I missed the chance to send off an R.I.P. to the jazz pianist Paul Bley, who died on January 3, at the age of 83, so I'm catching up with this advance notice of a free memorial concert to be held this Thursday night, February 11, featuring piano solos by seven of his acolytes—most notably Ethan Iverson and Frank Kimbrough, whom I've lauded on this page many times. The memorial concert—which also features Rob Schwimmer, Aaron Parks, Lucian Ban, Jacob Sacks, and Matt Mitchell—will be held at 8:00 pm, in the…
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Paul Bley is featured on The Montreal Tapes, with Charlie Haden and Paul Motian.
Are you old enough to remember when the wires connecting speakers to even the most expensive and sophisticated electronics were 16-gauge, multistrand lamp cord, and the terminals on speakers and amplifiers were just little screws? Sometimes those screws wouldn't even secure all of the wires' strands, but as long as loose strands from one screw didn't touch loose strands from the other, it was good enough . . . and back against the wall went your bookshelf speakers.
And do you remember plugging the plugs of lamp-cord-like AC leads into any old wall sockets, themselves connected to any old…
Because of Garth Powell's background in pro audio, you can be sure there's a Ground Fault Circuit Interrupter (GFCI) for the two groups of four outlets that use isolation transformers, because their outputs are symmetrical (balanced), which produces a voltage potential on Neutral relative to Ground. This is not a problem unless a connected component's power supply suffers a catastrophic failure, in which case there's a slight chance of the presence of AC voltage on the chassis. In that case, the GFCI would, within a fraction of a second, shut off the main power switch.
The Niagara 7000…
For some time now, I've been thinking that my record player was due for an upgrade. My Linn LP12 turntable and Ittok LVII tonearm are about 25 years old, and my AudioQuest AQ7000nsx cartridge is going on 15. During that time, my listening has become increasingly dominated by CDs, but I am not yet ready to give up on LPs. Updating my LP12—for which I have Linn's Lingo power supply but no other upgrades—would involve installing the Keel subchassis, for $3250—for which price I could get another maker's new, current-design turntable and still have the LP12 to sell. The Linn Ittok can't be…
Sidebar: Specifications
Description: AC powerline conditioner with 12 AC outlets.
Dimensions: 17.5" (445mm) W by 5.24" (133mm) H by 17.2" (437mm) D. Weight: 81 lbs (37kg).
Price: $7995.
Manufacturer: AudioQuest, 2621 White Road, Irvine, CA 92614. Tel: (949) 585-0111. Web: www.audioquest.com.
The TA-1000 permits adjustment of VTA/SRA and azimuth—important adjustments, especially when using a cartridge fitted with a line-contact stylus, as is the Soundsmith Zephyr MIMC (see sidebar). Adjusting azimuth involves loosening and then tightening three screws that hold the armtube in the bearing housing. Michael Tang, doing the setup for me, at first expressed concern about the difficulty of adjusting azimuth in this manner, but afterward told me that it had actually been quite easy. He used the Dr. Feickert record and software to adjust the azimuth to produce equal left–right and right…
Sidebar 1: Soundsmith Zephyr MIMC phono cartridge
The Soundsmith Zephyr MIMC ($1499.95) is a new cartridge that uses much of the technology of the Soundsmith Sussurro ($4799.95), which Michael Fremer raved about in the March 2012 issue. Like all Soundsmith cartridges, the Zephyr MIMC uses what's usually called a moving-iron design, but which Soundsmith designer Peter Ledermann prefers to call fixed-coil. Ledermann makes a persuasive argument about the superiority of fixed-coil over moving-coil cartridges, lower moving mass being the major factor (footnote 1).
Like the Sussurro,…
Sidebar 2: RD's Associated Equipment
Analog Source: Linn Sondek LP12 turntable with Lingo power supply, Linn Ittok LVII tonearm, AudioQuest AQ7000nsx cartridge.
Digital Source: PS Audio PerfectWave Memory CD/DVD transport & DirectStream DAC.
Preamplifier: Convergent Audio Technology SL-1 Renaissance Black Path Edition.
Power Amplifier: McIntosh Laboratory 50th Anniversary MC275.
Loudspeakers: Avantgarde Uno Nano.
Cables: Interconnect, speaker, AC: Nordost Valhalla 2.
Accessories: PS Audio PerfectWave P5 Power Plant AC generator, Arcici Suspense Rack,…
Everyone in the room can hear the difference when I swap one phono cartridge for another. Same thing happens with loudspeakers. This is because both of these magnet-based transducer technologies are electromechanical devices, traditionally made of paper, wood, iron, and copper. (Nowadays, polymers, aluminum, and carbon composites are more typical.) Both are motor-generator mechanisms that either convert mechanical energy into electrical energy (cartridges) or vice versa (speakers). As audio devices, they are spool-and-wire simple, but even tiny changes in the materials and/or how those…
In my sophomore year of high school, one of the greatest challenges my friends and I faced was the search for the perfect after-school hangout, perfect being defined as "having the least amount of adult supervision." Some of us lived in single-parent homes, but only one had a single parent for whom weekday surprise inspections were impossible, and that was Scott. So Scott's place—a downstairs apartment in a nice older house not far from school—got the nod.
Scott's place was also where I learned to distinguish the differences between monophonic and stereophonic playback. Most of us had…