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Listening to the Stax SR-009 and Great Headphone Amplifiers HeadAmp Blue Hawaii

HeadAmp Blue Hawaii Special Edition ($4980)
Though they don't stack, the headphone amplifier and power supply of the HeadAmp Blue Hawaii sit next to each other with an understated grace that only extremely high-quality builds can pull off. The unit I have here (thanks Stretch!) has silver panels, but a wide variety of custom colors are available. The BHSE is a hybrid amp sporting a quad of EL34 output drive tubes in an OTL DC coupled configuration, fed by a solid-state input section and power supply.

Slowly but surely over the week of listening, the Blue Hawaii became the amp…

Listening to the Stax SR-009 and Great Headphone Amplifiers Conclusions

Conclusions
A week with some of the world's best headphone gear is merely a taste. I think readers should take my thoughts here as simply one data point in your personal search for sonic Nirvana. There simply wasn't the time during this audition to do anything more than develop some personal preferences; an exhaustive analysis would take months.

If you're beginning to think that a Stax SR-009 headphone is in your future, I think you should spend plenty of time reading the threads regarding these wonderful amps at Head-Fi, and finding ways to hear them in person at meets and…

Lauding Jobs's Least Loved Product: The Basic Apple Ear-Bud Page 2

How Good Are Apple Ear-Buds?
I don't usually spend much time evaluating ear-buds, but I have done a fair bit over the years. The best ear-bud I've ever heard is the Yuin PK1, which simply has astonishing performance for a headphone of this type. But, it's $159 and it's rather inefficient, so you almost need a portable headphone amp to drive it to solid listening levels. The Yuin PK2 ($79), which is more efficient, isn't nearly as good sounding. Sennheiser has been making a full line of ear-buds for a long time in their MX series, and their top-tier 'buds have been a solid…

Lauding Jobs's Least Loved Product: The Basic Apple Ear-Bud Page 3

Summary
Steve Guttenberg may still be right: millions and millions of people have heard their iDevices through these ear-buds, and while they may be the best ear-bud out there, it's still pretty mediocre sound quality.

At least Apple tried very hard to make it as good as they could. They could have just made yet another piece of junk throwaway ear-bud, but instead they gave it their best shot. They spent good money improving these little 'buds over the years so they could give them away with pride. It took the vision to know that even though they were cheap, throwaway cans…

Rudresh Mahanthappa: The Time Is Now

An outburst of saxophone flurries sits you straight up in your chair. The tone is rich but with a cutting edge.

It has to be Rudresh Mahanthappa. The riveting cry of his alto saxophone is one of the most recognizable sounds in jazz.

But those darting runs coalesce into Charlie Parker's "Red Cross." So it can't be Mahanthappa, can it? He has made 15 straight albums of original music. He doesn't do covers, right?

On his 16th recording, Hero Trio, Mahanthappa breaks through to the past—his and ours. He proudly proclaims Parker's bebop—but then "Red Cross" flies apart, into…

Rudresh Mahanthappa: The Time Is Now Page 2

The turning point came in 2005, when he again traveled to India, this time to Chennai, on a commission. He spent time with Kadri Gopalnath, who played Mahanthappa's instrument, the alto saxophone, but in a style that was decidedly non-Western. Gopalnath employed microtones derived from the Carnatic music of southern India. After Mahanthappa made another trip to India on a Guggenheim grant, he felt ready to record with Indian musicians. The result was Kinsmen, his collaboration with Gopalnath, released on Pi in 2008 to widespread astonishment and praise. Two dissimilar musical cultures, both…

Analog Corner #296: Grado Epoch3, Lyra Atlas Lambda SL, Ortofon MC A Mono phono cartridges

We're 30 years into a cartridge design revolution, particularly at the top end of the market, where manufacturers charge upward of $10,000 for their best efforts: prices that well-off consumers have amply proved they are willing to pay. There doesn't seem to be an innovation end in sight.

When you consider the fragility of phono cartridges—how easily they can be broken and how surely they wear out over time and must be replaced at great expense—you wonder why anyone would pay so much for them. At least until you've listened. Fortunately, some of these innovations eventually make their way…

Analog Corner #296: Grado Epoch3, Lyra Atlas Lambda SL, Ortofon MC A Mono phono cartridges Page 2

The damper and suspension changes bring to the Atlas SL λ a quality of top-to-bottom, luxurious textural suppleness, sustain, timbral generosity, and midband warmth, while losing none of the speed, slam, and detail retrieval for which the Atlas SL (and the brand in general) is best known. Still evident are black backgrounds against which are "carved images in perfect relief," as I wrote about the original Atlas.

Vocal sibilants have time now, beyond the initial, cleanly drawn transient, to expand and better capture the event, which helps produce a more convincing and lifelike…

Luxman D-105u CD player

The $1200 D-105u, the top of Luxman's CD-player line, is novel in its twin-triode vacuum-tube amplification in the analog output stage. This configuration is said to provide high linearity with low distortion and that hard-to-quantify musicality found in tubed products. In addition, the D-105u incorporates an anti-vibration laser pick-up mechanism and a high-mass magnetic disc clamper, the latter feature said to mass-load the disc center to minimize spindle-motor microvibration, thus improving tracking accuracy for lowest error rate.

Removing the cover from the unit reveals a neat,…

Luxman D-105u CD player Page 2

As I continued listening to the Astrée disc, I began to hear a slight imbalance in the treatment of the different registers of the lute. The upper bass seemed subdued in comparison to the upper-mid and treble ranges. The continuity of the musical line was sometimes hard to follow. The upper range of the instrument predominated, leaving the bass line struggling for attention. I had to dig to recover the musical Gestalt. The sound had an overall "dark" character to it, pleasing and seductive, but leaving me less emotionally involved than what the Tercet Mk.III had accustomed me to.

The…