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Gramophone Dreams #13: Audeze The King & Focal Elear Manufacturer's Comment

Manufacturer's Comment

Editor: Thanks to Stereophile for bringing the joy of headphone listening to its audience. We deeply appreciate Herb Reichert's review of the Audeze LCD-4 and The King headphone amplifier in the December issue, along with John Atkinson's Follow-Up measurements in this issue. Herb: "I can enthusiastically declare that Audeze's The King is one of the two or three best all-around headphone amps I have heard. . . . and by all audiophile measures, the LCD-4s must be rated Class A, superb, the state of the art."

Regarding the measurements, The King headphone…

Industry Profile: Steve Cohen, In Living Stereo (NYC)

This week's industry profile tells a story about beginnings and changing times, in a conversation with Steve Cohen, a longtime employee (he doesn't have a formal job title) of the New York based hi-fi shop In Living Stereo. I started our conversation by asking Steve how he got into hi-fi. What was his background?

Steve Cohen: My dad was into music, and getting a good hi-fi system to listen to was a project that we got to witness as kids. He went through a brief phase of buying equipment until he assembled his hi-fi system. He'd drive us to Lafayette Radio, an electronics store where the…

Wilson Audio's Ultimate Loudspeaker: the WAMM Master Chronosonic

Photos: Daryl Wilson except where indicated

On December 8, 12 days before an embargo on the news was lifted, I visited Wilson Audio in Utah. The occasion was the launch of the WAMM Master Chronosonic loudspeaker. Given its limited-edition production run (70 pairs), oversized dimensions (approximately 86" H with spikes x 26" W x 36.5" D), and high price ($685,000/pair), Wilson Audio's ultimate speaker is not slated for dealer and audio show demos. Instead, the only way prospective customers, dealers, and select press can experience Dave Wilson's magnum opus—the culmination of well over…

Bang & Olufsen BeoLab 90 loudspeaker

Bang & Olufsen's BeoLab 90 is not a loudspeaker to take on lightly. Though its size—49.33" high by 28.9" wide by 29.4" deep—and weight (302 lbs each) meant a major disruption of my listening room, which is also our living room, my wife assented. Its price of $84,990/pair puts it far beyond anything I might consider buying—and the complexity of the BeoLab 90, which has its own dedicated amplifiers and DACs, makes it impossible for a reviewer—or consumer—to directly compare it with any other loudspeaker. So be it.

Ever since I returned from visiting Bang & Olufsen's factory in…

Bang & Olufsen BeoLab 90 loudspeaker Page 2

I spent that first evening listening to the BeoLabs before any room equalization, but there's no reason to dwell on that. First, without EQ, the sound was more a product of my room than was intended. Second, there's no good reason to run a DSP-based system such as the BeoLab 90 without EQ. To do so would be equivalent to never using the top gears of a powerful car. EQ has been included in the speaker to provide the best quality of sound from it; you don't need to add an accessory—and you've paid for it!

Setup, Part 2
The next morning, having spent the previous evening listening to…

Bang & Olufsen BeoLab 90 loudspeaker Specifications

Sidebar 1: Specifications

Description: Remote-controlled, powered, three-way, 18-driver, floorstanding, sealed-box loudspeaker with Beam Width Control, Beam Direction Control, and Active Room Compensation. Drive-units (all ScanSpeak): seven 1.18" (30mm) Illuminator tweeters, seven 3.39" (86mm) Illuminator midrange units, three 8.3" (212mm) Discovery woofers, one 10.25" (260mm) Revelator woofer (front). Crossover frequencies: vary with driver and Beam Width setting. Power amplifiers: 14 B&O ICEpower AM300-X, tweeter & midrange drivers; four Heliox AM100-1, woofers. DSP: 2 Analog…

Bang & Olufsen BeoLab 90 loudspeaker Associated Equipment

Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment

Digital Sources: Oppo Digital BDP-105 universal BD player, Baetis XR3 PC-based music server, exaSound e28 II multichannel D/A processor, QNAP TS569L NAS.
Preamplifiers: Audio Research MP1, Parasound Halo P 7.
Cables: Interconnect (analog): AudioQuest Earth/DBS balanced. Interconnect (digital): Corning Optical USB 3, Shunyata Research E-Tron Anaconda BNC/RCA S/PDIF, Peachtree X1 USB-to-S/PDIF converter, UpTone Audio USB ReGen. AC: AudioQuest NRG-10, JPS Aluminata, Kubala-Sosna Emotion.
Accessories: Environmental Potentials EP-2450 power…

Bang & Olufsen BeoLab 90 loudspeaker Measurements

Sidebar 3: Measurements

The BeoLab 90 is so massive that, rather than having it shipped to my home, I traveled to Kal Rubinson's place to take some measurements. I used SMUGSoftware's Fuzzmeasure 3 app running on my MacBook Pro, along with an Earthworks QTC-40 microphone and a FireWire-connected Metric Halo ULN-2, which combines a low-noise microphone preamplifier with A/D and D/A converters. (These were set to a sample rate of 96kHz for the measurements and I fed Fuzzmeasure's analog signal to the Master loudspeaker where it was converted at 192kHz.)

First of all, as KR…

Merry Christmas Indeed

Editor's Note: The editorial leader for the seventh issue of what was then called The Stereophile, cover-dated April 1964, was the first to introduce a recurring theme to the magazine's first 20 years of publication: an apology to subscribers for being late.—John Atkinson

Those of you who have a mind for dates may have noticed that this issue of The Stereophile is very, very late. This, the seventh issue, was supposed to have been a Merry Christmas November–December issue, but as things worked out, it doesn't even deserve the title of January–February issue. So, we think a few words of…

The Best Jazz Albums of 2016

It's that time of the year again. Here are my picks for the 10 best new jazz albums of 2016—and the four best historical releases:

New:
Henry Threadgill's Ensemble Double Up, Old Locks and Irregular Verbs (Pi).
Darcy James Argue's Secret Society, Real Enemies (New Amsterdam).
Frank Kimbrough, Solstice (Pirouet).
Fred Hersch Trio, Sunday Night at the Vanguard (Palmetto).
Brad Mehldau Trio, Blues and Ballads (Nonesuch).
Wadada Leo Smith, America's National Parks (Cuneiform, 2 CDs).
Dave Douglas & Frank Woeste, Dada People (Greenleaf).
Krakauer's Ancestral…