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How would you feel after paying $2000 for super-stereo system, you learned that genuinely high-fidelity recordings of many excellent classical musical performances were not available to you? Could you excuse it with a shrug and the philosophical observation that nothing's perfect but things will get better as the state of the recording art improves? Okay then, what if you learned that truly high-fidelity recordings of these performances, that would sound very much like the real thing if reproduced through your super system, are available to millions of other people but not to you? Would you…
Is it because no one takes pot shots at you unless you're on top? Or are the most recent criticisms of Klaus Heymann and his diversified Naxos Digital Services empire on to something more?
To refresh: Heymann, a German entrepreneur who began selling cameras and stereos to American GIs in Vietnam, and later become the Hong Kong distributor of Bose and Studer audio gear, launched Naxos, a classical-music label specializing in budget-priced CDs, in 1987 (footnote 1). The label's name is also easy to pronounce in any language. Heymann began to build the Naxos catalog—now one of the largest…
Friday, August 7, 5–9pm, and Saturday, August 8, 10am–7pm: Yamaha and Fillion Électronique will participate in the OSM Classical Spree Music Festival, to be held at Place des Arts (1600 Saint-Urbain Street, Montreal).
The Yamaha/Fillion exhibit and listening room, located near the Maison Symphonique de Montreal, will feature Yamaha's CD-S3000 CD player and A-S3000 integrated amplifier (above), driving Focal's Sopra loudspeakers. All cables will be provided by AudioQuest, including: Aspen speaker cables, Wind interconnects (below), Coffee USB, and NRG-1000 AC power cables.
In…
If anyone can be said to be the guru of the transmission line, that would have to be Irving M. "Bud" Fried. He has been promoting the design for years now, first with the made-in-England IMF designs, later with the designs of Fried Products, made right here in the US of A. He has long been convinced of the basic superiority of the design, and still uses it in his top-of-the-line systems. But true transmission lines are invariably big, heavy, hard to build, and, for all of those reasons, expensive. Essentially, they involve a long, convoluted, heavily damped tunnel behind the bass driver…
Sidebar 1: Equipment
Three power amplifiers were used in the course of this evaluation: the Threshold S/550e, the Mark Levinson No.23.5, and the Audio Research Classic 120 monoblocks. 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.)
Comparison loudspeakers were Paradigm Studio Monitors, B&W 804s and KEF Reference Series 103/4s. Interconnects were AudioQuest Lapis between CD and preamp and for the unbalanced link between preamp and power amp with the…
I believe in historical consensus. I believe in hi-fi gear that reveals its quality slowly and holds it value over time, irrespective of technology. I have never bought into the superiority of one technology over another. The art of audio engineering lies in the wisdom and vital energy of the designer's viewpoint within whatever technology he or she has chosen to work with. I call this the designer's qi or chi. Every audio product's most important specification is who created it, followed by the spirit in which it was fostered—and, of course, how it was made and what it is made of. These are…
Sidebar 2: Measurements
The impedance plot of the Fried R/4 (fig.1) shows a single well-damped resonant peak at 50Hz, and an impedance magnitude which stays well above 5 ohms at any frequency. The speaker should be an easy load to drive. The small tick in the magnitude plot at just under 200Hz likely indicates a serious resonance somewhere in the system, something which the results below might shed some light on. The impulse response in fig.2 shows a clean decay with no serious aberrations or ringing, though the step response (fig.3) reveals that the midrange response lags the tweeter by…
It did. With the Hegel driving the .7s, wired in parallel with a DWM bass panel (2 ohms average impedance below 200Hz, 4 ohms above), every type of music was delivered with ease and rock-steady confidence. But the Hegel H160 driving the .7s also delivered a big surprise. I always knew that Magnepan made nice-sounding speakers, but I'd never heard any Magnepans that I thought did delirious boogie or fierce, driving, forward momentum. That was always my main complaint about them. Well, the Hegel and Magnepan .7s proved me totally wrong. Think speeding trucks. Think twin-engine freight trains…
Sidebar 3: Specifications
Description: three-driver, three-way loudspeaker with "Line-Tunnel" bass loading. Drive-units: 10", vented pole-piece, polypropylene-cone woofer, 5.5" polypropylene-cone midrange, 1" fluid-damped tweeter. Crossover frequencies: 250Hz, 3kHz. Frequency response: 30Hz–20kHz, ±2dB. Sensitivity: 90dB. Nominal impedance: 8 ohms (5 ohms minimum). Amplifier requirements: 25–100W.
Dimensions: 34" H by 12" W by 11" D. Weight: 56 lbs.
Serial numbers of units tested: 01347/48.
Price: $1195/pair in walnut veneer (1992); no longer available (2015). Approximate…
We've worked out a special deal for readers to celebrate the new Chesky You're Surrounded release.
From now until September 7, 2015, readers of this website will get a 25% discount on the new 24-bit high resolution You're Surrounded album and/or anything in Chesky's hi-res catalog on HDTracks.com.
To Get Your Discount:
Click on this link and then use STEREOPHILEHD25 for the offer code when you check out.
[This offer has expired.]
Some of the Other Releases Available in the Deal:
Anything from Chesky qualifies for the 25% off including these current…