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Pull down the shades, find a comfortable seat, and come with me on an imaginary journey to the year 1956. The Eisenhower-Nixon ticket wins reelection, the United Methodist Church begins to ordain women, and a can of Campbell's tomato soup costs 10 cents. Elvis Presley's two-week residency at Las Vegas's New Frontier Hotel and Casino is received so poorly by the middle-aged guests that Newsweek likens it to "a jug of corn liquor at a champagne party." And a Seattle couple gives birth to Kenneth Bruce Gorelick, who will become known professionally as Kenny G.
The experience reminded me that the drama of playback lives in the potential of a sound to emerge suddenly from silence into full-throttle expression and ebb back just as quickly. The presence of this potential imbues even quiet passages with anticipation and excitement.
Every hit of the conga sounded faster than I'd heard it, too. The impulse behavior of the Fairchild was off the charts—transients came at me blindingly, realistically fast, with long decay and outstanding pace and drive. This breakneck speed compounded the liveness of the vastly dynamic presentation, at times…
It started one evening when I was killing time watching YouTube videos and stumbled across a 2017 talk given by Jonathan Carr, Lyra's brilliant cartridge designer (footnote 1). After discussing his design and Lyra's manufacturing processes for about 18 minutes, Carr opens the floor to questions. Someone asks which of the many cartridge setup parameters he feels is the most important. I was floored when the first thing Carr said was that "horizontal tracking error is not very important at all." What? I couldn't believe I was hearing this from the guy who writes owner's manuals with super-…
The result is what's known as an underhung arm, where the stylus plays the record in an arc that doesn't reach the record's center. Instead of two null points, an underhung arm can only have one, with tracking angle error that increases to its sides. ViV places the null point about two-thirds of the way into the record, 90mm from the spindle. This design choice biases the tracking angle error so it's greatest at the start of the side, where the linear speed is highest, and the groove modulations are more spread out. In return, you get more accurate tracking at the much tougher-to-play…
In 1989, I bought my second pair of Rogers LS3/5a's from a guy on Staten Island who had them hooked up to a Musical Fidelity A1 integrated amplifier. After playing the speakers for me, he began removing his zip-cord speaker cables and paused to show me how, at the amplifier end, his red-plastic Pomona Electronics banana plugs had partially melted from the A1's heat. We both laughed.
After it first appeared in 1985, the A1 quickly became famous for its hot top plate. The top plate got as hot as it did because it was used as a heatsink for the output transistors, which were biased highly…
Compared to Rogue Audio Sphinx
Rogue Audio's tube/class-D hybrid Sphinx V3 and Musical Fidelity's A1 sounded more alike than different. Still, the "different" part was important.
The Sphinx V3 uses an N-core power module to make 100 class-D watts into 8 ohms. It costs $1595 and has a killer, to-die-for MM/ MC phono stage that came across as more transparent than the A1's. As always when comparing components, the sound character of the previous component affects what I notice first with the new component that replaces it.
In this case, I'd been listening to pianist…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: Solid state integrated amplifier. Inputs: 1 pair phono (RCA), five pair line-level single-ended (RCA; labeled CD, Tuner, Aux 1, Aux 2, Tape Out). Outputs: one pair "Tape Out" line-level fixed (RCA), one pair "Pre Out" line-level variable, one set L-R multiway loudspeaker binding posts. Rated power in class-A: 25Wpc into 8 ohms (14dBW). Max. voltage: 42.5V, peak–peak. Max. current: 25A, peak–peak. Gain (volume at maximum): 32dB (Direct Mode), 42dB (Normal Mode). Line level sensitivity: 300mV RMS nominal, 8V RMS max. Input impedance: 25k ohms line, 50k…
Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment
Analog sources: Dr. Feickert Analogue Blackbird turntable with EMT 912-HI tonearm and EMT JSD 6 moving coil cartridge, Sorane SA-1.2 tonearm with a Dynavector XX2 and Hana Umami Blue moving coils; Musical Fidelity Stealth turntable with a Nagaoka MP-200 moving Permalloy cartridge; MoFi MasterPhono and Prima Luna EVO 100 phono stages.
Digital sources: Denafrips Terminator Plus, HoloAudio Spring 3, dCS Lina (with Master Clock) DACs; Onkyo C-7030 CD player, TEAC CRDS-701T CD transport.
Preamplifier: HoloAudio Serene.
Power amplifiers: Parasound…
Sidebar 3: Measurements
I assessed the Musical Fidelity A1's measured performance using my Audio Precision SYS2722 system. I initially had some problems, as while the right channel's gain increased as expected when I pushed the front-panel button to switch from Direct mode to Normal mode, the left channel was muted. Suspecting there was something wrong with the pushbutton, I pressed it in and out several times in quick succession, which restored correct operation. I subsequently encountered another problem: The right channel had excessive distortion and limited power if the volume control…
New recordings of Julius Eastman compositions aren't as rare as they were a decade ago. Eastman's profile has grown with each repetition of his story, which seems to become more dramatic with each iteration. Trained at the Curtis Institute of Music; worked with Peter Maxwell Davies, Meredith Monk, and Petr Kotik; composed significant works often for instrument multiples (four pianos, 10 cellos); then drugs, homelessness, and dying alone in a hospital at the age of 49. A recent resurrection has brought new recordings, new research, and new visibility. An exciting recent realization of his 1974…