Description: Three-way, four-driver, floorstanding loudspeaker with vented enclosure. Drive-units: 2.5" by 0.4" (63.5 by 10mm) ribbon tweeter; 4" (100mm) coated pulp-cone midrange unit; two 6.3" (160mm) magnesium-cone woofers with alnico magnets. Frequency range: 25Hz–100kHz. Sensitivity: 87dB/2.83V/m. Impedance: 8 ohms nominal, 4 ohms minimum.
Dimensions: 45" (1154mm) H by 11.5" (295mm) W by 13.5" (346mm) D (all with plinth). Weight: 95 lbs (43.2kg).
Finishes: True Piano Rosewood with True Piano Black bases. Piano Black and other finishes available by…
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Sidebar 1: Specifications
Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment
Analog Sources: Analog Sources: Linn Sondek LP12 turntable with Lingo power supply, Linn Ekos tonearm, Linn Arkiv B cartridge.
Digital Sources: Ayre Acoustics C-5xeMP universal player; Apple 2.7GHz i7 Mac mini running OS10.9.3, iTunes 11, Pure Music 1.89 & 2.0, Audirvana Plus 1.5.10; Auralic Vega, PS Audio PerfectWave DirectStream D/A processors; dCS Vivaldi upsampling D/A system; Ayre Acoustics QA-9 USB A/D converter.
Preamplification: Channel D Seta L phono preamplifier; Pass Labs XP-30, Ayre Acoustics KX-R Twenty line preamplifiers.
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Sidebar 3: Measurements
I used DRA Labs' MLSSA system and a calibrated DPA 4006 microphone to measure the Nola Metro Grand Reference Gold's frequency response in the farfield, and an Earthworks QTC-40 for the nearfield and spatially averaged room responses. My estimate of the Nola's voltage sensitivity was 83.5dB(B)/2.83V/m, which is both low in absolute terms and significantly lower than the manufacturer's specification of 87dB. Despite a combination of 5.7 ohms and –45° phase angle at 87Hz, the Metro Grand's plot of impedance magnitude and electrical phase against frequency (fig.1)…
The Sheraton Center Hotel, venue of the 2014 Toronto Audio Video Entertainment Show (TAVES), represents a marked change from the genteel elegance of the King Edward Hotel, the TAVES venue for the past two years. Built in 1972 in a modern style, the Sheraton offers a lot more space—it also sports one of the most confusing show layouts that I've encountered. There are long corridors leading who-knows-where, and stairs going up and down that may or may not lead to exhibit areas. TAVES did its best to make things easy to find, with signs and with TAVES staff being as helpful as possible, but on…
Virginia retailer Command Performance A/V—115 Park Ave. Suite #2, Falls Church—is having a Grand Opening on Saturday November 8 from 11am to 5pm. The day will feature Constellation Audio's new Inspiration Series (above), presented by Irv Gross, Director of Sales for Constellation Audio.
MartinLogan's Truth in Sound Tour continues with the introduction of its new flagship loudspeaker, the built-to-order Neolith, at Overture Ultimate Home Electronics, 2423 Concord Pike, Wilmington, DE on Saturday, November 8, from 11am to 6pm.
Members of the MartinLogan sales, marketing and engineering team, along with Overture's founder Terry Menacker, will be available to answer questions, perform demos and provide an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at the intensive development process that created Neolith. Neolith is the result of a 3-year-long development process. It combines the…
Editor's Note: On the 52nd anniversary of Stereophile's founding in 1962 by J. Gordon Holt, we are publishing this mea culpa "As We See it" essay from 1981, in which he explains why Vol.4 No.10 was almost six months late in mailing to subscribers. Gordon had relocated from the Philadephia suburbs to Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1978, and as he had explained in the April 1978 issue, the move had not gone well. "Much of the equipment necessary for testing got damaged or destroyed in transit," he wrote, adding that "What had promised to be a superb listening room turned out to have some sticky…
I'm drawn to the idea of having a single transducer reproduce all the frequencies, but I appreciate the difficulties of this approach. Generally, the larger the driver, the better it is at reproducing low frequencies, and the worse at reproducing the highs. Thus, I was intrigued when I walked into the demo room of R2R Audio, a new Canadian manufacturer, which featured a single-driver system, with the driver having a 15" diameter, used in a dipole configuration. Can a driver like that reproduce anything other than the bass?
I sat down and listened. Well, yes, there was full-range sound,…
Let's say you want a reliable means of distinguishing between original works of art and forgeries of same. One thing you wouldn't do—assuming you know anything about art, human perception, or the subtle differences between car wax and excrement—is apply to the problem a blind test: You wouldn't waste your time bringing people in off the streets, showing them pairs of similar but nonidentical images for 15 seconds each, and expecting your test participants to provide answers of any worth. You wouldn't do that because it's stupid.
I take that back: It's beyond merely stupid—it's…
Just this morning I received an e-mail newsletter from a very nice objectivist-leaning man who works for a very nice objectivist-leaning company. In it he writes, "I accept that the Red-Book digital standard for CDs . . . very closely matches or exceeds human hearing on music. This has been confirmed by recent experiments of down-sampling High Definition records to Red-Book standard and then doing comparisons of the two. All results (that I am aware of at this time) indicate the two standards are indistinguishable in blind testing (footnote 4). And, in my opinion, blind testing of audio…