Construction details
A design like this is pretty simple for the experienced constructor, so there aren't too many guidelines to lay out. Definitely make sure you use RCA jacks which come with isolation washers, like the Tiffanies or the Vampires, in order to keep the jacks from touching the chassis; the only ground point in the entire circuit should be that single point ground mentioned earlier. Mount the 470µF supply bypass caps (with their 1µF bypasses) as close to the BUF-03s as you can to ensure a solid path to ground for any noise. And even though they may look more "professional,"…
search
According to Kawakami, SACD software is beginning to sell and chart the way regular CDs used to—a good thing, he says, because "the music industry is in desperate need of a packaged media it can sell." Regular CD sales continue to decline, yet Universal has shipped 700,000 CD/SACD hybrid Police albums, Sony shipped 700,000 hybrid Dylan albums between September and November alone, and ABKCO has sold more than 2 million hybrid Rolling Stones discs in the past year. (Keep in mind that ABKCO's Stones discs are not a supplement to a back catalog of regular CDs: They have replaced single-layer…
David Chesky, whose company has been making superior recordings for nearly 20 years now, isn't from the engineering side of the business. He's talent—a pianist who sometimes performs on his label, a composer of classical and jazz selections integral to its catalog, and an arranger as well.
Chesky was born in October 1956, grew up in Miami, and began studying piano at age five because his mother, an eighth-grade teacher, decreed that "everybody in the house is going to take piano lessons, so when you become a doctor you can play as an avocation." She also felt that the pursuit would help…
Lander: You've long used exotic equipment to make your recordings.
Chesky: We have so many things in our studio: a large selection of vintage tube mikes, our own custom tube mike preamps and custom tube mike mixers. We use a lot of audiophile mike cable, and we have a SoundField mike that we had customized as well. We use Genex multichannel optical disc recorders, and we have a selection of A/D and D/A converters.
Lander: As a longtime champion of high-resolution digital and the first to release a recording with 128x oversampling, do you want to comment on the format wars?
…
A few nights ago, John Atkinson and I played host to a speaker designer and a turntable manufacturer. We were all chewing over the 1998 Consumer Electronics Show, talking about different systems we'd heard there and speculating as to which designs would be around for the long haul. The speaker designer said he'd heard no truly bad sound at the Show. Nods all around the table—none of us had. The turntable manufacturer asked if any of us could recall hearing any spectacularly bad products recently. We all shook our heads.
"Actually," I said, thinking about the Audio Research CD2 CD player…
Between good sense and good taste there is the same difference as between cause and effect.—Jean de la Bruyère (1645-1696)
Impatient sort that I am, I didn't let the CD2 gather much dust between plugging it in and playing it. According to my well-thumbed copy of Earn Big Bucks as a Hi-Fi Critic, this is where I'm supposed to impress everybody with my description of how horrid it sounded cold out of the box. But it didn't. From the start, the CD2 sounded warm, big-boned, and inviting. Oh, the sound bloomed and steadily grew more refined and relaxed over the next several hours, but it…
Impatient sort that I am, I didn't let the CD2 gather much dust between plugging it in and playing it. According to my well-thumbed copy of Earn Big Bucks as a Hi-Fi Critic, this is where I'm supposed to impress everybody with my description of how horrid it sounded cold out of the box. But it didn't. From the start, the CD2 sounded warm, big-boned, and inviting. Oh, the sound bloomed and steadily grew more refined and relaxed over the next several hours, but it…
It must be possible for an empirical scientific system to be refuted by experience.—Karl Popper (1902-1994)
Conditioned as I have become to the proposition that when you audition two components side by side you will be able to identify differences between them, I was initially startled by how few significant differences I heard when comparing the Audio Research CD2 with the Mark Levinson No.39. That's not to say that there were none, just that most of them were either musically unimportant or so small as to seem piddling.
Conditioned as I have become to the proposition that when you audition two components side by side you will be able to identify differences between them, I was initially startled by how few significant differences I heard when comparing the Audio Research CD2 with the Mark Levinson No.39. That's not to say that there were none, just that most of them were either musically unimportant or so small as to seem piddling.
Ruth Laredo's superb-sounding CD of Beethoven piano sonatas (…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: Single-chassis CD player with 20-bit delta-sigma DAC and digital outputs (one XLR AES/EBU, balanced; one BNC coaxial S/PDIF, 75 ohms; one TosLink fiber-optical; optional ST-type glass fiber-optical). Analog outputs: one pair balanced XLR, one pair RCA single-ended. Jitter reduction: high-stability crystal-controlled re-clocking for all outputs. Frequency response: 0.1Hz-20kHz, ±2dB. Phase linearity: <0.5 degrees, 20Hz-20kHz. S/N Ratio: 96dBA. Distortion: -90dB (0.003%) at 1kHz. Output impedance (analog): 350 ohms balanced, 175 ohms single-ended.…
Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment
CD Players: Krell KAV-300cd, Mark Levinson No.39.Preamplifier: Conrad-Johnson ART.
Power Amplifiers: Cary CAD-300SEI, Krell FPB 600 and KAV-300i.
Loudspeakers: B&W Silver Signature, EgglestonWorks Andra, ProAc Response One SC.
Cables: Kimber KCAG and WireWorld GEI interconnects, Kimber Black Pearl and WireWorld GEI speaker cables.
Accessories: Audio Power Industries Power Wedge 112, Magro Stereo Display Stand, Foundation 24" stands.
Sound Treatment: ASC Tube Traps, Studio Traps, Bass Traps; RPG Abffusors; micronoetic feline.—Wes Phillips…
Sidebar 3: Measurements
The Audio Research CD2 proved well able to cope with damaged CDs. The Pierre Verany test disc has deliberate data dropouts; the CD2 could play up to track 33, a 1.5mm gap in the data, without the sound muting. The player's output level at 0dBFS from its single-ended jacks was 0.7dB higher than the CD-standard 2V, at 2.16V. The channels matched to within 0.05dB at 1kHz, which is excellent. From the balanced outputs, the output offered the expected doubling, to 4.3V. The source impedance was similar to specification at 350 ohms (balanced) and 195 ohms (unbalanced),…