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CES 2019 Unleashed

"They expect 180,000 people this year," the Lyft driver told me as we headed to the Strip shortly after sunset. "That's 10,000 more than last year!"

Does that mean there will be 10,000 more gadgets on display?

One thing's for certain: there will be far less to see on the floors of the Venetian Hotel, which "high performance audio" once called home. The last time I glanced at a site map, there were only 25–27 high performance exhibit rooms scattered over three floors. In addition, I know of only two companies that are exhibiting off-site, and no High Resolution Pavilion where…

Recording of November 1962: Berlioz: <I>Symphonie fantastique</I>

Berlioz: Symphonie fantastique
Boston Symphony Orchestra, Charles Munch, conductor
RCA Victor LSC-2608 (LP). TT: 48:40

It is easy to forget that the hi-fi movements—the "March to the Scaffold" and the "Dream of a Witches' Sabbath"—comprise barely a third of the music in the Symphonie fantastique, yet when we listen to most of the available versions of this, we can understand why the first three movements are usually passed up by the record listener. Two are slow and brooding, one is a wispy sort of waltz, and all three require a certain combination of flowing gentleness and…

Shostakovich's Devastating Impact

Dmitri Shostakovich (1906–1975) was hardly the first composer to run headfirst into opposition from political authorities. In his case, however, the pushback was so extreme that it affected everything he wrote thereafter.

In early 1936, after the style and subject matter of his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk clashed with the so-called proletarian aesthetic of Russian dictator Joseph Stalin (1878–1953), Shostakovich was denounced by the official state newspaper, Pravda. From then on, his symphonies reflected either his defiance of decades of Socialist realism, or attempts to appease the…

The CES Challenge

After a few minutes in the VTL/Wilson/Nordost room on the 29th floor of the Venetian Hotel, the challenge I faced in covering CES 2019 was staring me in the face. The good news for me, and the bad news for exhibitors, was that visitor traffic was extremely light. To only two rooms did I need to backtrack because exhibitors were totally occupied with other visitors when I paid an initial visit. But, on the other hand, the sound in some rooms was so good, the musical selections so compelling, and the exhibitors so hungry for attention from someone that I had an extremely difficult time tearing…

Nordost QKore system grounding accessories

As a longtime user of Nordost's cable and AC-power products, my ears opened wide when they released their three QKore Ground Units and QKore Wire at High End 2017, in Munich. While I've never questioned the importance of proper electrical grounding, to prevent problems with safety and noise—the latter including measurable noise generated by transformers, appliances, LED lighting, power supplies, and Bluetooth, WiFi, and cellular devices—I couldn't fathom what difference a passive grounding device might make in a high-end system that, in my case, is fed by an 8-gauge dedicated line with its…

Nordost QKore system grounding accessories Page 2

Setup decisions were simplified when Taylor explained that, since the component LVAPs in the QKore3 and 6 are identical, and the power-product LVAPs in the QKore1 and 6 are also identical, if I were to use the QKore6 to connect only three components plus a power product, the sound would be equivalent to connecting a separate QKore1 and QKore3. It got even easier when I discovered that the only open digital connectors on my components were single-ended BNC and RCA. This meant that I wouldn't be able to compare the sounds of the QKores' grounding via single-ended vs balanced connectors.

…

Nordost QKore system grounding accessories Specifications

Sidebar 1: Specifications

QKore1, QKore3, QKore6 Ground Units: Passive grounding devices, connected to power conditioners and audio components with QKore Wires.
Dimensions (all three): 10.6" (270mm) W by 3.2" (80mm) H by 7.9" (200mm) D, or 8.9" (225mm) D with binding posts. Weights: QKore1, 13.25 lb (6kg); QKore3, 13.55 lb (6.1kg); QKore6, 17.2 lb (7.8kg).

Serial numbers of units reviewed: QKore1, 4157251; QKore3, 4158509; QKore6, 4158572.
Prices: QKore1, $2499.99; QKore3, $3499.99; QKore6, $4999.99.

QKore Wire Conductors: 1x16 AWG, solid-core, 99.9999%-pure…

Nordost QKore system grounding accessories Associated Equipment

Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment

Digital Sources: dCS Rossini DAC & Scarlatti clock; Apple MacBook Pro computer with Intel i7, SSD, 8GB RAM; Intel NUC7i7BNH with 8GB RAM, 128GB SSD running Roon; Linksys routers with two sets TP-Link Gigabit Ethernet media converters, multimode duplex fiber-optic cables, Small Green Computer linear power supply; external hard drives, USB sticks, iPad Pro.
Integrated Amplifier: CH Precision I1.
Loudspeakers: Wilson Audio Specialties Alexia 2.
Cables: Digital: AudioQuest Diamond (Ethernet), Nordost Odin 1 & Odin 2 & Valhalla 2 (USB),…

Music in the Round #95: Wolf & NAD

Although I no longer attend the audio pageant that was once the annual Consumer Electronics Show, I now seem to be traveling more, in hopes of recapturing the excitement CES had once provided. Last May I attended High End, in Munich, and found that while it was entirely as advertised, there was, alas, not enough emphasis on the playback of high-resolution files, and hardly any attention paid to multichannel music.

So when Andy Quint of The Abso!ute Sound invited me to join him and Brian Moura, technical advisor to NativeDSD and Channel Classics, for a seminar, "Multichannel Music: The…

Music in the Round #95: Wolf & NAD page 2

Before receiving the Alpha 3, I looked on PassMark Software's Cpubenchmark.com site to find test results for the Alpha 3's six-core i7-8700 processor, and for the four-core i7-7700K processor in my Baetis ProdigyX server, and found them to be respectively 15,156 and 12,045—a more than 25% increase in overall speed in favor of the Alpha 3. Later, I ran the JMark tests built into JRiver Media Center and was surprised to discover that the four-core i7-7700K was marginally faster in its overall JMark score, and in the subcategories of image and database processing, but that the six-core i7-8700…