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If speakers were cars, the Infinity IRS Beta and B&W 801 Matrix would represent the luxury end of the mass market, with perhaps the Celestion SL700, Quad ESL-63, and MartinLogan Sequel II analogous to rather hairy, temperamental sports cars—the Porsche 911, for example. But most people don't buy Porsches, or even Lincoln Town Cars; they buy Hyundai Excels and Ford Escorts. In the same way, when the car is garaged for the night, they don't sit down in front of IRS Betas; in all likelihood they listen to their records with a compact two-way design. If competently designed, a small two-way…
Sidebar 1: Review context
The most important consideration with speakers such as these is what stands to use. Often treated as an afterthought, a good pair of stands is fundamental to getting optimum performance from even inexpensive loudspeakers. Paradigm did supply a stand intended for use with their Control Monitor, but in order to keep the effect of the stand a constant during the listening tests, I decided to use the same stands for all three models. These were $300/pair, 18"-tall Celestion SLSi stands, their center pillars each filled with 30 lbs of lead shot, topped up with sand (…
Sidebar 2: Measurements
I use a mixture of nearfield, in-room, and quasi-anechoic FFT techniques to investigate possible objective factors that might explain the sound heard. Readers wanting more detail on this regime should read pp.166–167 in the October 1989 issue (Vol.12 No.10).
Fig.1 shows the Control Monitor's response to the rectangular test pulse on the tweeter axis with the grille removed. Both drive-units appear to be connected with the same polarity; ie, they both start moving forward in response to the positive voltage spike. The initial short-risetime pulse is from the…
Sidebar 3: Specifications
Description: Two-way, reflex-loaded, stand-mounted loudspeaker. Drive-units: 1" (26mm) textile-dome tweeter, 8" (210mm) copolymer polypropylene-cone woofer. Crossover frequency: 2kHz. Crossover slopes: third-order (acoustic slope), quasi-Butterworth. Frequency response: 55Hz–20kHz –2dB. Sensitivity: 89dB/W/m. Nominal impedance: 8 ohms. Amplifier requirements: 15–100W.
Dimensions: 20" (510mm) H by 10" (255mm) W by 13.5" (345mm) D. Internal volume: 32 liters. Shipping weight: 55 lbs (25kg)/pair.
Finishes available: Natural Oak, North American Walnut, Black…
My entrée to high-end audio was in the late 1990s, when I bought a used pair of Cary Audio CAD-572SE tubed monoblock amplifiers to add to my Marantz CD player, Audio Note M2 preamplifier, and ProAc Response One SC loudspeakers. This system reproduced recordings with a sound that made me happier than a country boy with a glass of milk and a helping of peach cobbler. (I was reared, as my grandmother would say, though not born, in North Carolina, where Cary is based.)
Though the CAD-572SE's class-A, single-ended-triode (SET) design produced only 20Wpc into 8 ohms—probably not enough wallop…
Another excellent 45rpm reissue purchased from Revilla: a remastering of Miles Davis's Sorcerer (2 LPs, Columbia/Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab 2-435). Recorded at Columbia's 30th Street Studio in 1967, Sorcerer, like all of Davis's original Columbia recordings with his second great quintet—Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, Tony Williams—can sound small, foggy, and lacking resolution and clarity. The MoFi changes all that, and again, the Music Hall–Heed–Cary–Elac system provided thrills and chills. Re-creating the beautiful depth of the 30th Street Studio, every scintilla of note action…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: Solid-state, class-A/B integrated amplifier with internal DAC, Bluetooth receiver, and remote control. Analog inputs: 2 balanced (XLR), 2 unbalanced (RCA). Preamplifier outputs: 1 balanced (XLR), 1 unbalanced (RCA). Protections: full short circuit, thermal, ultrasonic, RF signal muting & current limiter. Communication: Ethernet RJ45 full remote configuration interface, WiFi 802.11 b/g/n. Digital outputs: coaxial, TosLink (16–24 bits, 44.1–192kHz). Digital input sample rates: USB (44.1–384kHz, 16–32 bits, DSD64/128/256). Digital sampling rates:…
Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment
Analog Sources: Kuzma Stabi S turntable & Stogi tonearm, Music Hall MMF-7.3 turntable; Denon DL-103, Goldring Elite MC, Ortofon 2M Bronze cartridges.
Digital Sources: Apple MacBook computer running Audirvana Plus; Halide DAC HD, PS Audio NuWave DACs; Western Digital T2 Mirror Drives (2).
Preamplification: Auditorium 23 A23 moving-coil step-up transformer, Heed Audio Quasar phono stage, Shindo Laboratory Allegro preamplifier.
Power Amplifier: Shindo Laboratory Haut-Brion.
Integrated Amplifier: Heed Audio Elixir.
Loudspeakers: DeVore…
Sidebar 3: Measurements
I performed a full set of measurements on the Cary SI-300.2d using my Audio Precision SYS2722 system (see the January 2008 "As We See It"). Usually, I precondition an amplifier by running it with both channels driven at one-third power into 8 ohms for 60 minutes. After just 20 minutes, however, the temperature of the Cary's internal heatsink, which can be touched, was 192.8°F (89.3°C); that of the top panel, just behind the faceplate, was 120.6°F (49.3°C). After another 20 minutes, the SI-300.2d turned off its outputs, and "PROTECT" appeared on its display. I let…
"Our production line was stepping on its own toes," said Boulder Amplifiers' Rich Maez, Director of Sales and Marketing, as he welcomed me into the company's new, massive 23,000 sq. ft. manufacturing and testing plant in Louisville, CO. The move to a huge, brand-new building on 3 acres of land outside Boulder, in an area devoted to light industry, was greeted with sighs of relief by a team that had formerly found itself squeezed into an increasingly over-packed 10,000 sq. ft. facility.
The company was lucky to find the land when it did. It seems that there is almost no warehousing space…