I visited the Genesis factory in September 1994 and spent some time with Arnie and Paul (footnote 1)…
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Arnie Nudell is one of a handful of designers who could justifiably be called founding members of the high-end audio industry. With Cary Christie, and John Ulrick, Arnie co-founded Infinity in his garage in 1968 and recently joined forces with Paul McGowan, the co-founder of PS Audio, to create Genesis Technologies, the Colorado-based company formed to build ultra–high-end loudspeaker systems (see my review of their $22,000 Genesis II.5 loudspeaker system elsewhere in this issue.)
Not the easiest tonearm to set up (let your dealer do it if you aren't overly skilled at such things), this English-designed and Japanese-made device is the best pivoted tonearm we have tested to date, and at a very reasonable price at that. Polk Audio is importing them and distributing to dealers, most of whom sell them for around $130 to $140, and some buyers have managed to purchase them directly from stores in England for as little as $80. We received two samples of this for testing, one directly from the US distributor, Polk Audio, the other from Natural Sound, a Nebraska dealer and (…
If you take an ideal line source, there are no floor or ceiling bounces. And because of the cardioid pattern, the radiation at the edge of the speaker is essentially zero, so there's no wall bounce at the intersection with the wall. So with a line-source dipole, you have almost an ideal room match. Reducing the room's effect gives you the purest look at what's on the CD or the record. But this isn't true for frequencies below 100 cycles, where you get the same kinds of room interactions.
That's where servo woofers come in. Several woofers that we and other people have shown over the…
Sidebar: Specifications
Description: Viscous-damped unipivot tonearm. Length: 8.8" stylus to base center. Nominal effective mass: 4.5 grams. Base clearance: 4.5" below arm tube.
Price: $140 (1977); no longer available (2015).
Manufacturer: Mayware, England. Company no longer in existence.
Maria Schneider Orchestra: The Thompson Fields
Maria Schneider, composer, arranger, conductor; 18-piece orchestra
ArtistShare AS0137 (CD). 2015. Maria Schneider, Ryan Truesdell, prods.; Brian Montgomery, eng. DDD. TT: 77:25
Performance *****
Sonics ****
Maria Schneider, composer, arranger, conductor; 18-piece orchestra
ArtistShare AS0137 (CD). 2015. Maria Schneider, Ryan Truesdell, prods.; Brian Montgomery, eng. DDD. TT: 77:25
Performance *****
Sonics ****
The world's leading figure in orchestral jazz has not released a jazz recording in eight years. In her liner notes, Maria Schneider says, "This album was funded by my ArtistShare fan base. Making a recording like this is becoming increasingly difficult and would now be impossible without the generous support of my many…
Photo © Kipnis Studios 2015
Are you on Facebook? Twitter? Instagram? Reddit? Social media has done much to bring together people of every interest imaginable to share their fascinations, desires, and, occasionally, delusions. From fans of frogs (FrogStomp) and proponents of clean public toilets (Benjyo Soujer) to a group that challenged an Iranian cleric's statement that women's flimsy attire causes earthquakes (Boobquake), social media is a global town square in which anyone with a keyboard and an attitude has an equal voice.
Like all self-respecting Facebookers, audiophiles also…
My friend and renowned tube polymath J.C Morrison says, "Blackie Pagano is sweet, smart, and has a devious sense of humor . . . (that I love). His work is reliable and he has years of experience keeping every imaginable band functioning in the gutted rock holes of NYC. Not only all that, but he is also a musician . . ."
1992: Back in the days of Don Garber's "Fi" at 30 Watts Street in New York, there existed a loose conglomerate of scruffy solderers that outsiders called "The New York Triode Mafia." They built experimental directly heated triode amps coupled to unconventional tapered-pipe…
Danish manufacturer GamuT Audio's patchy history in the US includes a succession of distributors that failed to establish the brand here. But in 2014 GamuT tapped Michael Vamos to spearhead their own US-based distribution company, which is now energetically promoting the company's products. That change coincided with my auditioning, at the 2014 Rocky Mountain Audio Fest, of GamuT's two-and-a-half-way RS5 tower loudspeaker ($31,900/pair). I was sufficiently impressed that I asked to review it—but then, at the 2015 Consumer Electronics Show, I experienced the RS7. This was the GamuT speaker I…
Having determined the optimal placement of each speaker, Meldgaard then listened to both speakers, to determine the degree of toe-in to the listening position and the exact amount of backtilt for the baffle. The toe-in adjusts the high-frequency balance, GamuT recommending that its speakers be listened to 10–30° off-axis. In my room, the speakers ended up being toed in by 5°, which meant that my ears were about 15° off axis. With the degree of baffle backtilt Meldgaard had set, pink noise sounded a little hollow, the highs a little disconnected, when I sat with my ears level with the…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: Three-way, four-driver, floorstanding loudspeaker with vented enclosure. Drive-units: 1.5" (29mm) ring-radiator tweeter; 7" (178mm) oil-impregnated, sliced-paper cone midrange unit; two 7" (178mm) wood-fiber cone woofers with wooden dustcaps. Crossover frequencies: 250Hz, 2.5kHz. Frequency response: 28Hz–60kHz, ±3dB; 23Hz–60kHz, +3/–6dB. Sensitivity: 88dB/2.83V/m. Nominal impedance: 4 ohms. Minimum impedance: 2.7 ohms at 120Hz. Recommended amplifier power: 150–700W into 4 ohms.
Dimensions: 50.4" (1280mm) H by 8.9" (226mm) W by 25.3" (642mm) D,…