My review samples look serious because they are constructed of black, 15mm-thick, internally damped "bituminized aluminum" panels, which, besides being rigid, look full-metal stealth and recording-studio…
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The Acelec Model One speakers I'm auditioning ($6495/pair) are not princesses in pink, or frog green, or made of some chemically distilled polypudding. Nor are they conventional-beyond-reason MDF boxes covered with stick-on vinyl pretending to be wood. The Model Ones are squat, small, serious-looking, two-way standmounts. They are 11.2" tall, 7.7" wide, 11.5" deep, and 37.5lb heavy.
Because of their extraordinary focusing and structuring talents, both speakers—the Acelec and the TAD—shared a knack for making me pay attention to, and oftentimes enjoy, music I did not appreciate previously.
One such piece, Richard Strauss's Metamorphosen, TrV 290, performed by the recently formed (2018) Sinfonia Grange au Lac, conducted by Finnish conductor/composer Esa-Pekka Salonen (24/48 FLAC, Alpha Classics/Qobuz), drew me all the way in and held my attention all the way through. This never would have happened with a lesser speaker. With the Acelec Model Ones, the…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: Two-way, ported standmount loudspeaker with cabinet walls made from 0.59" (15mm)-thick bituminized aluminum panels. Drive units: 5.9" (15cm) Scan-Speak bass/mid transducer with sliced-paper cones; 0.7" Air Motion Transformer tweeter with neodymium magnet. Frequency response (–6dB): 45Hz–35kHz, max. deviation ±2.5dB. Crossover frequency: 1.8kHz. Sensitivity: 84dB/W/m. Recommended amplifier power: 25–100W. Nominal impedance: 8 ohms. Minimum impedance: 5 ohms at 375Hz.
Dimensions: 11.2" (285mm) H × 7.7" (195mm) W × 11.8" (300mm) D. Weight: 37.5lb (…
Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment
Analog sources: Dr. Feickert Analog Blackbird turntable with a 10.5" Thomas Schick tonearm and a My Sonic Lab Ultra Eminent Ex moving coil cartridge powering Sutherland Engineering's SUTZ transimpedance step-up into Tavish Audio Design's Adagio RIAA stage. PTP Audio Solid9 turntable with a 9" Abis/Sorane SA 1.2 tonearm and a Denon DL-103 moving coil cartridge, into Lounge Audio's Copla transimpedance step-up, into Lounge's LCR RIAA stage.
Digital sources: Roon Nucleus+ music server; Denafrips Terminator Plus and HoloAudio May D/A processors; dCS Bartók…
Sidebar 3: Measurements
I used DRA Labs' MLSSA system with a calibrated DPA 4006 microphone to measure the Acelec Model One's behavior in the farfield and an Earthworks QTC-40 mike for the nearfield responses. I measured the speaker's impedance magnitude and phase with Dayton Audio's DATS V2 system.
The Model One's specified sensitivity is 84dB/W/m; my B-weighted estimate was within experimental error of that figure, at 84.1dB(B)/2.83V/m. The Model One's nominal impedance…
Behold the genius of Quincy Delight Jones Jr., well known as Q, still with us at age 90. There isn't enough space to get into all his accomplishments, so I will focus on five favorite albums, which he either headlined or was heavily involved with.
After entering the music scene with Lionel Hampton's late-era big band as a trumpet player and arranger, Q moved to New York City and landed gigs arranging for Ray Charles, his childhood friend and surrogate big brother, and other jazz and pop artists including Dinah Washington. His work with Washington brought him to the attention of Mercury/…
In just a few days, Audio Advice will be hosting its 2nd Audio Advice Live, a three-day home theater and hi-fi show showcasing equipment from almost a hundred brands. Participants will have the opportunity to experience the launch of a host of new products from brands including Bowers & Wilkins, JBL, and Monitor Audio.
Audio Advice Live has a focus on both two-channel audio and home theater. Visitors will also see and hear a large variety of affordable gear plus some of the best flagship products in audio and home theater. The Audio Advice install teams are even retrofitting…
Photo by Reinout Bos
Audio engineers never get the credit they deserve. The same is true for music arrangers, who are also an unheralded but hugely fundamental part of any musical success. As a composer, conductor, and inventive arranger of popular music, the modest but multitalented Vince Mendoza says he's most focused on enhancing the song he is arranging and the story it is trying to tell.
"Young arrangers are very concerned with their own voice and spinning their own melodies and turning things upside down and backwards, and they forget what a song really is about," he told me…
I view poetry as more than a literary genre. It's a worldview and a state of being that frames my daily experience in the supernal. I've consumed a lifetime keeping my senses peeled for authentic, manmade mysteries, especially in art and music. Music is my favorite hunting ground, and nowhere have I found mysteries as DNA-deep as the 59 takes of 29 songs recorded in only five days by Delta blues legend Robert Johnson (1911–1938). I've played the Columbia Records 1961 anthology King of the Delta Blues Singers (Columbia LP CL 1654) 100 times since my days in Chicago as a teenager, and I still…
HiFiMan's Dr. Fang Bian recommends the Audivina, above and right, for studio and mastering work.
HiFiMan's wood-cup mania
I've been using two very different HiFiMan headphones: the newer, $1999 Audivina, which was released in March 2023, and the older HE-R10P, which costs $5499 and was released in spring 2021. Both are wood-cupped closed backs with "Supernano" planar-magnetic diaphragms. Each time I use one of them, I pause, surprised again by how just right it sounds. ("Just right" is an audio descriptor that needs no explanation. You'll know it when you hear it, I promise.)…