Emotiva's new XMC-1 preamplifier/processor, which incorporates the Dirac room-correction software is featured in "Music in the Round," while on the analog playback side, two…
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Bel Canto's extraordinary Black amplification system is featured on the cover. Combining state-of-the-art class-D monoblocks with an all-digital preamplifier, the Black sounds and measures as good as it can get. At a price, of course—but at the other end of the price spectrum, we review Creek's Evolution 100A integrated amplifier, as complete in its way as the Black is in its. These are not your father's amplifiers.
Michael Murray: Encores à la Française
Works by Couperin, Dupré, Gigout, Franck, Widor, J.S. Bach, Vierne, Lemmens
Organ at Symphony Hall, Boston
Telarc Digital DG10069 (LP), 80104 (CD, released in 1990). Robert Woods, prod., Elaine Martone, assistant prod., Jack Renner, eng. TT: 65:46 (CD).
Organ at Symphony Hall, Boston
Telarc Digital DG10069 (LP), 80104 (CD, released in 1990). Robert Woods, prod., Elaine Martone, assistant prod., Jack Renner, eng. TT: 65:46 (CD).
This is another winner. Michael Murray's superior performances are or should be well known to all by this time. This recording of Encores in the French style covers a wide gamut of registration and mood, ranging from the large and full-blown sonorities of Franck's Pièce Héroique, the Toccata…
The summer of 1975 will be remembered by us, with no fondness whatsoever, as The Time the Roof Fell In. Or the Murphy Months, or the Period of the Plague Upon Our House.
Ye Editor can recall from the days of WWII hearing and reading about the depredations of some mischievous sprites called Gremlins, who would cause aircraft hatchcovers to jam and control cables to get hung up at the worst possible moment, but I don't think I ever really did believe in Gremlins. I think I sensed somehow that the mishaps attributed to their malevolent machinations were too capricious to be the work of…
LAST (Liquid Archival Sound Treatment) is a record treatment developed by one Dr. Catalano, which promises to retard dramatically the wear of vinyl discs. I don't feel that the advent of true digital discs will diminish the importance of LAST; on the contrary, as this century comes to a close many stereo records will be in their 30s and 40s and in need of as much preservation as possible, if the sounds and performances we treasure are to be preserved.
After perusing the reprints of reviews in other under-grounders, supplied by LAST at their CES booth (all raves, needless to say), I was…
Manufacturer's Comment
Editor: Thank you for the opportunity to review your article, re: LAST, prior to publication. You are very kind to allow me such an opportunity. I do not blame anyone for being "fuddled" by thermodynamic concepts. I personally had a great deal of difficulty in learning the little I know about the general subject. And, although I have taught chemical thermodynamics a number of times, it is still difficult for me to do so and extremely difficult for students of either physics or chemistry to grasp the concepts on a deep, basic level. I consider the concepts of…
By now most readers will be familiar with the relatively new tuned-cavity method of low-frequency loading. Such designs have popped up all over the place of late, especially in those little satellite/woofer systems, but KEF can rightly lay claim to generating the design's theoretical basis, as JA described in his review of the KEF R107/2 loudspeaker in Vol.14 No.5 (May 1991). Essentially, the technique consists of loading the rear of a woofer in a conventional fashion—usually a sealed box—but also loading the front of the driver into another enclosure, ducted to the outside. Basically, the…
Sidebar 1: Equipment
Four power amplifiers were used in the course of this evaluation: the Threshold S/550e, the Mark Levinson No.23.5, the Audio Research Classic 120 monoblocks, and the PS Audio 100 Delta. The preamplifier was the Rowland Consummate, and the CD player was the Wadia WT-3200 driving the Audio Research DAC1-20 converter. (CD was the primary source in this audition.)
Interconnects were AudioQuest Lapis between CD and preamp and for the unbalanced link between preamp and power amp with the ARC and PS Audio amps. For balanced hookup to the Threshold and Levinson…
Sidebar 3: Specifications
Description: four-driver, three-way, floorstanding loudspeaker with "Conjugate Load Matching," "Coupled-Cavity" bass loading, and optional, line-level equalizer. Drive-units: two 6.5" (160mm) fiberglass-reinforced, pulp-cone woofers, one 6.5" (160mm) "Uni-Q" midrange/tweeter with concentric 1" (25mm) soft-dome tweeter. Crossover frequencies: 3rd-order at 160Hz, 5th-order at 2.5kHz. Frequency response: 50Hz–20kHz, ±2.5dB, –6dB at 38Hz (measured at 2m on reference axis). Sensitivity: 91dB/W/m (2.83V RMS input, band-limited 50Hz–20kHz, anechoic conditions).…
Sidebar 2: Measurements
All of the measurements were taken with the Kube out of the circuit. The impedance of the KEF 103/4 is shown in fig.1. The minimum at about 85Hz is actually the tuning of the port; the large rise at the bottom of the range (around 10Hz) appears to be due to a large, DC blocking capacitor in series with the network. Note also that the Conjugate Load Matching crossover, while keeping the response's magnitude reasonably linear above about 60Hz, is not as effective as that in the more expensive KEF R107/2 (Vol.13 No.5, p.114). The impulse response (fig.2) is rather…
Ran Blake may be the most unjustly obscure jazz pianist out there, so it's worth noting—shouting, even—that he has three new albums that rank in the top tier of his career: Cocktails at Dusk (Impulse!), The Road Keeps Winding (Red Piano), and Kitano Noir (Sunnyside).
All three discs feature female singers—two of them are tribute albums to famously smoky singers (The Road Keeps Winding to Abbey Lincoln, Cocktails at Dusk to Chris Connor)—and that may account in part for Blake's revitalization at the age of 80.
Bonus for those in New York: Saturday night, June 20, he and Sara Serpa…