For the first time in a long time, audiophiles were putting together music systems differently, spending money on audio equipment differently, and listening differently. Shopworn watchwords like soundstage and bloom and inner detail were replaced with vibe and drama—words that real people might actually use to describe real music. And, as with the flat-earthers of the 1970s, it was nice to…
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I didn't care how the stuff measured, and I wasn't terribly worried about the sound. When the single-ended triode movement crossed my attention eight or nine years ago, I simply thought: That's for me.
When people go on and on like that about "fidelity," what they're generally talking about is flat frequency response. It's a tone thing, in other words. But the science and art of music reproduction encompass a great many different things: Dynamics. Pitch. Timing. Speed. Texture. Scale and spatial effects. Freedom from noise. And, yes, tone—as in "correct" tone. My question—and it's a good one—is this: Why do some people not only take it upon themselves to put tone at the top of the list, but go so far as to pretend that it's the only thing that matters?
That's where claims of objectivity…
HANK WILLIAMS: Timeless
Lost Highway 088 170 239-2 (CD). 2001. Luke Lewis, Mary Martin, Bonnie Garner, prods.; Bob Brockman, Michael Hopkins, Mark Johnson, others, engs.; Hank Williams (no relation), mastering. AAD. TT: 43:19
Performance ****
Sonics *****
Lost Highway 088 170 239-2 (CD). 2001. Luke Lewis, Mary Martin, Bonnie Garner, prods.; Bob Brockman, Michael Hopkins, Mark Johnson, others, engs.; Hank Williams (no relation), mastering. AAD. TT: 43:19
Performance ****
Sonics *****
TOWNES VAN ZANDT: Poet: A Tribute to Townes Van Zandt
Pedernales/Freefalls FFE 7019 2 (CD). 2001. Freddy Fletcher, exec prod.; Eric Paul, Michael Timmons, Ray Kennedy, Steve Earle, others, prods. & engs. AAD? TT: 59:17
Performance ****
Sonics ****
Tribute albums are problematic in enough ways that…
TEMPLES OF SOUND: Inside the Great Recording Studios
by Jim Cogan and William Clark; Foreword by Quincy Jones
San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2003. Softcover, 7.5" by 10", 224 pp. $24.95. ISBN 0-8118-3394-1.
by Jim Cogan and William Clark; Foreword by Quincy Jones
San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2003. Softcover, 7.5" by 10", 224 pp. $24.95. ISBN 0-8118-3394-1.
Temples of Sound: Inside the Great Recording Studios is a history of those US studios that were either the most influential in advancing the state of the art of American popular music from the late 1940s on—the "Golden Age"—or that made the records that were the most popular. In many cases, those were one and the same studio.
The book is organized into 15 principal…
Editor's Introduction: Thirty years ago this month, in September 1962, J. Gordon Holt, lately Technical Editor of High Fidelity magazine, was working on the contents of the first issue of his brainchild The Stereophile, a magazine that would judge components on how they actually sounded. We thought it appropriate, therefore, to use the occasion of the 1992 Summer Consumer Electronics Show, held in late May in Chicago, to invite some 200 members of the international high-end industry to a dinner to celebrate the occasion. Larry Archibald dug deep into the magazine's coffers; Ralph Johnson…
Richard Vandersteen doesn't look like a typical loudspeaker designer. True, he wears glasses, but his presence suggests a longshoreman or somebody who'd be played by Gene Hackman. And sure enough, he tells you in a quasi-Dukes of Hazzard drawl that he's been a construction worker, plumber, truckdriver, and electrician. Electronics had always been a hobby, but Vandersteen formalized his understanding by working in electronics during his stint in the Air Force. Back in civilian life, Vandersteen entered into speaker manufacture, producing the "baffleless" range, at least regarding the midrange…
It turns out that the internal diffraction problems of dynamic drivers are far greater or as great a problem as the problems with the baffle, because there's as much energy coming off the rear of the cone as the front of the cone, and here you have a big magnet and a basket and everything, with all of this crap delayed only two inches—in time a few milliseconds—before the sound is reflected back. We probably pioneered minimizing the external diffraction problems involving time and phase—people have said that they enjoy what it does for us, and I think it's real—so the natural extension was…
We have to talk. Are you sitting comfortably? Is the reading light okay? Have a little something to drink at hand? (Audio is thirsty business.) The audio world is abuzz over the reintroduction of the single-ended triode amplifier. This is the first of three reviews of such amplifiers I'll be bringing you, along with two speaker systems with which to play them.
Like most audiophiles, I've been peripherally aware of single-ended amplifiers and the high-efficiency speaker systems required to play them as an alternative to the more familiar high-power push-pull setups. (Except in Japan and…
There's also an argument to be made that the dynamic power of SETs is better than push-pull. I too cocked an eyebrow when I first heard this one, but Gordon explained: "In push-pull you've got the transformer's core magnetizing, collapsing the field, then magnetizing in the opposite phase, for one thing. And then the core of a single-ended amp has large amounts of DC current in it, and the inductance actually seems to create more power. In a sense, you not only have storage in the power supply, but also instantaneous power stores in the output transformer itself!"
And last, how close can…
Conclusions
There is no question that the Meridian Digital Theatre system auditioned here performed admirably, and that its individual components were equal to the best obtainable conventional devices. The system was beyond significant reproach in its reproduction of two-channel discs, and the realization of multichannel material was limited only by the source. As an obsessive audiophile, I'd be very happy with the Meridian system, but wonder if another amplifier might have made the speakers sound warmer, or if I could somehow pipe my LPs to the speakers' amps without intervening A/D…
There is no question that the Meridian Digital Theatre system auditioned here performed admirably, and that its individual components were equal to the best obtainable conventional devices. The system was beyond significant reproach in its reproduction of two-channel discs, and the realization of multichannel material was limited only by the source. As an obsessive audiophile, I'd be very happy with the Meridian system, but wonder if another amplifier might have made the speakers sound warmer, or if I could somehow pipe my LPs to the speakers' amps without intervening A/D…