Sidebar 3: Measurements The Wadia's output impedance was a low 58 ohms from the unbalanced RCA jacks, this doubling as expected from the balanced XLRs. (Because a balanced connection has a separate driver for each phase of the signal, the drivers impedances appear in series and must therefore be added to get the overall output impedance.) The player preserved absolute polarity from both sets of outputs, with the XLR wired with pin 2 "hot." Its error correction was superb, coping with gaps in the CD data spiral up to 1.5mm in length without audible glitches.
The maximum output…
Fig.7 shows the spectrum of the Wadia player's balanced analog output driving a high (100k ohm) load. The highest-level harmonic is the third, at a still very low -85dB (0.006%), with the second evident at -90dB (0.003%). The third harmonic rose into the punishing 600 ohm load (spectrum not shown). However, at -72dB (0.025%), this will still be negligible, though the fifth harmonic does now make an appearance, at -90dB. Intermodulation into either load was very low, the 1kHz difference component remaining close to -90dB, even into 600 ohms (fig.8). This spectrum was taken with Filter A: I…
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.
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…
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 ***** 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.
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…
