CHARLES LLOYD: Canto
Charles LLoyd, tenor sax, Tibetan oboe; Bobo Stenson, piano; Anders Jormin, bass; Billy Hart, drums.
ECM 78118-21635-2 (CD). 1996. Manfred Eicher, prod; Jan Erik Kongshaug, eng. DDD. TT: 65:18
Performance ****½
Sonics ****½ In 1967, Charles Lloyd's Forest Flower became one of the first jazz albums to sell a million copies. Lloyd was a star, and played major rock venues like the Fillmore in San Francisco. His popularity was astonishing, given the fact that he played uncompromised acoustic jazz. It was even more astonishing when Lloyd walked away. At…
SON VOLT: Straightaway
Warner Bros. 46518-2 (CD). 1997. Brian Paulson, Son Volt, prods. TT: 40:27
Music: *****
Sonics: ***** The more time goes on, the harder it is to believe that Jay Farrar and Jeff Tweedy were ever in Uncle Tupelo together. As their solo careers progress—in Son Volt and Wilco, respectively—the stylistic chasm between these two former roommates and co-leaders widens. The split between the more pop-oriented (Tweedy) and the more rough-hewn and punky (Farrar) is reflected exactly in the ever-expanding horde of bands who've jumped into the school of country…
The VK-150SE stands tall at the top of Balanced Audio Technology's range. It and its smaller brother, the identical-looking VK-75SE stereo amplifier (or, sans the Special Edition mods, the plain VK-75, footnote 1), are related to BAT's first amplifier design, the VK-60. The company's partners, Victor Khomenko and Steve Bednarski, eventually realized that they'd made enough upgrades to the VK-60 to warrant a new model designation, and in 2000 they discontinued the VK-60. Bednarski explained that while the VK-60 accepted the upgrades with good results, the BATboys felt that, in order to fully…
Bill Evans' Piano Player (Columbia/Legacy CK 65361) sounded fine, the VK-150SEs laying out a beautifully recorded piano. Or take the first two cuts from side two of Duke Ellington's Indigos LP (Columbia CS 8053). You'll be in shock as you're instantly transported to the set of a 1940s film noir. But instead of a B flick's bad soundtrack, Ellington, sitting straight at his grand piano, transfixes all and sundry with his mastery of his huge-sounding instrument. The size of the soundstage, the cushions of air around each performer, the utter truth of timbre, the glow from within, the swing and…
Sidebar 1: Specifications Description: Tubed monoblock power amplifier. Tube complement: six 6SN7, four 6C33-C-B, two 6H30, two 6V6. Inputs: balanced XLR only. Specified output power: 150W into 8 or 4 ohms, less than 3% THD (21.8dBW). Input sensitivity: 1V. Input impedance: 100k ohms per phase. Frequency response: 7Hz-200kHz, -3dB. Power consumption: 1000VA (500VA idle).
Dimensions: 17" W by 8" H by 24" D. Weight: 90 lbs.
Serial numbers of units reviewed: 075000143 & 144.
Price: $17,000/pair. Approximate number of dealers: 55.
Manufacturer: Balanced Audio Technology, 26…
Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment Analog source: Forsell Air Force One turntable, van den Hul Grasshopper GLA IV, Koetsu Rosewood Signature Platinum, Clearaudio Insider cartridges.
Digital source: Linn Sondek CD12 CD player, Wadia 270 CD transport and 27ix D/A converter, dCS Purcell D/D converter and Elgar Plus D/A converter, Accuphase DP-100 SACD/CD transport and DC-101 D/A converter.
Preamplification: Conrad-Johnson Premier 15 phono preamplifier; Mark Levinson No.32 Reference, BAT VK-50SE, Lamm L2 line preamplifiers.
Power amplifiers: Krell FPB 350Mc, Linn Klimax Mono 500,…
Sidebar 3: Measurements The big BAT VK-150SE offered a healthy 26.6dB voltage gain into 8 ohms from its 8 ohm output-transformer tap, a rather lower 24.8dB into the same load from the 4 ohm output. The input impedance was a very high 170k ohms and the amplifier inverted absolute polarity (pin 3 of its input XLR appears to be wired "hot"). The output impedance was a moderately high 1.3 ohms from the 4 ohm tap, this increasing to 2.3 ohms from the 8 ohm tap. As a result, there was a significant ±1.2dB response variation with our simulated loudspeaker load (fig.1), resulting from the…
This behavior is shown somewhat differently in fig.7, the spectrum of a 50Hz tone driven at a fairly low level into 8 ohms from the 4 ohm tap. Both second and third harmonics lie at -64dB with respect to the fundamental (0.06%). As implied by figs.4 and 5, the distortion rose quite rapidly at higher powers. The second harmonic reached 1% at 40W into 8 ohms, for example. Repeating the spectral analysis for a fairly high-level 1kHz tone (fig.8) reveals that the second- and third-harmonic products rise to -50dB (0.3%), and are now joined by higher harmonics.
Fig.7 Balanced Audio…
The quest for a full-range electrostatic loudspeaker has occupied many engineers' minds for many years. The problems are manifold: large physical size (which can lead to room placement problems and poor dispersion), the difficulty of achieving high sound pressure levels, the need for a potentially sound-degrading step-up transformer, and the unsuitability for production-line manufacture. Even so, the potential rewards are so great that one can understand why loudspeaker designers keep on attempting the apparently impossible. Epoch-making models do appear at infrequent intervals, keeping the…
Without a doubt, the CLS is the most revealingly transparent loudspeaker I have used. The Wilson Audio Beethoven violin sonata, for example, was presented spatially the best I have heard, the soloist being obviously around four feet in front of the piano, and the piano image naturally sized. Tonally, the midrange is neutral, voices being rendered without undue coloration, but the lower midrange is slightly depressed. The exact amount of upper midrange energy seems to depend very much on listening height: my chair puts my ears about two-thirds of the way up the panels; lower than that and…
