Michael Vamos, who pays attention to my playlist, switched to Grant Green’s “…
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Audio Skies and Fidelis AV teamed up to present some of my favorite emerging stars of the Audio Highlands. It was a joy to re-experience some of the special sound I heard in my music room when I reviewed JMF Audio monoblocks. On Trentemøller’s driving “Chameleon” and Jacques Loussier’s maximally different take on Satie, I heard color and rightness for days. I think I’d prefer to listen to Trentemøller in a club or altered state, but it certainly helped the system make its point in the bass department.
What a perfect way to say goodbye AXPONA 2024. In a pretty simple system consisting of Zellaton Emotion Evo speakers ($44,750/pair), LTA Ultralinear amplification ($7000), and a Grimm Audio MU2 ($17,500) serving as preamp and streaming DAC with a Roon core and analog volume control, we began with a 16/44.1 mastering of Janis Ian’s “Guess You Had to Be There.” Given my age, I expect I was.
The sound was so good that I asked to scroll through the iPad-controlled playlist. Given the opportunity to make up for what I missed, I cued up Elisabeth Schwarzkopf’s great recording of Richard Strauss…
High-flying Fidelity Imports occupied seven rooms at AXPONA 2024—probably a show record. Since starting the company in 2018, industry veteran Steve Jain has signed up a bevy of brands from Italy, France, England, Japan, and beyond.
Jain evidently has ears that match his business acumen; so far, every Fidelity product I’ve encountered has sounded somewhere between really good and masterful, with Perlisten and Diptyque impressing the most in the speaker department. As for amplifiers and players, I give a tip of the trilby to Soul Note, Audia Flight, and Unison Research.
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JBL's AXPONA presentation began with a nod to the iconic "Blown Away Guy" tape ad for Maxell featuring the original JBL L100 speakers. This nostalgic touch set the stage for a compelling demonstration of JBL's latest equipment.
The setup included the JBL Classic SA550 ($1999) and SA750 ($3000) integrated amplifiers, and three sources: the MP350 Classic music player/streamer ($799), CD350 Classic CD player ($699), and TT350 Classic turntable ($999).
Starting with the compact L82 Classic MKII speakers ($2900/pair) powered by the SA550, Lake Street Dive's "I Want You Back"…
In the April 2000 issue of Stereophile, I reviewed SME's Model 10, which was an attempt by that storied company to produce an "affordable" turntable. I described the Model 10's $5500 turntable-only price—about $7600 in today's dollars—as "stiff." (At the time, the Model 10 cost $5995 with SME's M10 arm, or $8250 with their IV.Vi arm.) But 16 years later, the same Model 10 costs only $5000 ($7000 with the more recent Model 10 arm, which is superior to the M10) (footnote 1).
Today, a turntable price of $7000, while not exactly cheap, can't be called stiff. What happened between then and now…
SME 309 SPD tonearm: Problems
Though the design of the 309 SPD—and that of SME's entire line of tonearms—has been refined over the years, it remains essentially unchanged from the company's first Series 300 tonearms of the late 1980s: After the cartridge pins themselves, between the headshell's cartridge-pin clips and the cable that goes to the phono preamp, there are three breaks in the signal path: an additional set of pins, at the back of the headshell; the connection between the headshell and armtube; and the connection between the DIN socket at the base of the tonearm pillar and the…
Though the design of the 309 SPD—and that of SME's entire line of tonearms—has been refined over the years, it remains essentially unchanged from the company's first Series 300 tonearms of the late 1980s: After the cartridge pins themselves, between the headshell's cartridge-pin clips and the cable that goes to the phono preamp, there are three breaks in the signal path: an additional set of pins, at the back of the headshell; the connection between the headshell and armtube; and the connection between the DIN socket at the base of the tonearm pillar and the…
For reasons that have as much to do with why the creek does or doesn't rise as anything, almost all the UK-manufactured electronics I've reviewed over the years were from dCS of Cambridge. Through 2023, no electronics from Linn or a host of other UK-based companies have crossed the threshold of my music room.
That situation changed when, soon after New Year's, a pair of Linn's 60lb Klimax Solo 800 monoblock amplifiers ($90,000/pair) arrived from Scotland. Right away, they delighted me with their ease of maneuverability, handsome, uncluttered look, and relative compactness. Given their…
Other engineering goodies
I asked Roscoe how much power the Klimax Solo 800 outputs in class-A before switching to class-B and if the number fluctuates with the ohm rating of loudspeakers. "By controlling bias current at the optimum value, the Klimax Solo 800 suffers far lower distortion than an amp which operates in class-A up to a higher, more arbitrary power level. I would therefore say that the changeover power level from class-A to class-B is not relevant for the Solo 800 because you will simply not hear it.
"We've thought about each stage of the amplifier, paid lots of…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: Solid state, class-AB, monoblock amplifier with 2kW Utopik power supply, 20A IEC connector, and Adaptive Bias Control. Inputs: one each balanced (XLR) and single-ended (RCA). Output: One pair Furutech 4mm FT-816(R) banana/spade binding terminals. Passthrough: One single-ended (RCA), one balanced (XLR). Rated output power: 400W into 8 ohms, 800W into 4 ohms (both equivalent to 26dBW), 1.2kW into 2 ohms (24.8dBW). Nominal gain: 26.6dB unbalanced, 22.6dB balanced. Bandwidth: 150kHz into 8 ohms, 140kHz into 4 ohms, 130kHz into 2 ohms, –3dB. Output…
Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment
Digital sources: dCS Vivaldi Apex DAC, Vivaldi Upsampler Plus, Vivaldi Master Clock, and Rossini Transport; EMM Labs DV2 Integrated DAC, Meitner MA3 Integrated DAC; Innuos Statement Next-Gen Music Server; Small Green Computer Sonore Deluxe opticalModule; Uptone Audio EtherREGEN with SOtM sCLK-OCX10 Master Clock and sPS-500 power supply; Finisar FTLF8519P3BNL and Broadcom/Avago AFBR-5718PZ 1GB SX-SFP, Gen 5 fiberoptic modules; Nordost QNet switch and QSource linear power supplies (2); Sonore Audiophile Linear Power Supply; Synology 5-bay 1019+ NAS with…