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Harold Mabern made this record when he was 81, 20 months before he died, with a sextet full of badasses 30 years younger. You might think his five sidemen had to go easy on their aging leader. If you thought that, you would be wrong. The guy here with the most striking…

A thirst for good tunes led me to this new recording of Mendelssohn Violin Sonatas. For a composer as prolific as Mendelssohn, it may come as a surprise that of the three completed sonatas and one sonata fragment on this 67-minute recording, Mendelssohn chose to publish only one, which he composed the year he turned 14. Even more astounding, the finest and most original of…

The backstory—or parts of it—is important to fully understand the front story: this review. So stick with me. Founded by Wilhelm Franz in Berlin in 1940, EMT began as a…

The…

A track I have recently been using to judge a speaker's low-frequency behavior is "All Too Well (Taylor's Version)" from Taylor Swift's album Red (24/96 FLAC, Big Machine Records/Qobuz). At 2:25, when Swift sings "'Cause there we are again in the middle of the night," the bass line drops an octave. The effect sounds awesome even on the little KEF LS50s, but on the Monitor Audio with the ports open, it was all too much.

I blocked both ports on each speaker and listened again to the low-frequency warble tones. Now the tones were reproduced evenly down to 63Hz, but the 50Hz and 40Hz…

Description: Three-way, reflex-loaded, floorstanding loudspeaker. Drive units: two 8" (203mm) RDT III woofers, 4" (102mm) RDT III midrange unit, MPD III tweeter. Port tuning frequency: 32Hz. Crossover frequencies: 650Hz, 3kHz. Frequency response: 25Hz–60kHz, –6dB (free-field); 17Hz–60kHz, –6dB (in-room). Nominal impedance: 4 ohms. Minimum impedance: 4.0 ohms at 3.75kHz. Sensitivity: 88dB/2.83V/m (freefield). Recommended power: 200–800W, music program. Maximum continuous power handling: 400W, pink noise with 6dB crest factor. Supplied accessories: screw-in cone…

Digital sources: Roon Nucleus+ file server; Ayre Acoustics C-5xeMP universal player; MBL N31 CD player/DAC; Ayre Acoustics QA-9 A/D converter; NetGear Nighthawk router.
Integrated amplifiers: NAD M10, Audio Research I/50, Musical Fidelity Nu-Vista 800.2.
Power amplifiers: Parasound Halo JC 1+ monoblocks, Naim Classic 200 Series NAP 250.
Loudspeakers: KEF LS50.
Cables: Digital: AudioQuest Vodka (Ethernet), AudioQuest Coffee (USB), DH Labs (1m, AES3). Interconnect: AudioQuest Wild Blue (balanced). Speaker: AudioQuest Robin Hood. AC: AudioQuest…

I used DRA Labs' MLSSA system and a calibrated DPA 4006 microphone with an Earthworks microphone preamplifier to measure the Monitor Audio Platinum 300 3G's farfield frequency behavior and dispersion. For the nearfield responses, I used an Earthworks QTC-40 mike, which has a ¼" capsule and thus doesn't present a significant obstacle to the sound. I also used this microphone for the in-room behavior. The impedance magnitude and electrical phase angle were measured with Dayton Audio's DATS V2 system.

But when you look at a Rolls or a Bentley, you immediately recognize it for what it is, and you want to sit down in it. And so it is with McIntosh, except you don't want to sit down in it; you want to sit down in front of it, between the speakers of the hi-fi system it occupies.…

The Golden Road (to Unlimited Devotion)
Setup was easy. After connecting cables, my first order of business was to narrow the many available inputs down to the ones I actually use: one balanced, line-level input fed from my Bricasti DAC and one phono input from my VPI turntable. Unusually for a preamplifier, you must also choose an output, tubed or solid state. Any unused outputs can be turned off. Inputs can be renamed, their trim levels adjusted. I set phono gain and loading to appropriate levels. Then I started listening.

I began my listening by A/B-ing solid state and…