Vinnie recently introduced his namesake company's move upmarket with his flagship Brama tube-hybrid amplification. The Vinnie Rossi Brama integrated amplifier ($38,995, above), which uses 300B vacuum tubes in the preamp stage and a high-current, class…
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Peace and quiet at a busy audio show is hard to come by. I especially wasn't expecting mellow respite on a Saturday show day. But I found some lovely-sounding music and a chilled-out vibe in Vinnie Rossi's demo room 488. Only a couple of listeners came and went during that time. Control of the iPad—and Vinnie Rossi remote control—were mine.
Located just five miles from each other in the beauteous state of New Hampshire, Sonner Audio and Small Green Computer teamed up to present a lovely mid-priced system that quickly won over hearts with its beauty. Yes, every veteran audiophile has heard tenor José Carreras sing "that track" from Misa Criolla, but far fewer have enjoyed all the atmosphere, midrange warmth, and excellent bass that this track can deliver. Carreras sounded especially clear, present, and intimate on this space-considerated system.
"Only with Small Green Computer's Sonore sonicTransporter i9 ($2800) do I get…
I'm in the middle of an audition in the room where Raidho TD3.8 speakers ($119,999/pair) are producing sweet music in synergy with two $10,000-each tubed Margules 30th-Anniversary monoblock amplifiers running in triode mode. (JVS reviewed an earlier version of the amp in November 2017.) Suddenly some deep-voiced dude speaks up, just to my right: "You guys ever heard of the Purple Man?" Puzzled, I look in his direction. No one's there.
Being from Maine, I wonder if I accidentally sauntered into a Stephen King tale.
But a thousandth of a second later, my brain clicks into gear,…
Let's get right to it: The best way to set azimuth, as I recently wrote in this space, is to measure crosstalk using either a high-quality voltmeter or a digital oscilloscope and a good test record like Analogue Productions' The Ultimate Analogue Test LP (AAPT1). The traditional, qualitative procedure—setting the headshell so that it's parallel to the record surface—assures only cosmetic satisfaction.
The AP test record's second band contains a 1kHz tone, on the left channel only. The third band repeats that tone on the right channel. Measuring output on the unmodulated channel, in…
Next, you measure the dynamic cantilever angle by installing the cartridge—overhang is not critical at this point—and, after making sure the arm is parallel to the record surface in both axes (the Wally Reference tool is useful here), and with the supplied lipless record on the platter and the stylus on the record, you slowly rotate the platter with a finger and snap a picture using either the WallyScope or a digital microscope or smartphone camera. (Whichever device you use must be precisely located to achieve an accurate measurement.)
Then, using the WallyScope software, you measure…
If you're a regular attendee to audio shows you'll notice one constant, and that's a lack of consistency. At one show, Acme Turntables represents with Manny, Moe, & Jack's speakers. The next show, Acme has taken up with Beverly's speakers, and MM&J is now with Mr. Big's turntables. It's downright incestuous.
Into this audio polygamy come the good men of Volti Audio (Greg Roberts), BorderPatrol DACs and amplification (Gary Dews), and Triode Wire Labs cabling (Pete Grzybowski). These gentlemen have been hosting hi-fi rooms as a single organism since 2005! And it's audible. Roberts,…
AXPONA offered the public a long-anticipated first listen to prototypes of Mytek's forthcoming Empire Streamer DAC ($24,995) and Empire GaNFET class-D monoblock amplifier ($9995/each or $19,990/pair). The former, which I'll review, may be in production by Munich High End in May; the latter is expected to launch in September.
The Empire monoblocks weigh only 30lb each. Mytek's Chief Design Engineer, Michal Jurewicz, told me they output 300Wpc into 8 ohms and 600Wpc into 4 ohms. He also claimed that their gallium nitride transistors are 10 or 20 times faster than MOSFETs and…
From a new company came a new loudspeaker design that was four years in the making—thanks in part to the pandemic. But COVID downtime gave Malbork Audio founder and designer Daniel Fajkis (above) one advantage: more time to refine his inaugural Malbork Warsaw loudspeaker design through more math and engineering and simulations, Fajkis told me.
The Malbork Warsaw is an ambitious speaker. Named after a stately castle in Poland not far from Fajkis's hometown, the Malbork company is based in South Florida, where the speaker was built. With an enclosure made of machined aluminum, its…
A quarter century after Audio Analogue began in Italy, the company's products are again available in the United States. Thanks to Walter Swanborn and Dwight DiMartino of Fidelis Distribution of New Hampshire, visitors to AXPONA discovered the AADrive CD transport ($2850) and AA DAC ($4950), Puccini Anniversary integrated amplifier ($5850), Bellini Anniversary line preamplifier ($7750), Donizetti Anniversary power amplifier ($13,850, below), and AA Phono MM/MC phono stage ($2500).
With signal sent from an Aurender N20 High Definition Caching Music Server ($12,000) to Neat…
In the spring of 1969, as an aspiring jazz drummer of 15 pretentiously and largely uncomprehendingly drawn to the music's difficult avant-garde, I learned that Don Cherry, Ornette Coleman's alter ego during Ornette's starvation years and an icon of free jazz himself, had recently moved to the village of Congers in my native Rockland County, New York, just north of New York City. Ornette was putting together a group drawn mostly from his early cohorts, and the call went out to Stockholm, where Don had settled—to the extent that he settled anywhere—with his Swedish wife, Moki. Hence his…