Walking into one of the rooms hosted by Middle River, MD audio dealer Just Audio was a bit of a surprise, and to quote Yogi Berra, "It's like déjà vu all over again."
I'd been in search of Cambridge Audio, to see what was new and if possible, spend some time with two of their integrated amplifiers, the $2999 Evo 150 and the $6499 Edge A. The Edge A is part of an upscale line that Cambridge created to establish a presence above their current one, which is defined by an ethos of "great sound, nondescript cosmetics, and reasonable prices."
The Evo 150 is about as different from the…
In 1973, Elton John and Bernie Taupin capped one of pop music's most epic periods of sustained creativity by writing, recording, and releasing the 10-track single disc Don't Shoot Me I'm Only the Piano Player and the 17-track double album Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, both of which are now celebrating their 50th anniversary (footnote 1). As two of the strongest entries among the many classics that make 1972–73 the peak years for rock albums, both went #1 in the US and UK and arguably stand as the dual highpoints of John's recorded legacy.
At the center of both records is the unusual way…
Liner notes from jazz albums of the 1950s and 1960s can be shot through with naivete, hipsterism (usually faux), and callousness toward the abundance of musical talent then working. Few though are as shortsighted as the original essay by Jack Maher on the back of 1960's Workin' with the Miles Davis Quintet. Opening with "Miles Davis is the most maligned and idolized musician in modern American jazz today. He is at once the saint and the sinner," he goes on to cite a dynamic that literally all musicians experience, especially when playing live: "He has been accused of being lackadaisical and…
At least I didn't get arrested is a helluva way to begin a story, but then I never expected the FBI to question me about my online record shopping, viewing it as cover for potentially "Conspiring to Provide Material Support" to an international terrorist organization. "We need some information from you," the email said. "We've also temporarily limited certain features in your PayPal account.
"PayPal's Compliance Department has reviewed your account and identified activity that we have a couple questions about. To resolve the compliance inquiry in a timely fashion, PayPal is requesting…
In 1928, Swiss engineer and inventor Jean-Léon Reutter created a clock that could run for years without human interaction or any type of external power source. The Atmos Clock required no AC power, batteries, solar panels, or hand-winding. It was able to wind itself by leveraging subtle changes in atmospheric pressure and temperature.
The design was so energy efficient that a single degree of temperature change provided enough power for two days of operation; it would take an incredible 60 million Atmos clocks to equal the power demands of a single 15W light bulb. 95 years later, the…
Connecting the P1 was straightforward. Kevin showed me how to switch between the P1 with the X1 power supply and the P1 solo (with its built-in power supply) while leaving the X1 connected. This made it easy to compare the two configurations.
One of the fiddliest jobs when connecting a tonearm cable is hooking up that pesky ground wire, but CH Precision has come up with a simple but brilliant solution. A pair of banana plug sockets on the P1's back panel comes equipped with banana plugs topped with wing nuts, under which you can connect the ground wire. Because the plug can be…
"New York is an ugly city, a dirty city," John Steinbeck wrote in 1953. "But there is one thing about it—once you have lived in New York and it has become your home, no place else is good enough." Decades later, the novelist's insight about this appalling, incomparable city still feels true. New Yorkers love to complain about the summers, with their wafting miasma of hot garbage and urine; about the superannuated subway system, which only sometimes resembles a psilocybin trip gone really wrong; about the purgatorial agony of finding an apartment; about the affronts of existing shoulder-to-…
More surprising still was the GT2's nimble way with rhythm and timing—not the forte of many belt-drive turntables. Sonically, Bootsy Collins's bassline on "Unfunky UFO," from an early pressing of Parliament's Mothership Connection, offered solidity, tunefulness, and long decay, but it also forced my friend J and me to get off of the couch and dance, always a welcome development. Certain lightweight, light-on-their-feet record players—like the ones from Linn and Rega—seem to waltz their way through recordings, a propulsive quality I find appealing, but that is not what I heard here. The…
It takes a while for audio-related technologies to mature. Tubed amplifiers were invented by Lee de Forest in the nineteen-teens, but while there are still some adherents of early high-distortion triode designs, the age of mainstream high-fidelity amplification dawned with higher-power/lower-distortion amplifiers developed by Williamson and McIntosh followed by the Ultralinear take on the Williamson concept. That was 30+ years down the technology-evolution timeline after de Forest.
And when it comes to solid state amplifiers—the usual kind—does anyone prefer the state of the (germanium)…
The Warp 1 in the listening room
Bill Leebens, Underwood HiFi's PR guy, told me that the amp I was sent for review was "broken in" and verified as working, so I got right down to listening to music. I recently had my Benchmark AHB2 power amp connected to my listening room system, driving a pair of Bowers & Wilkins 808 speakers. Ahead of the power amp is the Benchmark LA4. Sources were a dCS Bartók DAC/streamer and a recently installed phono rig: Technics SL-1200MK7 turntable, vintage Shure V15 Type III HE cartridge, and Pro-Ject Phono Box RS2 phono preamp. Connected to the Bartók via…
