Analog Source: VPI Classic turntable & JMW tonearm, Ortofon Cadenza Blue cartridge.
Digital Source: Krell Cipher SACD/CD player.
Preamplification: Nagra BPS battery-powered phono stage; Simaudio Moon Evolution 740P and Pass Laboratories XP-30 line stages.
Power Amplifiers: Pass Laboratories XA60.5 monoblocks.
Integrated Amplifier: Simaudio Moon Evolution 700i.
Loudspeakers: Revel Ultima Studio2.
Cables: Interconnect & Speaker: Nirvana. AC: manufacturers' own.
Accessories: Bybee Technologies Signature power conditioner (…
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Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment
Sidebar 3: Measurements
I performed a full set of measurements on the Moon Evolution 860A (serial no. 4524200) using my Audio Precision SYS2722 system (see www.ap.com and the January 2008 "As We See It"). As the amplifier is specified as having a maximum power output of 200Wpc into 8 ohms, I preconditioned it before the measurements by running it at one-third that power, 67W, into 8 ohms for an hour. Following that period, the heatsinks were warm, at 110.2°F (43.4°C). The THD+noise percentage at this power level was 0.0126% with the amplifier cold, 0.0115% with it fully warm.
The…
With fame fleeting and lucrative ideas always ripe for imitators, the music business is perpetually looking for the “next” somebody. The best example is the neverending “next” Dylan sweepstakes. Springsteen grabbed that title for a minute as did Steve Forbert, Willie Nile and many others. Now along comes Leon Bridges who, it’s being whispered, is the “next” Sam Cooke. At this year’s South by Southwest music extravaganza in Austin he was the act to see. Every one of his shows was packed. And his debut album, Coming Home and its newly released single of the same name were the talk of the entire…
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…