Hoping to impress Vlad with the Terminator Plus's ability to express the qin's full harmonic spectrum, I played Xia Fuxi performing "A Fisherman's Song" from Chinese Traditional and Folk Music: Guqin Vol.3 (16/44.1 FLAC, China Record Corporation/ Qobuz), a demonstration-quality guqin recording. The sound was so ridiculously tangible…
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When I played Music for the Qin Zither for Vlad and Li, Li exclaimed, "I can see the qin! Look! It's right there!" as she pointed to a place between the speakers. Li was responding to one of the Terminator Plus's most dominant traits: its high acuity-factor.
You never forget your first time. Ask any audiophile about that first moment hearing music through a good hi-fi system—how it rocked their world and changed their life. Maybe it was at a friend's parents' house when they were a kid. Often, though, it was the first time they found themselves in a hi-fi dealership, back in the day.
Yes, back then, hi-fi dealerships played a critical role in exposing people to good sound. According to industry stalwart Anthony Chiarella, they still do—indeed, they must. The industry, though, faces serious challenges—including continuing to introduce…
The increasing prominence of Blu-ray explains why a device to extract audio from an HDMI stream has become necessary. At first, Blu-ray players had HDMI outputs for video and audio, but to speed their adoption, they also sported analog audio outputs to help users who had older AV receivers (AVRs). Bye the bye, those audio outputs were pared off. First, the multichannel jacks, then the stereo jacks, and finally the S/PDIF jacks were eliminated. In parallel, dedicated SACD players began to disappear, except at the very high end. The result: Most players, including so-called universal disc…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: Digital breakout box that extracts multichannel or stereo audio data (PCM or DSD) from HDMI sources. Inputs: HDMI 2.0. Supported input formats: PCM (up to 24/192), DSD64. Outputs, multichannel version: HDMI 2.0 and choice of 4 AES3 (XLR), 4 S/PDIF (RCA or BNC) outputs. Stereo version: one each AES3, S/PDIF, and TosLink. Output sample rates: up to 24/192kHz (from PCM) or DoP (from DSD64). Word clock and Super clock outputs. Separate power supply for HDMI and audio circuitry via dual USB-C connections. Supplied accessories: two 5V/1A DC power supplies…
Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment
Digital sources: Oppo Digital UDP-105 universal disc player, custom Baetis Prodigy-X4i music server running JRiver Media Center v28 and Roon 1.8,
Mytek Brooklyn+, exaSound s88 streaming DAC and Okto dac8 PRO D/A processors. QNAP TVS-873 NAS.
Preamplifier: Coleman Audio 7.1SW for source switching.
Power Amplifiers: Benchmark AHB2, NAD C 298.
Loudspeakers: Revel Ultima2 Studio with IsoAcoustics Gaia I isolation feet. Revel Performa3 f206 for surrounds. Two SVS SB-3000 & one SB-2000Pro subwoofers.
Cables: Digital: AudioQuest Coffee USB,…
Photo: Charlene Gray
When I need information about recordings, I go to Discogs. At Discogs, Kevin Gray has more than 2500 entries. That's as good an indicator as any of the amount of ground he has covered in his career so far as a creative participant in the recorded-music art known as mastering. Since starting out in the early 1970s, in Los Angeles, he has worked for all the major music labels and many independents, in all music genres.
At one time, behind-the-scenes jobs like Gray's were anonymous and technical—not really viewed as real creative work. When the Beatles started…
Matson: Have you ever cued up a recording to listen to and thought: "I can't fix this?"
Gray: Without mentioning any names, when I get stuff that is supercompressed, it's a challenge to cut that. You are basically trying to put squarewaves on the record, because everything is wave-top clipped. There are programs that smooth the edges a little bit, but that's the stuff that I really hate. The old '60s stuff that was loud and EQ'd for radio: You can massage that and get it sounding pretty good. I never complain about those records.
Matson: The dark days of early digital, the early…
It was great fun having our editorial coordinator, Jana Dagdagan, shoot a video profile of me in my listening room. As I write this, it's had more than 88,000 views. While the ratio of thumbs up to thumbs down has remained consistently around 10:1, some of the negative comments, particularly about our industry and about this magazine, do enrage me.
Being called a "snake oil peddler" and a "haberdasher to emperors" is bad enough, but having high-end audio characterized as "the biggest shill industry ever to hit humanity since the age of alchemy," and as one based solely on greed, sets me…
Initial leveling is easily done: Unscrew the black caps atop each arm-mount post, then screw in or out the large hex-head screw under each. TechDAS advises checking the level after a few weeks, in case of settling.
Because the belt doesn't stretch, the most critical part of setup is to adjust the precise distance between the platter and the motor pulley. This is made relatively easy via a slide knob that can move the motor within its housing. There's no guesswork: You hold down the 45rpm and Pitch High # buttons, then adjust the slide knob until "45rpm" appears on the speed display;…
Superb tracking ability, very good imaging and extremely smooth frequency response, plus unusual freedom from mounting problems make this one of the best pickups available and, quite possibly, the best all-around performer we have encountered.
Like all Stanton pickups, the 681 sports a small integral, freely pivoted brush to sweep dust out of the grooves ahead of the stylus and also, incidentally, to take some of the normal inward-pulling side thrust away from the stylus. The brush does not appear to have any detrimental effect when reproducing warped discs, and may actually be of some…