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Analog Corner #234: Do You Believe in Magic?

When a magician pulls a quarter from someone's ear or saws a woman in half, I believe in magic. I know it's an illusion—not real—but that doesn't mean that magic isn't real.

What's real is that the magician's illusion is believable because your eyes see it and, until sometime later—even if only a fraction of a second—your brain doesn't argue. The best your brain can do is tell you, "Yes, you saw that, but you know it didn't happen."

Funny, then, how anti-audiophiles always claim that the ear is more easy to fool than the eye. Yet books have been devoted to cataloguing optical…

Analog Corner #234: Do You Believe in Magic? Page 2

How can such tiny resonators do anything? That's what I'd wondered about the Harmonix tuning dots, but they produced results in my old room very similar to what the HFTs were doing here. The HFTs definitely improved the sound in very specific ways having to do with soundstaging and imaging, and not at all to do with harmonics, tonality, or instrumental textures—which was good: I wouldn't want any of that to change.

According to Synergistic Research, everything in your room resonates, and not necessarily in tune with the music. "The resonance of your listening room is literally pushing…

Return to Analog's Pierre Markotanyos

The return of vinyl, which has stayed popular and profitable since its resurgence, has now developed a surprising nuance. Pierre Markotanyos, the owner of the reissue label Return to Analog and Montreal record store Aux 33 Tours (which refers to the speed at which an LP spins), has noticed a distinct change in the makeup of who's buying vinyl these days. "In the late 2000s," Markotanyos reflects, "it was mostly 55-to-70-year-old guys who were coming in, buying records to play on their high-end stereos that they bought at the audio show in Montreal." [Sound familiar, Stereophile readers?] "…

Perfect Album Sides

Before the bits and bytes, before the streams, the music business and its most talented artists, producers, and engineers conjured up a notion of musical-sonic holiness: the perfect album side.

Remember albums? The idea is quaint in the era of streaming, a time of "summer songs," one-hit wonders, meme songs, song snippets on TikTok, songs tied to viral videos, robot-generated playlists, and whatnot. Those of us older than the World Wide Web itself, we remember albums. They were 12" slices of happiness, sadness, escape, epiphany—all the feelings. The geometry and physics of…

Gramophone Dreams #92: Technics SL-1300G record player

Like romance or car racing, the act of playing records is tactile by design. Like drifting through curves or making out, spinning vinyl is a learned skill that requires users to touch everything with practiced assurance.

To play a disc with Technics' new SL-1300G record player means pushing its round On button, then touching one or more of its rectangular speed selector buttons, then pushing the big square [Start:Stop] button, then unclamping the tonearm and using its cue lever to raise it up.

Next comes the part where my heart beats a little faster: using the headshell's…

Gramophone Dreams #92: Technics SL-1300G record player Page 2

In that spirit, and knowing I did not own a runout gauge, Trei told me to eyeball the chrome bead on the lower rim of the 1300G's platter against the line of the plinth's top surface, watching to see if the platter rises and falls during rotation. Which it did! I estimated it rose about 1.5mm during one point in each rotation. This seemed trivial, but Michael said I could fix that by first making sure I have the washers on the screws that fasten the platter to the motor in the right order (with the small Belleville spring washers on top next to the screw-head), and, as the manual clearly…

KEF KC92 powered subwoofer

I was fascinated by Herb Reichert's adventures with the KEF KC62 subwoofer, so I borrowed one. Beautifully engineered, contoured, and finished and chock-full of cutting-edge technology, it would be welcome in any room and easily integrated into any system. However, it struck me as not just small but miniaturized, like the meticulously functional samples made for the traveling salesmen of a century past. Since its two force-canceling 6.5" radiators were the same size as or smaller than the midrange drivers in my main speakers at the time, I had low expectations and returned it without comment…

KEF KC92 powered subwoofer Page 2

KC92s with the PS Audio Aspen FR5
This user configuration is one of the most likely for the KC92, and I found that it worked well. Setup with these small standmount speakers was not as streamlined as with LS60s since the KEF app does not know them. One could use an external program (eg, Roon, JRiver, etc.) to split off the bass to the KC92s and high-pass the rest to the FR5s. Instead, I connected the full-range L/R signals to the subs and fed the main amps and FR5s from the KC92s' line outputs (footnote 4).

Physically, I placed the FR5s where the LS60s (which are usually my…

KEF KC92 powered subwoofer Specifications

Sidebar 1: Specifications

Description: Powered, sealed-box, dual-driver subwoofer. Drive units: two 9" cone woofers in force-canceling arrangement. Inputs: stereo or dual-mono unbalanced (RCA), speaker level input via Euroblock speaker level connector (included). Outputs: stereo or dual-mono unbalanced (RCA). Controls: Level; Low-Pass filter (variable, 40–140Hz, 24dB/octave, LFE); Phase control (0°, 180°); EQ (Room, Wall, Corner, Cabinet, Apartment); Power/Standby Mode; Ground Lift (On, Off); Line Out High-pass filter (Variable, 40–120Hz). 12V trigger input. USB-C service port. Expansion…

KEF KC92 powered subwoofer Associated Equipment

Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment

Digital sources: Custom Intel/Win11 music server running JRiver Media Center v32 and Roon 2, Merging Devices Hapi II and Okto Dac8 PRO multichannel DACs. QNAP TVS-873 NAS. Oppo Digital UDP-103 universal disc player.
Power amplifiers: Benchmark AHB2, NAD M23.
Loudspeakers: KEF Blade Two Meta with IsoAcoustics GAIA II feet, KEF LS60 Wireless, PS Audio Aspen FR5.
Cables: Digital interconnects: Mogami Gold AES TD DB25-XLR0 snake.Analog interconnects: Mogami Gold AES TD DB25-XLR snake, Benchmark Studio&Stage XLR–XLR. Speaker cables: Blue Jeans…