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…
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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.
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.
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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…
Hanson Audio Video (3140 Far Hills Avenue, Dayton, OH 45429) is hosting an event Thursday July 14, 4–8pm) and AudioVision San Francisco (1628 California Street, San Francisco, CA 94109) is holding an event also on July 14, 7:30–10pm.
The Hanson event will feature flagship products from Dynaudio (Evidence Platinum loudspeakers), Octave (Jubilee mono amplifiers and preamp), and Nordost cables. Dynaudio's Mick Tillman, Octave's Thomas Brieger, and Nordost's Michael Taylor will be on hand. For more information, please contact Hanson Audio Video at (937) 293-6200 or visit Hanson's website.…
If you must know, I do in fact maintain on my desktop computer a file-folder labeled Vintage, which is where I put all my audio porn, much of it gathered at audio shows such as CAF2016. Janet has seen it, and she agrees that things could be a lot worse.
Because I love Garrard 301 and 401 turntables, I photograph every one that I can find. And at CAF2016—notwithstanding the fact that VPI was the predominant brand of turntables, by a huge margin—I found three of them. The first was this beautiful hammertone, grease-bearing, ca-1955 301, owned by Vu Hoang of Deja Vu Audio. Aldo D'Urso, who…