search
During my cub reporter days at Stereophile, I was always on the lookout, casting about for midlevel analog components I might latch on to, ones that could join my long-term daily-driver reference system by complementing the character of my midlevel DeVore Fidelity Orangutan O/93 and Falcon LS3/5a loudspeakers. I was searching for these basic traits: alive and vigorous, clear and well-sorted, relaxed and natural. One of my first-ever Stereophile reviews, in the October 2014 issue, was of Sentec's EQ11 phono preamplifier, which featured six EQ choices, selectable from the front panel, Bakelite…
After living the previous month with PrimaLuna's 10-tube EVO 100 phono stage, I kept checking in with myself to see if I found the MasterPhono transistory—hard, shallow, gray—but it never did. Instead, it walked a narrow line between hard and soft, dry and wet, warm and cool—leaning maybe 10% towards wet and warm on the most atmospheric recordings. It did not attenuate reverberation or diminish atmosphere. I never consciously wished for tube treats I wasn't getting.
With the $1k Lenco
With the plastic Denon DL-103 cartridge, on the aluminum aftermarket headshell, I could probably get…
When I reviewed the Concept 50 loudspeaker from the UK's Q Acoustics in August 2022, I concluded that the Concept 50 lowers the sweet price spot for affordable tower speakers to $3000/pair. Now I have another pair of Q Acoustics loudspeakers in the house for review. Like the earlier speaker, the 5040 is a slim, elegant-looking tower with a vertical D'Appolito drive-unit array comprising a 0.9" fabric-dome tweeter positioned between the two 5" plastic-cone woofers. But the price is half that of the Concept 50: $1499/pair. Will this be a new sweet spot? We shall see.
The 5040
…
BBC Radio 3's Night Tracks program, streamed with Roon, alerted me to Corin, an electronica artist with whom I was completely unfamiliar. After an ambient choral beginning, the title track from her Lux Aeterna (24/44.1 FLAC, UIQ/Qobuz) features a sequence with high-level, low-frequency synth notes. The Q Acoustics had no problem playing this passage with sufficient authority—not what I was expecting from a pair of relatively inexpensive speakers with 5" woofers.
I was careful to keep the sound pressure level at the listening seat below 87dB(C), slow ballistics. These are 5"…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: Two-way, reflex-loaded, floorstanding loudspeaker. Drive units: two 5" (125mm) impregnated-and-coated-paper–cone woofers; 1" (25mm) fabric-dome tweeter. Crossover frequency: 2.5kHz. Frequency response: 39Hz–30kHz –6dB. Nominal impedance: 6 ohms. Minimum impedance: 3.0 ohms. Sensitivity: 91.5dB/2.83V/m. Recommended amplifier power: 25–150W. Supplied accessories: foam port-blocking plugs, aluminum stabilizers, carpet-piercing spikes, and protective spike covers.
Dimensions: 38.1" (967mm) H × 11.5" (293mm) W × 14.2" (361mm) D including spikes and…
Sidebar Associated Equipment
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: Audio Research I/50, Musical Fidelity Nu-Vista 800.2, NAD M10.
Power amplifiers: Parasound Halo JC 1+ monoblocks.
Loudspeakers: KEF LS50.
Cables: Digital: AudioQuest Vodka (Ethernet), AudioQuest Coffee (USB), DH Labs (1m, AES3). Interconnect: Ayre/Cardas (balanced). Speaker: AudioQuest Robin Hood. AC: AudioQuest Dragon Source & High Current,…
Sidebar 3: Measurements
I used DRA Labs' MLSSA system, a calibrated DPA 4006 microphone, and an Earthworks microphone preamplifier to measure the Q Acoustics 5040's quasi-anechoic behavior in the farfield. (The 5040's manual doesn't mention an optimal listening axis, so I examined the farfield frequency- and time-domain responses on the tweeter axis.) I used an Earthworks QTC-40 mike for the nearfield and in-room responses and Dayton Audio's DATS V2 system to measure the impedance magnitude and electrical phase angle.
In Gramophone Dreams #79, I described how my mother started me on a path where I am compelled to look and touch and listen and read my way to "good taste in everything." "Books and manners," she called it. She viewed these social proficiencies as something people put on like clothes.
But for me, taste has a deeper significance. I see it as regulated by an internalized moral and socio-spiritual code that forces me to recognize how little I know about whatever subject I am judging. With fine art and music, that code compels me to ask myself why I prefer one artist, style, or genre to…
In the 1970s, Steely Dan produced hit records for a listening public that could care less about the band's cryptic lyrics. Those early Dan fans responded to their songs' epic choruses and glistening hooks, awarding chart-topping success and a global audience.
From 1972's Can't Buy a Thrill to 1980's closing act Gaucho, Bard sages Walter Becker (1950–2017) and Donald Fagen occupied a place in pop music as unique as their songs' references to "wild gamblers," "midnight cruisers," "bodacious cowboys," and a female protagonist who "prays like a Roman with her eyes on fire." Much later, Becker…
Photo by Himanshu Ratnaka
In prior screeds, I have discussed the category of turntable designers I like to call deep thinkers, who twist their brains to come up with fresh thinking about how to approach the task of playing a vinyl record. If there is a poster boy for deep thinkers, it's got to be Simon Brown.
Brown is based on the South Island of New Zealand. I'm thinking that being in such a far-flung part of the world must have given his head plenty of space to get creative. First, in 2011 he created The Wand tonearm, a striking unipivot design that features a fat carbon-fiber…