Description: Omnidirectional two-way dynamic loudspeaker with multiresonant woofer loading. Impedance: 8 ohms. Power capacity; 25 watts.
Dimensions: 11" W × 8¾" D × 26" H.
Price: $114/pair (1973); no longer available (2019).
Manufacturer: Hegeman Laboratories, Inc., Glen Ridge, NJ 07028 (1973). Company no longer in existence (2019).
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Sidebar 2: Specifications
My current romance with audiophile-quality headphones began in earnest with the appearance, about 10 years ago, of Audeze's LCD-2 planar-magnetic headphones—these predated the company's patented Fazor elements, said to guide the sound around the transducers' magnet structures—and Schiit Audio's original Asgard headphone amplifier. Together, these groundbreaking products rekindled my interest by making headphone listening into something new and exciting—something less distorted, more dynamic, denser, and more intensely lifelike than what I was getting from my speakers on the floor. Best of…
The Grados' high sensitivity exposed a bit of the First Watt's noise floor, but when the music played, that noise became unnoticeable. Gloriously, when the J2-powered Grados played Vivaldi's Gloria, sung by The Choir of King's College with David Willcocks conducting (LP, Argo ZRG 505), I witnessed a full three-dimensional apparition of the King's College Chapel in Cambridge, England. I wondered: Have anyone's floor speakers ever exposed this much of the Cambridge chapel's interior? The sense of being there was acute.
Interestingly, while listening to the Vivaldi with the Grados, I…
We mentioned in the last issue that we were becoming increasingly disturbed by "a certain manic quality that is creeping into this pursuit of sonic perfection." We were referring then to a manufacturer's announcement of the imminent availability of a speaker system weighing over 1000 lb per channel, but we could just as well have been speaking of this behemoth from Audio Research.
The Dual 150 looks like a piece of professional broadcast equipment. It contains 8 output tubes (6550s), three slow-speed (but efficient) cooling fans, two front-panel meters for monitoring AC supply line volt…
Follow-Up, from December 1977 (Vol.4 No.1):
Now that the Audio Research D-150 has been officially retired, and ARC President William Z. Johnson has burned his tube bridges behind him, that amplifier is already well on its way to becoming a classic within little more than a year after it went into (limited) production.
Its closest sonic competitor, in terms of those things that musically-oriented listeners have liked about the best tubed stuff, is the Luxman 3045. Unfortunately, Lux's custom-made out-put tubes for that amplifier have a tendency to go sour after anywheres from a…
Sidebar: Specifications
Decription: Two-channel tubed power amplifier. Output power: 150Wpc.
Price: $2685 (1976); no longer available (2019).
Serial number of review sample: 671030-17.
Manufacturer: Audio Research Corporation, 2843 26th Avenue S., Minneapolis, MN 55406 (1976); Audio Research Corporation, 6655 Wedgwood Road N., Suite 115, Maple Grove, MN 55311. Tel: (763) 577-9700. Fax: (763) 577-0323. Web: www.audioresearch.com (2019).
It's not just the gray hairs or the expanding waistline that suggest one is getting old: it's also when the albums you love so much, and so vividly remember hearing for the first time, have become a part of the rock heritage industry. So it is with London Calling by the Clash, which celebrates its 40th birthday in December 2019.
In 1979, when it was released in the UK, I couldn't have imagined such a thing. But then, as a British teen who had just left school, I was more interested in seeing if the Clash were a spent force or not: They held a special place in my heart because the…
It didn't require a degree in politics to make the connection. Bassist Paul Simonon had grown up in London—always a multicultural town, where reggae boomed from neighboring homes—and he developed a great love for that music. Reggae had been in the Clash portfolio right from the beginning, as on the epic cover of Junior Marvin's "Police and Thieves" they recorded for their debut album, but London Calling contains several reggae numbers—including originals. Simonon's own "The Guns of Brixton"—his first composition to be recorded by the group—is an anthem of the defiance that simmers in that…
A couple of issues back, we mentioned in passing that the Fidelity Research FR-1 Mk.3F was the only moving-coil cartridge we had heard (as of then) that we would give house room to. (The others had frequency-response problems which so colored the sound that their other strong points were not worth the tradeoff.) That first observation about the FR-1 was based on a couple of hours' listening. Now that we have had an opportunity to live with one of them for a while, we can essentially confirm that first reaction, but with a few added qualifications.
This is in fact one of the few MCs that…
Sidebar: Specifications
Description: Moving-coil phono cartridge with 0.3×3-mil, line-contact stylus. Output voltage: 0.14mV. Impedance: 10 ohms. Compliance: 10×10–6cm/dyne. Recommended tracking force: 2 grams. Weight: 10 grams.
Price: $230 (1980); no longer available (2019).
Manufacturer: Fidelity Research, Tokyo, Japan. Fidelity Research of America, PO Box 5242, Ventura, CA 93003 (1980). Company no longer in existence (2019).