search
To hear the system demonstrated by The Voice That Is—Tidal Audio Piano Diacera G2 loudspeakers ($39,990 in midnight black), Tidal Preos-D preamp ($31,190), Tidal Impulse stereo amplifier ($32,290), Bricasti M1se DAC ($10,000), Aurender N10 server ($7999), and Brinkmann Spyder turntable ($12,000) with that company's 10.5 tonearm ($5490) and EMT-ti cartridge ($3990)—was to conclude, on the basis of that experience and previous experiences with systems put together by proprietor Doug White, that the man is utterly incapable of making bad sound. Although I assume it took alot of after-hours,…
At 5pm on a Thursday, some Thursdays ago, Robert Baird and I embarked on a post-work record hunt in Brooklyn. More specifically, we explored Williamsburg, otherwise referred to as "Hipster Land" (footnote 1). Aside from being an all-round neat neighborhood, Williamsburg is also home to quite a few record shops. This trip, we decided to keep our stops to a minimum and focus on two of our favorites: Rough Trade (64 N 9th Street, Brooklyn, NY 11249) and Earwax Records (167 N 9th Street, Brooklyn, NY 11211).
First stop: Rough Trade
Rough Trade is an all-in-one, two-floor kingdom of…
Every good show has a vibe, and the vibe at Capital Audiofest owes a lot to the region's very spirited DIY community. Put it this way: If Capital Audiofest were a music club, open-mic night would draw some of its biggest crowds.
So it was at CAF2016, where the DC-DIY room (visit www.DCAudioDIY.com) was perpetually crowded—and perpetually energized by some of the most remarkable gear I've seen and heard. During one visit, a pair of GM70-powered, 20W single-ended monoblocks designed and built by David McGown drove speakers built by Stuart Polanski using GR Research mid-woofers and Fountek…
Stax Kogyo, a small audio company by Japanese standards, has been for the past 15 years steadfastly refining and redefining the electrostatic headphone. The SR-Lambda Pro is their current flagship model, and at a 1984 US list price of $780 it also represents a very substantial investment in headphone technology.
The SRM-1/MK2 drive unit supplies the necessary polarizing voltage for the phones and is also a low-powered class-A transistor amplifier that can simultaneously drive two sets of Pros or other Stax headphones. The SR-Lambda is available in two versions, the more costly being the…
Sidebar 1: Headphone Frequency Response
There is a fundamental difference between headphone listening and any other listening experience. With headphones, whether of the on-the-ear or around-the-ear type (that's what the "circumaural" in the specs means), the auditory canal is more or less on the axis of the headphone's diaphragm. In all other listening, much of the sound enters the ear only after reflecting off the pinna (ear lobe) and head. This factor alone drastically affects the frequency response perceived by the ear/brain.
John R. Sank, in a paper in the April 1980 Journal…
John Atkinson auditioned the Stax in May 1991 (Vol.14 No.5):
For this comparative review, I borrowed a pair of the Stax Lambda Pro "Ear Speakers," as well as a Stax ED-1 diffuse-field equalizer. The Lambdas were driven by their SRM-1/Mk.II direct-drive, class-A, solid-state amplifier, using a Meridian 208 CD player as source. As well as using each pair of headphones for my daily music supply, I did some paired comparisons, matching levels by ear using the 1kHz warble tone on the Stereophile Test CD.
I've used the electrostatic Stax Lambdas ($1200) on most of the recording…
Sidebar: Measurements
Measuring headphones is fraught with practical problems, mainly due to the fact that the target response for a drive-unit that fires straight into the ear canal is anything but flat, given the frequency-response–modifying natures of the pinnae and inner ear canal which, as mentioned earlier, are unique for each person. A graph in an excellent 1980 AES paper from Audio Contributing Editor Jon Sank (footnote 1; see Dick Olsher's sidebar on headphone frequency response), shows the envelope of responses he found desirable for conventional headphones to sound flat.
…
Sidebar: Specifications
Description: Circumaural electrostatic headphones with included stepup transformer and class-A solid-state amplifier. Frequency range: 8Hz–35kHz.
Weight: 15 oz.
Price: $780 (1984); $1200 (1991); no longer vailable (2016).
Manufacturer: Stax Limited, 3798-1 Shimonanbata, Fujimi-shi, Saitama-Ken, Japan 354-0004. Tel: 81-49-293-1891. Fax: 81-49-293-1892. Web: www.stax.co.jp/index-E.html. US distributor: Stax Kogyo, Inc., Carson, CA 90746 (1984); Yama's Enterprises, Inc., 16617 S. Normandie Ave., Suite C, Gardena, CA 90247 (2016). Tel: (310) 327-3913. Fax…
Carla Bley, Andy Sheppard, Steve Swallow: Andando el Tiempo
ECM 2487 (CD). 2016. Manfred Eicher, prod.; Stefano Amerio, eng. DDD. TT: 47:19
Performance ****½
Sonics *****
ECM 2487 (CD). 2016. Manfred Eicher, prod.; Stefano Amerio, eng. DDD. TT: 47:19
Performance ****½
Sonics *****
Resistance is futile. From the moment she dropped out of high school in Oakland, California and headed for New York, nothing was going to stop Karen Borg, the daughter of a church organist, from evolving into one of the most influential jazz composers of her generation in her new identity as Carla Bley. While working as a hat-check girl at Birdland, she met the brilliant avant-garde pianist Paul Bley (1932–…
Bob's Devices is a company that make finely crafted and affordable step-up transformers for moving-coil cartridges, as well as silver-clad pure copper interconnects ($395/meter). Their lowest-priced SUT, the CineMag 1131 ($1195), has switchable gain (1:20/1:10). Next is the Bob's Devices Sky CineMag ($1250), which offers lower inductance, thanks to (switchable) ratios that are also lower. Finally there's the Integrated VPI SUT ($1650), a CineMag 1131 transformer that also takes the place of the standard VPI tonearm wire/phono cable interface.
Before I visited the Bob's Devices…