I used four cartridges with the Technics: an Ortofon 2M Black MM, a Hana by Excel EL low-output MC, my Zu Denon DL-103 MC, and a mono-wired Shure M44 MM with 78rpm stylus. My…
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Listening: The world's best record-players all exhibit an eerie silence coupled to a precise, palpable, and captivating spatiality—which is what we pay so much extra for. By comparison, my stoop-sale Technics SL-1200 Mk.2 is conspicuously noisy and spatially vague. The reconceived 1200, the new Grand Class SL-1200GAE, with its new motor-drive system, went a surprisingly long way toward correcting these problems.
I should have seen this coming: Less than a year after the last time I railed against the darkness of cable reviewing—the indignity of crawling around behind my equipment rack, the tedium of comparing one wire to another, the frustration of trying to wring from the experience some fresh and hopefully entertaining observations, the horror of dealing with manufacturers whose hunger for good publicity borders on the vampiric—I have once again invited into my home a cable manufacturer and his wares.
I did so for the best possible reason: The manufacturer is someone I've known for five or so…
Sidebar: Contacts
Technics, Panasonic Consumer Electronics Corporation, Two Riverfront Plaza, Newark, NJ 07102. Web: www.technics.com/us.
Hana by Excel, Excel Sound Corporation, Toyo Building 5f-a, No.8-5 1-Chome, Ebisu, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo, Japan. Tel: (81) (03)444-8634. Web: www.excelsound.co.jp. US distributor: Musical Surroundings, 5662 Shattuck Avenue, Oakland, CA 94609. Tel: (510) 547-5006. Fax: (510) 547-5009. Web: www.musicalsurroundings.com.
That my next step should be to replace the AC cord of the Shindo Haut-Brion power amplifier—the amp in use at the time—was obvious, but utterly lacking in the excitement of anticipation: Since upgrading the preamp's power cord produced so modest a change, I assumed that performing the same swap on the next component downstream would produce an even subtler change, if any. Yet when we made the swap and began listening, I heard a difference so startlingly apparent that I laughed aloud—as did Danny Labrecque, whom I then chided for committing the unpardonable sin of messing with my head (though…
When I first met Luke Manley, proprietor of VTL, he and his father, David, with whom he ran the company at the time, had recently emigrated from the UK to California. I asked Luke how he liked the West Coast. "Great," he replied. "Much better parts availability." This was about 30 years ago, when I was just immersing myself in high-end audio at a high-toned level. Our exchange gave me a taste of the obsessions ahead, though Luke Manley's single-mindedness through the decades since has been more dogged than many—and, at the same time, less dogmatic.
Once a tube purist (the initials VTL…
On "Amelia," from Joni Mitchell's Hejira (LP, Asylum/Rhino R1 01087), the ringing from Victor Feldman's vibes billowed forth in waves as I'd never heard before (if I had synesthesia, I'm sure I'd have seen bright balls of color), while never obscuring the surrounding guitar strums or Mitchell's voice, which all seemed distinct but enveloped in the same, cohesive space. In "Walking by Flashlight," the first track of Maria Schneider's The Thompson Fields (CD, ArtistShare AS-0137), the accordion, even when submerged in the background, never lost its squeeze-box airiness; ditto the flute's…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: Hybrid tube (gain stage) and FET (output stage, power supply), dual-mono, fully balanced differential design, zero-feedback line-level preamplifier. Inputs: 3 pairs balanced (XLR or RCA), 5 additional pairs single-ended (RCA only). Outputs: 1 pair balanced (XLR), 2 pairs single-ended (RCA), 2 pairs single-ended buffered Tape outputs. Gain: 19.2dB balanced, 13.2dB single-ended. Volume knob: 95 increments of 0.7dB. Frequency response: 1Hz–200kHz (20Hz–200kHz, +0/–1dB, into 600 ohms with 900pF 20' interconnect). Signal/noise: 88dB. Channel separation…
Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment
Analog Source: VPI Classic turntable with JMW tonearm, Ortofon Cadenza Blue cartridge.
Digital Source: dCS Puccini SACD/CD player.
Preamplification: Nagra BPS battery-powered phono preamp, Simaudio Moon Evolution 740P line-stage preamplifier.
Power Amplifier: Simaudio Moon Evolution 860A.
Loudspeakers: Revel Ultima Studio 2.
Cables: Interconnect: AudioQuest Wild Blue, Kubala-Sosna Elation!, Nirvana S-L. Speaker: Nirvana S-X. AC: manufacturers' stock.
Accessories: Black Diamond Racing Mk.4 Cones (under VTL), Audiodesksysteme Gläss…
Sidebar 3: Measurements
I measured the VTL TL6.5 Series II Signature's electrical performance with my Audio Precision SYS2722 system (see the January 2008 "As We See It"). Most of the measurements were taken with balanced input and output signals; I repeated some tests with unbalanced signals. The volume control's unity-gain setting was "78" on the front-panel display and the control appears to operate in accurate 0.75dB steps. At the control's maximum setting of "95," the voltage gain at 1kHz, measured at the balanced output jacks, was 13.2dB for both balanced and unbalanced input…
Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Mary Oliver famously remarked, "attention without feeling . . . is only a report."
After nearly two years of prattling for Stereophile, I am finally grasping the full veracity of that statement. When I read reviews that jabber on about highs, mediums, and lows, and that rely exclusively on nonmusical vocabulary, I come away with feelings of acute cognitive dissonance. Not to mention: if a review has a lot of initialisms—ADD, S/PDIF, DXD, HDMI, etc.—my ADHD kicks in and I stop reading by the third paragraph.
I prefer equipment reports in which the…