I measured the Meridian Explorer2 with my Audio Precision SYS2722 system (see the January 2008 "As We See It"). Source materials were WAV and AIFF test-tone files, played with Pure Music 3.0 on my MacBook Pro running on battery power. As with the original Explorer, I performed a complete set of measurements from both the line-level and headphone outputs, but most of what I describe here is the Explorer's performance from its line output; I comment on the headphone output only when it differed. I also comment on the Explorer2's measurements only when they differ…
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The inaugural Canlanta is being held this Saturday, May 21, 10am–6pm, in Atlanta, Georgia at the Marriott Century City. Twenty vendors will have the latest in latest in DACs, amplifiers, and headphones on display. Exhibitors will include Noble, Questyle, Oppo, Sennheiser, Kimber Kable, Empire Ears, Violectric, Meze, and Cavalli. National retailers include HeadphoneAudiophile and Sight+Sound Gallery.
Tyll Hertsens, editor-in-chief of Stereophile's sister site InnerFidelity.com, will deliver the keynote speech and hold two "table sessions" in which he'll talk with show attendees. Oppo,…
Whoa! Am I reading this correctly? Has Universal Music Group, parent company of classical/jazz labels Deutsche Grammophon, Decca Records, Decca Classics, Mercury Classics, and distributed label ECM, really "deepened [its] commitment to jazz and classical music [and the] company's unwavering commitment to building upon its rich history in both genres" by announcing, on May 19, that it has lumped those US labels together with jazz label Verve under the new Verve Label Group? Note as well that it has also appointed Danny Bennett, the Grammy and Emmy Award-winning music, film, and TV producer who…
No prosaic formal classification can begin to describe the universal embrace of life and death that is Schubert's final, posthumously published String Quintet in C major, D.956. Written in his final year, as his health was rapidly deteriorating from syphilis (and, perhaps, the mercury that was likely administered as a "cure"), the quintet melds characteristically Viennese gemütlichkeit with far darker forebodings. Although that darkness is expressed musically rather than through words—Schubert's contemporaneous, bone-chilling song, Der Doppelgänger, is far more explicit in this regard—the…
Spectral Audio President Richard Fryer (above) brought the new SDR-4000SV Studio Reference CD Processor ($20,000) to Innovative Audio Video Showrooms in Manhattan May 13 and 14, as part of the New York City dealer's "Meet the Innovators" series. Fryer debuted Spectral's limited-edition digital player and playback system in one of Innovative's renovated listening rooms, its dark lights, cool temps and flowing white wine aiding the already sumptuous atmosphere.
As well as the SDR-4000SV Studio Reference CD Processor, the Spectral Audio system included Spectral's DMA-400 Monaural…
On the heels of its revelatory release of long-lost sessions by Larry Young in Paris during the mid-1960s, Resonance Records pulls another treasure from the archives—Sarah Vaughan's appearance at Rosy's, a now-defunct New Orleans jazz club, in May 1978.
Vaughan was 54 and in the midst of a merry comeback, recording a slew of albums for producer Norman Granz on the Pablo label and performing in a string of small clubs around the world (I saw her around this time at a very small venue, holding maybe 50 people, in Washington, DC), all with stunning virtuosity leavened with a playful verve…
Boy meets girl.
Boy and girl fall in love.
Boy and girl live happily ever after.
Boy and girl fall in love.
Boy and girl live happily ever after.
This is the traditional fairytale romance we've all been spoon-fed from birth. You know, Disney, unicorns, white picket fences, medieval castles, Ryan Gosling, etc, etc. There are many variations, but each one essentially tells the same story.
Unfortunately, the fact of the matter is, reality often falls quite short of fairytale, and very rarely is one story identical to the next. Modern romance is often more like this:
Boy meets girl (one of many) online.
Boy asks girl out on a…
It seems like something amazingly profound should spring to mind on this, the occasion of Bob Dylan’s 75th birthday, however the stark facts are enough. He is, in the rarely used best sense of the word, the most impressive monster the world of popular music has ever produced. It’s hard to even find words big enough to express what he’s accomplished. Still on the road for most of the year at 75, still making important records, still writing songs, the man is a mountain, an ocean, a titanic force unlike any other. His mass of original material is the most influential body of work ever produced…
I first spied the Ayre Codex two Januarys ago, at the 2015 Consumer Electronics Show, and its scrappy proletarian vibe sure made it look different from any other Ayre creation. On learning that its price would be well under $2000, I was immediately curious what Charley Hansen and his gang—makers of the $3450 QB-9DSD USB digital-to-analog converter, plus a few five-figure amps and preamps—could create when cost is an object.
Indeed, as Hansen says, "The Codex was deliberately built to the lowest price point we've ever done. Doing so imposes specific constraints. No matter how clever one…
The second track on Cruel Sister is a cappella: McShee singing "When I Was in My Prime." In addition to the you-are-there intimacy of the studio space captured in the recording, with the Codex I could clearly hear an odd artificial reverb that sat behind McShee at the center of the stage. I could also hear the compression-pumping artifacts each time she takes a breath. Then there was an obvious edit at 2:23, where they glued a different take on at the end of the song. I realize all this is diving into audio-geek territory (headphone listening can do that), but rarely does a DAC so precisely…