Although Masaaki Suzuki and his Bach Collegium Japan have previously recorded Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis, he is not a conductor one commonly associates with Beethoven’s music–not that there is anything common about this…
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As the decade draws to a close, many of us choose to gather with people we love so that together we can celebrate and give thanks for our blessings. In that spirit, I offer a new hybrid SACD/Download of a perennial favorite, Beethoven Symphony No. 9 in D minor. Op. 125 “Choral” (BIS 2451), whose memorable finale celebrates the joy of oneness with humanity and the divine.
The buzz at the 2019 Audio Engineering Society (AES) convention in New York was immersive audio, as it has been for the last several years. I witnessed developments that may have a big impact on the future of multichannel audio.
First, I listened to Sony's new immersive codec, developed with the cooperation of the research society Fraunhofer IIS: 360 Reality Audio allows the producer to place any individual sound source anywhere in the surround field. While I listened to binaural playback over regular headphones equipped with special decoding software, I was able to watch the placement (…
Photo: Carl Thomas Hriczak
It's 9:45 on a mid-September weeknight in Greater Toronto. Having spent the evening reveling in the glory of her 9th birthday—candles blown out, presents open, pleasantly full of Wegmans' Ultimate Chocolate Cake—Our Birthday Girl has one additional request:
"Can we please play 'Happy Birthday Polka'?!"
Emily's referring to a 10" 78rpm recording by Tex Williams, on a red-label Capitol I brought home for $1, mainly for the near-mint outer sleeve it came in. The first time I played it, she was sitting on her bean bag chair, counting the change from…
During my first attempt at college, I lived in a dormitory where my next- door neighbors had an informal trade in pharmaceuticals; their most ardent customers were my neighbors across the hall. One of the latter was a fellow named Pete, a good-natured guy (if a bit sanctimonious in his disdain for music he considered insufficiently bluesy) whose heavy rotation list was, at the time, topped by John Fahey's The Voice of the Turtle. I merely disliked the record the first time I heard it, but in the days ahead I came to loathe it. I found it repetitive, masturbatory, technically inept, and dead…
The Naim components in question were their NAC 32-5 preamplifier and NAP 250 power amplifier, supplemented with their Hi-Cap outboard power supply; that last item was devised as an upgrade to a more basic system in which DC from the Naim amp's own power supply is used to power the preamp. In 1988, the 32-5/250/Hi-Cap combination was Naim's second-best amplification system, bettered only by the use of two NAP 135 monoblocks in place of the stereo amp. (In 1988, my own Naim setup was humbler: I started out with the less expensive NAC 62 preamp and NAP 140 amp, later upgrading to a Naim-…
We usually save the question of value for the end of a review, but this time it's worth mentioning up front, if only because PS Audio has been in the news lately. Late last August, the company announced they were switching from a traditional dealer network to a factory-direct sales model. So, to some readers, it might seem fair to judge the brand-new, full-featured Stellar Phono Preamplifier ($2500) against ones selling in stores for $5000.
Then again, to speak with the Stellar Phono's talented designer, 30-something engineer and vinyl enthusiast Darren Myers, is to know that this is a…
What I heard at home more or less confirmed what I heard at RMAF (though the home experience was considerably better than the already fine performance I heard under typically lousy show conditions)—that is, once the "whining, beeping, buzzing" issues had been solved. That's not a product indictment! It's more about Myers's "no compromise" design philosophy, which is well documented in the instruction manual: As I immediately discovered, and as Myers and Leebens also heard, the Stellar is extremely sensitive to grounding, ultralow-capacitance cables, RF, and other kinds of interference.
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Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: Solid-state phono preamplifier with unbalanced inputs and both balanced and unbalanced outputs. Overall voltage gain: MM: 44dB, 50dB, 56dB. MC: 60dB, 66dB, 72dB. Input loading: MM: 47k ohms (100pf). MC: 60, 100, 200, 47k ohms, Custom, 1 ohm–1k ohms. Output impedance: unbalanced <200 ohms, balanced <200 ohms per leg. (All measurements are with both channels operating, gain set to low, and balanced outputs. Input frequency is 1kHz.) Frequency response: 20Hz–20kHz ±0.25dB. THD @0.5V, 1kHz: <0.01%. Maximum output: @1%THD: 24VRMS. Overload…
Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment
Analog sources: Continuum Audio Labs Caliburn, & Castellon turntable & stand; VPI HW-40 Air Force One Premium turntables; SAT CF1-09, Graham Elite, and VPI Fatboy tonearms; Lyra Atlas, Atlas SL, Atlas SL mono, Etna, and Etna SL, Ortofon MC Century, Anna Diamond, A95, Miyajima Labs Infinity (mono) and Destiny (stereo) Grado Epoch (mono).
Digital sources: dCS Vivaldi One SACD player DAC; Lynx Hilo A/D-D/A converter, Roon Nucleus; Pure Vinyl and Vinyl Studio software.
Preamplification: darTZeel NHB-18S, Ypsilon MC-10L, MC-16L, Consolidated…
Sidebar 1: Measurements
I measured the PS Audio Stellar Phono phono preamplifier using my Audio Precision SYS2722 system (see the January 2008 "As We See It"). For logistical reasons, I tested a different sample (serial number SPH-B-9J0100) from that auditioned by Michael Fremer. To get the lowest measured noise, I floated the signal generator's unbalanced output from ground and ran a separate connection from the analyzer's ground to the grounding post on the preamplifier's rear panel.
PS Audio specifies the voltage gain for the moving-magnet input as Low (44dB), Medium (50dB),…