Philips having already committed the 14-bit design to silicon, they would not have a 16-bit DAC ready in time…
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"Desperation is the Mother of Invention." Isn't that how the proverb goes? Certainly it applied ten years ago in the case of the Philips engineers working on the development of the Compact Disc system. Given a specification that had included a 14-bit data word length, they had duly developed a 14-bit DAC chip, the TDA1540, only then to be informed that the CD standard decided upon after Sony joined forces with the Dutch company would involve 16-bit data words. (Thank goodness!)
Sound
I first used the 208 as a line-level preamplifier, comparing the effect it had on the sound of other sources with my Mod Squad Deluxe Line Drive AGT passive control unit. (The Mod Squad is still the most transparent full-function passive control unit I have heard.) It might be thought that a preamp stage inside a CD player, with all that RF energy floating around, and in particular one that uses op-amps for gain and FET-switching to implement the remote volume control, might be compromised in sound quality. That didn't prove to be the case here. Though it did add a slight veiling…
I first used the 208 as a line-level preamplifier, comparing the effect it had on the sound of other sources with my Mod Squad Deluxe Line Drive AGT passive control unit. (The Mod Squad is still the most transparent full-function passive control unit I have heard.) It might be thought that a preamp stage inside a CD player, with all that RF energy floating around, and in particular one that uses op-amps for gain and FET-switching to implement the remote volume control, might be compromised in sound quality. That didn't prove to be the case here. Though it did add a slight veiling…
Again, however, even though the multi-bit player was no slouch in this regard, the Bitstream player was that little bit better at decoding the sense of space in a recording. On both my piano recording and Robert Harley's guitar and bass recording on the Stereophile Test CD, there was just that essential bit more of a sense of sonic reality via the 208. And on Peter Mitchell's organ recording on the same CD, the ostinato offbeat eighth-notes at the work's beginning were more easily placed in space.
How did the 208 stack up against the Kinergetics KCD-40, a player that has received…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: CD player with integral preamplifier and full remote control of functions via supplied 209 handset, two line-level inputs, one tape loop and optional phono input, fixed and variable outputs, one pair of optical outputs, and one coaxial digital output. CD player specifications, fixed outputs: Frequency response: 20Hz-20kHz ±0.2dB. THD: ±0.004%. Noise: ±94dB. Conversion: Bitstream, PDM, differential time-aligned mode, 256x-oversampling digital filtering with passive final low-pass filtering. Precision: 16 bits. Output impedance: 12.6 ohms, fixed…
Sidebar 2: Review System
Amplification used with the Meridian 208 consisted of either an Audio Research Classic 60 or a pair of Mark Levinson No.20.5 monoblocks fed via 15' lengths of AudioQuest Lapis or Audio Research unbalanced interconnect.
Loudspeakers used during the auditioning included the Celestion SL700, Avalon Eclipse, Icon Parsec, Monitor Audio Studio 10, Infinity Modulus/Modulus active subwoofer, Meridian D600, and Dick Olsher's Black Dahlia design, all except the active Meridian bi-wired with 5' lengths of AudioQuest Clear.
For reference, LPs were played on a…
Sidebar 3: Measurements
Looking first at the 208's preamplifier section, the output impedance from the variable outputs was a low 12.5 ohms, meaning that the 208 should not be fazed by long or very capacitive cables, or low power-amplifier input impedances. The maximum output level (for 1% THD) was a hefty 10.02V RMS, this obtained with a 1.02V RMS input and the volume control at maximum (64). (With a CD, this maximum output was obtained from a 0dB signal with the control set to 57.) The volume control itself showed excellent channel matching, the difference between channels averaging…
MILES DAVIS & GIL EVANS: The Complete Columbia Studio Recordings
Gil Evans (arranger/conductor); Miles Davis, Ernie Royal, Johnny Coles (trumpet); Cannonball Adderley, Lee Konitz, (alto sax); Gunther Schuller (french horn); Paul Chambers (bass); Philly Joe Jones (drums); many others.
Columbia 67397 (6-CD set) Michael Cuscuna, exec. prod.; Phil Schaap, Mark Wilde, Bob Belden, reissue producers; additional engineering, Tom Ruff. TT: 6:56:39.
Gil Evans (arranger/conductor); Miles Davis, Ernie Royal, Johnny Coles (trumpet); Cannonball Adderley, Lee Konitz, (alto sax); Gunther Schuller (french horn); Paul Chambers (bass); Philly Joe Jones (drums); many others.
Columbia 67397 (6-CD set) Michael Cuscuna, exec. prod.; Phil Schaap, Mark Wilde, Bob Belden, reissue producers; additional engineering, Tom Ruff. TT: 6:56:39.
After several delays and successive waves of anticipation, it seemed as if nothing, let alone the playing of mere mortals, could live up…
RY COODER/VISHWA BHATT: A Meeting by the River
Water Lily Acoustics WLA-CS-29-CD (CD only; LP available eventually). Kavichandran Alexander, prod., eng. AAD. TT: 39:48
Water Lily Acoustics WLA-CS-29-CD (CD only; LP available eventually). Kavichandran Alexander, prod., eng. AAD. TT: 39:48
I probably shouldn't be writing this review. I feel pretty passionately that a music reviewer should have a musical genre down if he's going to tackle one of its records, so how can I possibly cover this one if the sum total of my experience with traditional Indian music is the Ravi Shankar side of The Concert for Bangla Desh?!
The answer is, because A Meeting by the River isn't traditional Indian music. I'm not…
Dateline: late August 1989. The scene: my palatial office in the Stereophile Tower. Present were the magazine's official technowizard Robert Harley, Circulation Kahuna Michael Harvey, and myself. The subject under discussion was the program for the Stereophile Test CD, launched in this issue, and Bob had been dazzling Michael and myself with a description of the sophisticated signal-processing power offered by the Digidesign Sound Tools music editing system with which he had outfitted his Macintosh IIX computer. (He had to fit it with a 600-megabyte hard-disk drive!) "It'll even do edits as…
The human ear differs in its degree of tolerance to distortion, too. Obviously, the person with high-frequency hearing losses will miss any distortion that is limited to the upper range, but even people with identical hearing acuity vary in their sensitivity to small amounts of distortion that fall within their range of response.
A listener can train his ears to pick out all kinds of details in the reproduced sound—peaks, dips, phase shift, imbalance and the like—but many such trained ears have never heard a live orchestra, so they are hardly qualified to tell you what is and what is not…