"Why record [a work] again if it's not about the actual moment, you know? So that's part of that culture."
He even likes mistakes in his concert music, he told me: "Sometimes especially string players will do something that you didn't write, in terms of the sound. You might have written a G, but they're playing it with a…
St. Carolyn by the Sea/Suite from There Will Be Blood, with Jonny Greenwood and Copenhagen Philharmonic, Andre de Ridder, cond., 2014.
Swirls of electric guitar amid flutes with full orchestral sweep and a sense of stately drama. High-note pizzicatos give way to urgent strings on Lachrimae.
El Chan, with Katia and Marielle Labèque, pianos, 2019.
Intense attacks, rapid-fire runs, and delicate pianissimos. Includes the Concerto for Two Pianos Dessner composed for the two sisters.
Music for Wood…
Tubed preamplifiers have a well-earned reputation as system busters. Many of them during warmup produce horrendous bangs or plops so severe that every speaker fuse in the system blows. If fuses are absent, or rated too high to protect things, the amplifier, speakers, or both are likely to blow up (not literally; they just twitch once and lie down dead). The PV-5 contains one of the most effective pop suppressors I've encountered,…
Description: Tube stereo preamplifier. Inputs: MM or MC phono, tuner, 2 tape loops. Controls: Left, right, stereo, reverse, mono. 2 main outputs, 2 tape outputs, 4 AC outputs (2 switched, 2 unswitched). Frequency response: +0/–2dB, 2Hz–100kHz. Maximum output: 25V volts. Phono overload: 500mV.
Dimensions: 16" W × ll¾ × D by 4" H.
Price: $1485 (1984); no longer available (2021).
Manufacturer: Conrad-Johnson Design, MacLean, VA 22101 (1984); 2800K Dorr Avenue, Fairfax, VA USA 22031 (2021). Tel: (703) 698-8581. Web: conradjohnson.com.
Digital acoustic equalization system: Inputs: AES/EBU XLR, S/PDIF RCA, AT&T (ST) optical. Sampling rates: 44.1kHz, 48kHz. Optional analog inputs with 20-bit sigma-delta ADCs: balanced XLR with adjustable sensitivity from –4dBu to +24dBu and 15k ohms input impedance; single-ended RCA with adjustable sensitivity from –8dBu to +20dBu and 10k ohms input impedance. Frequency response: 10Hz–21kHz, +0, – .5dB. Dynamic range: 103dB unweighted. Outputs: AES/EBU XLR, S/PDIF RCA, AT&T (ST) optical. Optional Analog outputs use 20-bit, 8x-oversampling DAC with…
The test procedure followed, with minor changes, that established for my previous loudspeaker reviews: each pair was used with a Mark Levinson No.26/No.20 combination—amplification unlikely to be used with any of these speakers but which would undoubtedly get the best from them—a Marantz CD94 CD player used via its optical digital output to feed a Marantz CDA94 outboard DAC unit, and a 1987 Linn Sondek/Ittok/Troika combination sitting on a Sound Organization table.
Interconnect was Madrigal HPC, speaker cable was also from Madrigal. The…
The frequency response was measured in the listening window—spatially averaged to minimize room standing-wave problems—using a 13-octave warble-tone generator, which is said to be a little more analytical than the filtered pink-noise signal I have used in the past; in addition, the nearfield low-frequency response of each speaker was measured with a sinewave sweep to get an idea of the true bass extension relative to the level at 100Hz.
The most outstanding feature of the Rauna's spatially averaged room response (fig.1) was its flatness through the…