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One of the privileges of being a reviewer is being able to live with a wide variety of components. For the past year and a half, I've been listening to LPs using solid state, high-gain phono preamplifiers like the Parasound Halo JC 3+, the Sutherland Little Loco, and the Lejonklou Entity, which I've come to admire for their coherence and resolution. While I was reviewing the Entity, Ken Micallef brought over his Tavish Adagio, a tubed phono preamp with a great-sounding moving magnet section that we paired with my Auditorium 23 SPU step-up transformer. The combination didn't always sound as…
And now for something completely different, Part 2
On the gentle urging of one of the nicest guys in the biz, Ed O'Herlihy, owner of Ontario retailer EQ audio video, I visited, among the many exhibits Ed was hosting in his nearly stadium-sized space, was the Focal 1000 series Utopia 7.0.4 Dolby Atmos demonstration, the exact same setup that Focal presented in Dallas at this year's CEDIA Expo.
I was played two tracks, one from a scene from the movie The Greatest Showman and the other Elton John's "Rocket Man." A word about the .0 designation in 7.0.4. That digit refers to the…
A room I can always count on to deliver soul-stirring, heart-warming, duct-tearing, yearning-to-possess sound is the one hosted by Hearken Audio/Atelier Audio, an oasis of some of the least mechanical, most musical sound I've heard this side of real-life music.
You want to hear about something else that was completely different? The Ilumnia magister speakers ($34,000). They're a one-of-a-kind design featuring an inverted spiderless, surroundless floating midbass driver suspended by an electromagnet, over which projects like a shooting star on a metal beam a directional silk-dome tweeter.…
And now for something completely different, Part 3.
Ever heard of a monophonic integrated amplifier? An amp that includes a single amplification channel along with its single channel preamplification stage? I hadn't until I visited manufacturer Eon Art's room, which was demoing a pair of such a rare, in fact, one-of-a-kind, beast, called the Boson ($72,537/each).
This 250W amp is particular in other ways, including that it's a dual hybrid: it's both a tubed and solid state design and a linear and switching one, employing a combination of class-A and class-D circuits. And if those…
Whenever I install a new, in-for-review DAC, after some amount of spaced-out not-listening listening I find myself just sitting there, being happy I got the damn thing working. Once I recover from the stress of installation, my brain begins, without prompting, to examine the character of sound coming out of my speakers. Half-consciously I wonder: How does this sound sound? Has changing DACs altered the contrast, viscosity, or timbre? Does the energy of recordings feel more or less intense with the new DAC? I make these observations lazily but empirically, with a fair amount of detachment.…
The R7HE MK2's chassis is big and heavy, measuring 17" × 5" on its front elevation and 19" deep; this depth could present a problem in some equipment racks. It comes triple-boxed and weighs 37.8lb—1lb more than the dCS Bartók and about 1lb less than the HoloAudio May (both chassis together).
Audio-GD's R7HE MK2 is made in China and sold and supported with a two-year parts and labor warranty by 50-year industry veteran Walter Liederman at Underwood HiFi.
Setup and use
The Audio-GD R7HE is a standalone DAC with no volume control, so I connected its output to HoloAudio's Serene…
Like at the last Toronto Audiofest, I listened to two of EQ Audio's main systems that were setup at both ends mirror-image-like along the length of the back wall of their huge, subdivided exhibit space. One system included another North American premiere!—the Monitor Audio 3-way PL200 3G speakers ($17,500/pair), which have a specified frequency range of 25Hz–60kHz, and were connected to a 500Wpc, dual-monoblock Rotel Michi S5 power amp ($10,000), and a Michi 3-2bit streaming DAC-equipped P5 preamp ($5900). Associated equipment included Kimber Kables throughout, an Audience Adept Response AR6…
The Toronto Audiofest 2022 may not have been the busiest audio show I've attended, but it was still a success. It had plenty of new product launches, great-sounding rooms, and a good amount of traffic, especially on Saturday, when seats became a hot commodity in many exhibit rooms.
A few other observations: the sound of digital keeps getting better. Thanks in part to the advent of network switches and better Ethernet cables, digital has reached a new tier of performance. It has never before sounded this overall smooth, sweet, and analog-like organic—there, I said it! It's amazing how much…
Some audio experiences stick in your memory. For me, one such was in 1978, which I reminisced about in a 1987 review for Stereophile of the Mission PCM 7000 CD player, Mission 780 Argonaut loudspeaker, and Cyrus Two integrated amplifier. Mission founder Farad Azima (footnote 1) was a driving force in the UK audio scene in the late 1970s, when I was deputy editor of the English magazine Hi-Fi News & Record Review.
"I used to regularly visit [Farad] at his London apartment and witness stages in the design of a loudspeaker that, in retrospect, would put Mission Electronics on the high-…
I assumed that he modeled the crossover with a simulation program for a lot of that time rather than making hundreds of different physical versions. "No, I made 174 physical versions! Every one measured superbly, but they all sounded different."
Setting up
The main source of music was my Roon Nucleus+ server feeding audio data over my network either to an MBL N31, a Bel Canto e1X DAC, or a dCS Rossini Apex, all of which were connected directly to a pair of Parasound Halo JC 1+ monoblocks. I didn't use the Mission 770s' magnetically attached grilles, and the speakers were single-wired…