Rarely has a third record had more built-in pressure surrounding it…
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“Yeah, he’s really great,” so quoth the inestimable Michael Lavorgna, noise rock/art rock/out jazz music fan, editor of Audiostream.com and all around fine human being when talking about Sturgill Simpson’s latest record, A Sailor’s Guide to Earth. “I just love that cover of `In Bloom.’” I could feel my head nodding in both directions at once: Yes, that I too love it, and No, in disbelief that Michael was so hooked. A mutual admission that we both pre-ordered the blue vinyl online brought big smiles and more enthusing.
Thank goodness the handsome new Pathos gear came with English-language literature, because my sketchy operatic Italian and that of the SAF was of no help in this room. (Assassino and muori, two favorite words of Tosca, somehow seemed inappropriate). In fact, I'm now discovering that no matter how long I spent trying to communicate, the model names I managed to scribble down were wrong.
Making their debut were several products in the Pathos InPol (Inseguitore Pompa Lineare—literally, Linear Pump Follower) line. These are "fully balanced Class A devices using a single solid-state component…
Contrast this view, taken by Peter McGrath as we headed to dinner at show's end, with that of the mobbed staircase at the opening bell. Only the person visible on the ground level carrying two boxes gives indication of the bustle of activity throughout the MOC as exhibitors, who collectively displayed 95% of all high-end brands worldwide, were busy packing, sorting, and shipping enough valuable gear to leave many a trust-fund manager and venture capitalist in tears.
It was another scene in the hallways of the Atriums, where an earlier attempt to connect with McGrath for dinner ran…
The philosophy promoted by many mainstream stereo magazines (and thus often the belief of the general public) is that one should spend a minimum amount of one's hi-fi budget on electronics and front ends, and a maximum amount on loudspeakers. Since all electronics sound alike and it's the loudspeaker that really produces the sound, the highest overall performance is obtained by putting expensive loudspeakers at the end of a chain of inexpensive electronics. Cables? Don't waste your money.
During this review of three inexpensive speakers in this issue—the other were the Tannoy E11 and the…
Sidebar 1: Review Context
The Dana loudspeakers were auditioned in my dedicated listening room with the following ancillary equipment: VTL 225W Deluxe monoblock power amplifiers, Esoteric D-10 and D-2 digital processors, a Theta DSPro Basic digital processor, and the Electronic Visionary Systems Stepped Attenuator, a passive control unit. The analog front end was a VPI HW-19 Jr. turntable with an AudioQuest PT-5 tonearm and Sumiko Boron cartridge. A new outboard phono preamp made by Precision Audio allowed me to use the passive control unit for both CD and LP playback.
Speaker…
Sidebar 2: Measurements
I began the measurements with the Listening Environment Diagnostic Recording (LEDR) described by Bob Katz in Vol.12 No.12 and found on the Chesky Jazz Sampler CD. The LEDR test consists of a sampled cabasa (a percussion instrument) that has had its sound manipulated by a computer to give the illusion of the instrument moving in three-dimensional space. Three tests comprise LEDR: in "Up," the sound should appear to move up in a straight line from the loudspeaker; the "Over" test is also called the "rainbow" since the image should follow a rainbow-shaped arc above…
Sidebar 3: Specifications
Description: Two-way loudspeaker with 6" woofer and 1" titanium-coated dome tweeter. Bass alignment: sealed-box. Frequency response: 63–20kHz ±3dB. Maximum continuous power: 60W. Sensitivity: 86dB/W/m. Crossover frequency: 3150Hz. Crossover slopes: first-order, 6dB/octave. Nominal impedance: 8 ohms. Terminals: five-way binding posts. Dimensions: 8¾" W by 15" H by 7½" D. Weight: 11 lbs each. Price: $179/pair (1990); no longer available (2016). Approximate number of dealers: factory-direct. Manufacturer: Dana Audio, Austin, TX 78767 (1990); company no longer in…
As I write these words in January 1991, we're right in the midst of an annual media feeding frenzy: the "Best of the Year" follies. This usually takes the form of lists compiled in groups of ten for reasons that must hearken back to some obscure Druidic practice. You know the routine: "Ten Best Books of the Year," "Ten Best Films of the Year," "Ten Top Personalities of the Year," "Ten Best Sports Plays of the Year." Every corner of the media seems eager to get into the act. Special-interest magazines are hardly immune. Car enthusiasts can get their fill of "Cars of the Year." Computer…
The line stage of the Consonance accepts the single-ended output of the attenuator stage (which follows the phono stage), provides the appropriate gain, and also performs the conversion to differential (balanced) mode by means of a differential FET amplifier. No negative feedback is employed in this stage. There are several ways of converting a single-ended signal to balanced operation. Rowland claims that their (proprietary) method of conversion is superior to other implementations, providing increased loading flexibility, reducing time and phase anomalies, and maximizing the Common Mode…
Sidebar 1: A Matter of Volume
While there are 200 available level settings, the readouts are simply 0–200; they do not directly relate to decibels. That's a bit of a handicap for the reviewer and the audiophile who does a lot of comparison listening, but not much. To relate level settings to decibels, I simply fed a 1kHz test signal into the Consonance and measured the output of each channel for each of the 200 steps. While this was a bit tedious, it gave me a chart showing the relative level change from one step to the next. It also indicated very precise channel-to-channel tracking.…