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It's funny how we discover some music in unexpected, twisting ways. A friend recently sent me the real estate listing for a beautiful home in Deer Isle, Maine, about an hour from where I live. I gawked at the pictures and calculated I'd need to work for Stereophile for another 127 years before I'd have enough dough to buy it. Then I noticed something unusual on one of the walls of the place: lots of gold records. Google helped me figure out that the house had belonged to the late singer-songwriter Dan Fogelberg. I knew the name but was unfamiliar with his music. Minutes later, I was playing…
Regions of Light and Sound of God (16/44.1 FLAC, ATO Records/Qobuz), by My Morning Jacket frontman Jim James, was also exceptionally enjoyable. The soundstage on James's album is expansive, and a lot of the music is bathed in reverb. There may be some phase frippery going on, given how far certain sounds reached into the room. In other words, there's huge depth too.
Next, I played Bob Dylan's "Man in the Long Black Coat" from Oh Mercy (24/96 FLAC, Columbia/Qobuz). The solidity of the first bass note, 15 seconds in, was delightful, as was the sweetness and delicacy of the decay. I…
Sidebar 1: A Visit to Switzerland
Piega is headquartered in Horgen, Switzerland—a fortuitous fact, because in mid-May, two days after the High End Munich audio show ended, I was scheduled to interview Yello's Boris Blank in his Swiss hometown of Zurich for an upcoming music feature. Horgen is just 20 minutes from Zurich by train. So, not a bad schedule: High End Munich on the weekend, a factory visit to Piega on Monday (footnote 1), and a Tuesday spent with the creative wizard behind Yello. That's four days' worth of catnip for audiophiles. It's a tough job, but someone's gotta…
Sidebar 2: Specifications
Description: Three-way floorstanding speaker with two 8.7" woofers, two 8.7" passive radiators, and one C212+ coaxial ribbon midrange/high-frequency driver. Frequency range: 22Hz–50kHz. Sensitivity: 92dB/W/m. Impedance: 4 ohms. Recommended amplifier power: 20–250W. Extruded aluminum enclosure with Tension Improve Module.
Dimensions: 49" (1240mm) W × 11.4" (290mm) × 16.5" (420mm) D. Weight 139lb (63kg).
Finishes: Silver, black, or white aluminum. Eight additional colors available for an extra $1000 per speaker.
Price: $30,000/pair. Number of US dealers…
Sidebar 3: Associated Equipment
Digital sources: 16" MacBook Pro M1 Max running Roon 2.0. Roon ROCK (Lenovo ThinkCentre). Aurender A20. HiFi Rose RS520, Eversolo DMP-A8.
Preamplifiers: Balanced Audio Technology VK-90, Benchmark HPA4 line stage.
Integrated amplifier: Anthem STR.
Power amplifiers: Krell FPB 200c, Margules U280sc (used as monoblocks).
Loudspeakers: Focal Utopia Scala EVO.
Cables: Clarus Crimson pure copper OCC power cables. AudioQuest Thunderbird Zero speaker cables. Interconnects by AudioQuest and RSX.
Accessories: Puritan PSM156 mains purifier. Two…
Sidebar 4: Measurements
I measured one of the Piega Coax Gen2 811 loudspeakers auditioned by RvB. It had the serial number 8057. I used DRA Labs' MLSSA system, a calibrated DPA 4006 microphone, and an Earthworks microphone preamplifier to measure the quasi-anechoic frequency- and time-domain behavior in the farfield. I used an Earthworks QTC-40 microphone for the nearfield responses. Before I started the testing, I made sure the short wire jumpers that connect the two pairs of binding posts were securely fastened.
The Coax 811's voltage…
Photo: Echopark
With its swept-wing shape and platter-forward design, Sperling-Audio's L-1 turntable ($35,950, without tonearm; footnote 1) stands out in a crowd. This high-mass design from Germany is the result of a collaboration between Ansgar Sperling and Michael Bönninghoff, two fiftysomething engineers who began working together in recording studio construction.
Both also bring to the L-1's design and construction years of experience in signal processing. For years, Bönninghoff was the chief developer at Brauner microphones, and today is the technical director of the German…
Side 1 of Thelonious Monk's The London Collection: Volume 1 (Black Lion/ORG Music 1052) made clear the L-1's grip and control, but I listened to all four sides of this 45rpm reissue because the Sperling also produced realistic transients, generous sustain, and stable decays into very black backgrounds, all of which helped produce a three-dimensional image of a piano floating in space: Monk in my room, playing for me. The L-1 is one of the very quietest turntables I've heard—it well hid the mechanical nature of vinyl playback.
It's difficult to believe that more than a decade has…
In the e-commerce era, brick-and-mortar dealerships must give customers compelling reasons to stop by. Los Angeles hi-fi dealership Common Wave's owner Wesley Katzir keeps customers coming through the door with a simple idea: that music matters in our everyday lives and that what he enjoys, other people will enjoy, too. That extends not just to music but also design, which is a particular preoccupation of Katzir and his business.
"I wanted to create a hi-fi space for people who were interested in the same sorts of musical and listening experiences as I am, which is much more communal,"…
Detroit became a destination for migrating African Americans early, starting with the Underground Railroad; the city's proximity to Canada was convenient for those seeking to escape Southern slavery. The mass human movement accelerated with the Great Migration, which started about 1910, when millions of African Americans left the Jim Crow South for northern cities. The same human movement that brought the blues to Chicago and jazz to New York City took both to Detroit.
In all those cities, the 1920s was a time of ballrooms and big music halls. In Detroit, "society bands" black and white…