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In the 1990s, while putting together one of my early hi-fi systems, I'd often visit New York City audio retailer Sound by Singer to gawk at their top-tier wares. On one such visit I noticed a serious-looking gentleman listening to Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring through a pair of Audio Physic's Step loudspeakers (accompanying electronics long forgotten). Sitting on their dedicated, minimalist-looking metal stands, the pint-size Steps were angled up 22° or so, to create a physical time alignment of the tweeter's and midrange-woofer's wavefronts. The Step looked odd—kind of scrawny. But these…
I did all of my listening with the Steps' grilles off. I also switched out my usual Auditorium A23 speaker cables for Triode Wire Labs American cables, which improved focus from top to bottom. AudioQuest's Castle Rock speaker cables sounded rather hot at the frequency extremes, Tellurium Q Black somewhat lightweight.
I evaluated the Step Plus using LPs, CDs, and four different amplifiers: the Heed Elixir and Parasound Halo Hint6 integrated amps, and the Mytek Brooklyn and Shindo Haut-Brion power amps.
Listening with Parasound's Hint6 Integrated
With rumors circulating in…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: Two-way, ported, stand-mounted loudspeaker. Drive-units (both ceramic-coated aluminum diaphragms): 1.75" (45mm) tweeter, 5.9" (150mm) midrange-woofer. Frequency range: 50Hz–40kHz. Impedance: 8 ohms. Sensitivity: 87dB. Recommended amplification: 10–120Wpc.
Dimensions: 12.6" (320mm) H by 6.9" (175mm) W by 9.8" (250mm) D. Weight: 12.1 lb (5.5kg).
Serial number of units reviewed: 8083 (both).
Finishes: Cherry, Ebony, Walnut veneers; Black High Gloss; White High Gloss, add $200/pair.
Price: $2599/pair. Approximate number of dealers: 18.…
Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment
Analog Sources: Kuzma Stabi S turntable & Stogi tonearm; Thorens TD 124 Mk.I turntable, Jelco 350S tonearm; Denon DL-103, Hana EL, Ortofon Quintet Bronze cartridges.
Digital Sources: Apple MacBook computer running Audirvana Plus, Qobuz; ATC CDA2 Mk.II CD player, LG BD550 BD player (as transport); Halide DAC HD, Mytek Brooklyn, PS Audio NuWave DACs; Western Digital T2 Mirror Drives (2).
Preamplification: Auditorium 23 A23 MC step-up transformer; Heed Audio Quasar, Luxman EQ-500 phono preamplifiers; Shindo Laboratory Allegro preamplifier.
…
Sidebar 3: Measurements
I used DRA Labs' MLSSA system and a calibrated DPA 4006 microphone to measure the Audio Physic Step Plus's frequency response in the farfield, and an Earthworks QTC-40 for the nearfield responses. (I didn't use the grilles.) My estimate of the Audio Physic's voltage sensitivity was 84.2dB/2.83V/m, significantly lower than the specified 87dB/2.83V/m. While the specified nominal impedance is 8 ohms, the solid trace in fig.1 shows that the impedance magnitude drops slightly below 8 ohms in the midrange and to 6 ohms at 20kHz. The electrical phase angle (fig.1, dashed…
Editor's Note: 24 years ago, in January 1995, we published the first issue of Stereophile Guide to Home Theater, a sister publication intended to appeal to the the growing number of home-theater enthusiasts. Stereophile's founder, the late J. Gordon Holt, had gotten early into the idea of accompanying movies with high-quality sound, and when I first visited his New Mexico home in January 1986, his system included an Advent NTSC-format video projector. Gordon and I went back and forth over the next few years, arguing about the role video played in a music-lovers system—click here and here—but…
It's a tense moment during a suspense thriller. A cannibalistic serial killer has escaped from a maximum-security detention unit and eluded capture for long enough to work up a healthy appetite. Two small children are playing hide-and-seek in an overgrown lot behind their home.
They have forgotten mother's admonition to stay indoors, but we haven't. One is hiding in a dense shrub, holding his breath in case the other is nearby. It's dead—quiet except for some distant crows. Off-screen somewhere, and very near, a twig snaps, and we jump out of our seat. Then we hear "I see you!" and the…
Once the surround signal is mixed into the stereo signals, it can never be completely separated out again. Instead of appearing behind you, surround effects might appear some where between where you're sitting and where your front speakers are, and sounds that belong in front will tend to "leak" into the surrounds. To improve the front-to-back separation, Dolby Stereo uses what's called logic steering. (The home version is called Dolby Surround.)
Logic steering measures the signal content in all three channels, compares each one with the others, and "decides" on the basis of their…
Sidebar: The Mathematics of Dolby's Mono Surround Sound
Even though it may come from two loudspeakers, the surround signal on Dolby-encoded recordings is a single channel—monophonic. To encode it into the main stereo channels, it is subtracted from each channel by inverting its electrical polarity and then adding it to the front-channel signals. (Adding a minus to a plus subtracts it.)
But it's not quite that simple. Since the surround effects often contain the same frequencies as front-channel sounds, simply subtracting the surround from the fronts would impair the sound in…
The main inherent advantage of the full-range electrostatic loud speaker system is that it allows a single diaphragm to embody the conflicting attributes needed for optimal performance at both extremes of the audio range. Its thin-membrane diaphragm can be made exceedingly light, for superb transient response and extended HF response, yet it can be about as large in area as desired, for extended LF response. And since that diaphragm is driven uniformly over its entire surface, instead of from a relatively small voice-coil, it circumvents the inherent problem of dynamic speakers in requiring…