering electrical engineering and manufacturing operation hoping to become a leader in the dawning electrical age…
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.
A great concept—sound enough to serve as the foundation for an independent democratic nation.
Yet what's sound in one sphere doesn't necessarily apply to sound in another, namely the rooms in which our systems reside. As much as we audiophiles may wish to declare our independence from room resonances, image smearing from first-order reflections, slap echo, and every other environmental and speaker-related factor that can handicap system performance, no mere declaration will make it so. Not all rooms—and not…
Happily, I own two microphone stands. I placed one directly behind my customary listening position and aligned the microphone with an imaginary line running between my ear canals. With 15 or so feet of cabling to connect the Accuphase's supplied mike to the DG-68, it was easy to sit to one side and measure the room's acoustic. During the course of the review, I managed to travel back and forth between the DG-68 and my room-left listening position more than 40 times without tripping over the microphone cable.
The result
After I'd created my first curves, I put on Rickie Lee Jones's…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: Digital Voicing Equalizer with remote control. Analog inputs: 1 pair single-ended (RCA), 1 pair balanced (XLR). Outputs: 1 pair single-ended (RCA), 1 pair balanced (XLR). Digital inputs/outputs: 1 HS-Link (for Accuphase products; samples up to DSD 5.8MHz and PCM 32/384), 1 coaxial (samples up to PCM 24/192); 1 optical (samples up to PCM 24/96). USB 2.0/3.0 port for graphic storage only. Gain: +12dB to –90dB, variable. Analog input maximum level: 0.89V at +6dB gain, 1.78V at 0dB gain, 3.55V at –6dB gain. THD+noise, 20Hz–20kHz: 0.0007%. Frequency…
Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment
Digital sources: dCS Rossini SACD/CD transport, Rossini DAC, and Rossini Clock; EMM Labs DV2 Integrated DAC; Synology 5-bay NAS 1019+; Roon Nucleus+ music server with HDPlex 200 linear power supply; Uptone Audio etherRegen, Small Green Computer Sonore opticalModule, TP-Link gigabit Ethernet media converters plus multimode duplex fiberoptic cable (2), Linksys routers (2); Small Green Computer linear power supply & Small Green Computer/ HDPlex four-component, 200W linear power supply (3); external hard drives, SSD USB sticks, iPad Pro; Apple 2017 Macbook…
Sidebar 3: Measurements
The Accuphase DG-68 is a complicated product, comprising an analog–digital converter (ADC), digital signal processing (DSP), and a digital–analog converter (DAC). It also has digital inputs and outputs that bypass the ADC and DAC stages. JVS used it as a complete analog–analog processor, so, in addition to examining the individual performance of the ADC, DSP, and DAC stages, I looked at its behavior as set by JVS.
I used my Audio Precision SYS2722 system (see the January 2008 "As We See It") to perform the measurements, repeating some tests with the…
John Atkinson wrote about the Audio Research Reference 6SE in August 2021 (Vol.44 No.8):
Jason Victor Serinus's first impressions of this $17,000 tubed preamplifier (footnote 1) in Stereophile's November 2020 issue were very positive: "Am I really getting paid to do this?," he wrote, calling it "some of the most polished, transparent, and arresting sound I'd heard from my system." But as his auditioning resumed after a break of a few days, he discovered that the REF 6SE sounded very different than it had a few days earlier. "Much of the tonal beauty that had momentarily caused me to hold…