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Analog Corner #302: 25 Years and Counting Page 2

I wasn't anti-CD. I was anti–bad sound. I was against bad sound being declared good. I put a bumper sticker on my car—I printed it out myself—saying "Compact Discs sound terrible."

When the Los Angeles Times ran an editorial extolling CDs' excellence, I sent a letter, which was published, opining that I hoped the paper knew more about diplomacy and economics than it did about good sound. I was on the warpath.

After 6 years at The Absolute Sound, I quit in 1995—a hilarious story best told in a different venue. John Atkinson offered me a job at Stereophile and accepted my…

Mikey Bats 302

John Atkinson (left) presents Michael Fremer with the Los Angeles & Orange County Audio Society's 2018 Founder's Award.

Issue 54 of The Absolute Sound, cover-dated July/August 1988, had arrived in my mailbox. I had been warned that this issue contained a report from Stereophile's third hi-fi show, which had been held in Santa Monica the previous April. Although it wasn't listed in the issue's table of contents, I found the show report on page 186, written by Michael Fremer, who was listed on the magazine's masthead as "Senior Editor: Pop Mix."

I first met Michael at the…

Recording of October 2020: <I>Rough and Rowdy Ways</I>

Bob Dylan: Rough and Rowdy Ways
Columbia C-250652 194397980991 (2LP; also available on CD and as 24/96 FLAC download) Chris Shaw, eng.; Greg Calbi, mastering.
Performance *****
Sonics ****

The stats alone are impressive—or, as we at Stereophile like to say, the measurements. 79-year-old Bob Dylan's 39th studio album is his first album of original material since 2012. Rough and Rowdy Ways times out at more than 70 minutes of music, due in part to the inclusion of Dylan's lengthiest studio song to date, "Murder Most Foul," which runs 16 minutes, 54 seconds. The LP version…

Göbel High End Divin Marquis loudspeaker

Although it was founded by ex-Siemens loudspeaker engineer Oliver Göbel in 2003, I am embarrassed to admit that I had never heard of Göbel High End until I visited the room hosted by Florida retailer Bending Wave at the 2019 AXPONA. There, I listened to the German manufacturer's ginormous $220,000/pair Divin Noblesse loudspeakers, which were making their US debut. I was impressed by what I heard. I was interested, therefore, to learn that Göbel was introducing a smaller Divin model, the Marquis, which would not be too large for my listening room and would be priced at $80,000/pair.

The…

Göbel High End Divin Marquis loudspeaker Page 2

I had emailed Oliver Göbel a diagram of my room, and he was confident the Divin Marquises would work well in it. I ended up with the woofer of the left-hand Marquis 37" from the LPs that line the nearest sidewall, the right-hand loudspeaker's woofer 34" from the bookshelves that line its sidewall. The woofers were 88" from the wall behind them. This was a little farther out than I wanted, but I couldn't place the speakers any closer to the wall due to the two stairs and raised platform behind the right-hand Marquis that led to the vestibule. The speakers were 120" from the position of my head…

Göbel High End Divin Marquis loudspeaker Specifications

Sidebar 1: Specifications

Description: Three-way, reflex-loaded, floorstanding loudspeaker. Drive-units: 3.5" × 1.5" AMT tweeter with aluminum, modified–Tractrix-curve waveguide, 8" (200mm) doped paper/ Kevlar-fiber–cone midrange unit, 12" (300mm) doped paper/carbon-fiber–cone woofer. Crossover frequencies: 140Hz, 1.6kHz. Frequency response: 21Hz–28kHz, –3dB. Nominal impedance: 4 ohms. Minimum impedance: 3.4 ohms at 95Hz. Sensitivity: 92dB/W/m. Power handling: not specified.
Dimensions: 46.5" (1180mm) H × 16.15" (410mm) W × 28.35" (720mm) D. Weight: 330lb (150kg) each; 396lb (180kg)…

Göbel High End Divin Marquis loudspeaker Associated Equipment

Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment

Analog Source: Linn Sondek LP12 turntable with Lingo power supply, Linn Ekos tonearm, Linn Arkiv B cartridge, Channel D Seta L phono preamplifier.
Digital Sources: Roon Nucleus+ file server; Ayre Acoustics C-5xeMP universal player; PS Audio PerfectWave DirectStream D/A processor, MBL N31 CD player/DAC, Ayre Acoustics QA-9 A/D converter.
Power amplifiers: Parasound Halo JC 1+ and Lamm Reference M1.2, both monoblocks.
Cables: Digital: AudioQuest Vodka (Ethernet), AudioQuest Coffee (USB), DH Labs (1m, AES/EBU). Interconnect: AudioQuest Wild Blue (…

Göbel High End Divin Marquis loudspeaker Measurements

Sidebar 3: Measurements

I used DRA Labs' MLSSA system and a calibrated DPA 4006 microphone to measure the Göbel Divin Marquis's frequency response in the farfield, and an Earthworks QTC-40 mike for the nearfield and in-room responses.

Usually, I measure loudspeakers in our backyard, weather permitting, or in our living room with the furniture pushed to the sides. This eliminates or moves back in time the reflections of the speaker's output. However, as this 330lb loudspeaker was too massive for me to move outside or upstairs, I had to do the quasi-anechoic measurements in my…

Revinylization #10: Bill Evans's <I>Live at Montreux</I>

The late pianist Bill Evans may be the most reissued jazz musician in the catalogs of audiophile record labels. There are reasons for that: He played standards, mainly ballads (many audiophiles shun the avantgarde), almost never in groups larger than trios (stereo systems often do best with small-scale ensembles). Whether by design or chance, his best recordings were miked by superb engineers. Perhaps because of that, proprietors of high-end labels have cherished Evans's music with heightened passion.

Chad Kassem's Analogue Productions has reissued most of Evans's albums, some more than…

A Musical Inheritance

When I was a child, my father was a dealer in black-market records. We lived on what was then the outskirts of Moscow, in what was then the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. It was the 1970s, and our nation's record stores only sold discs of domestic manufacture, most of them wooly-sounding classical recordings on the Melodiya label. This meant that a healthy contingent of Muscovites valued records smuggled from what they referred to in hushed tones as "The West" more than just about anything else their rubles could buy. My father sold a single American record by Black Sabbath or Ornette…