Master & Dynamic, New York City, NY. Tel: (888) 814-5411. Web: www.masterdynamic.com.
The Electric Recording Company, 123 Westbourne Studios, 242 Acklam Road, London W10 5JJ, England, UK. Fax: (44) 207-575-3047 Web: www.electricrecordingco.com.
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Metronome’s CD8 S, which adds digital inputs to the French company’s well-regarded CD player, graces our March issue’s cover. As is often the case these days, we loved the sound but hated the measured performance—madness indeed! Melco’s affordable server and Merging’s expensive network-connected NADAC multichannel D/A processor get our nod of approval, as do class-D amplifiers from Theta, NAD, and Spec, while Herb Reichert finds much to enjoy with Simaudio’s Moon Neo 340i integrated amp. And on the music side of things, Robert Baird praises Acoustic Sounds’ new stereo releases of classic…
While a very slow night for landings at LaGuardia Airport thanks to the icy weather in New York kept me from seeing most of the 2016 Grammy Awards, I did manage to catch the last three big numbers: the tributes to David Bowie and B.B. King and the performance by the Hollywood Vampires, a salute to Lemmy.
The 2014 duet record with Tony Bennett Cheek to Cheek clearly signaled that Lady Gaga is in the midst of a career transition from oddball pop star to something more serious and adult that I heartily applaud. The Bowie tribute, with Nile Rodgers on guitar, was fast paced, visually…
The $800 JVC XL-Z1050TN 1050 is the Bitstream successor to JVC's popular 18-bit XL-Z1010, which got an enthusiastic thumbs-up from Robert Harley in April 1990 (Vol.13 No.4). Its styling is, in my opinion, much improved over the older player's, with the distinctive brushed-bronze finish of the rest of JVC's XL-Z line. The rear panel sports fixed and variable outputs (footnote 1), as well as Toslink optical and coaxial digital outputs. As with the 1010, the JVC features their proprietary K2 Interface, a circuit that reduces jitter by resampling the pulses with a short-duration gate just ahead…
Sidebar 1: Aunt Silly Airy Gear
Just about the only change I've made to my system has been replacing VTL's Compact 160 monoblocks with their larger KT90-version Deluxe 225s; I need more juice than the 160s were able to swing, and the triode-wired Deluxe 225s are just the ticket. The new 225s extend the virtues of the Compact 160s (triode mode only for these amps) further in nearly every direction, with even clearer midrange textures and Amazing Space. And as the new VTLs are too big to fit on the books I had the 160s sitting on, I've got the 225s up on sky-blue plastic milk crates…
When the Record Industry Association of America adopted its standard disc playback equalization curve in 1954, hi-fi enthusiasts heaved a sigh of relief and bade fond farewell to years of confusion, doubt and virtual pandemonium. Before the RIAA curve there were six "standard" curves in use, and since nobody seemed to know who was using what, getting flat response from a disc was often more a matter of luck than anything else. The adoption of the RIAA standard playback curve heralded an end to all this.
If record manufacturers had endeavored to install the best available playback…
Sidebar 2: Measurements
Fig.1 indicates a virtually ruler-flat frequency response, while in fig.2 the de-emphasis response indicates that no response-caused aberrations will be experienced with pre-emphasized discs. The fine squarewave response (fig.3) again is typical of a player with a linear-phase digital filter, but with a slight overshoot on the leading edge. And in fig.4, only the measured crosstalk from left to right is shown; the right-to-left curve practically overlays it.
Fig.1 JVC XL-Z1050TN, frequency response at 0dBFS (right channel dashed, 0.5dB/…
Sidebar 2: Specifications
Description: Bitstream 8x-oversampling CD player. Frequency range: 2Hz–20kHz. S/N ratio: 114dB. Channel separation: 110dB at 1kHz. Maximum output level: 2V RMS.
Dimensions: 17.8" (452mm) W by 4.5" (113mm) H by 13.4" (341mm) D. Weight: 17 lbs (7.75kg).
Price: $800 (1992); no longer available (2016). Approximate number of dealers: 100.
Manufacturer: JVC, Elmwood Park, NJ 07407. Web: www.jvc.com.
The musical and technical excellence of the 2016 Grammy Award winners makes this a great year for audiophiles. Not only are 28 of the albums / compositions that won awards in multiple categories available for download from HDTracks, virtually all in hi-rez (from 44.1/24 to 192/24), but just as many if not more are available for streaming and download in hi-rez and/or full CD quality from both ClassicsOnlineHD and Tidal.
Accepting the award for the Reference Fresh! Paulus CD were (from right–left): producer Peter Rutenberg, Dorothy Dyer Vanek, who commissioned the work and…
"Wow!" Jerome Harris—jazz guitarist, bassist, and composer—stopped talking and listened intently to the rough-mixdown dub of his latest album, Hidden in Plain View: The Music of Eric Dolphy (New World 80472-2 CD) (footnote 1). He'd brought it by my house in order to hear it on another system before pronouncing judgment. "That sounds like us! And I ought to know because I was there..."
It wasn't the first time the Metaphor 2s had totally transfixed a visitor with their accurate portrayal of a musical event. This time, however, they'd done it to one of the participants of that specific…