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Leema Acoustics Essentials phono preamplifier Measurements

Sidebar 3: Measurements

I measured the Leema Acoustics Essentials phono preamplifier (serial number ES140704B) using my Audio Precision SYS2722 system (see www.ap.com, and the January 2008 "As We See It"). As always with phono stages, I experimented with the grounding between the Essentials and the Audio Precision system to get the lowest level of noise.

The voltage gain at 1kHz was 35.7dB with the Leema set to MM (moving-magnet), and 61.2dB when set to MC (moving-coil). Both values are very close to their specifications, and the preamp preserved absolute polarity (ie, was non-…

Northampton Saturday Night

The term “music town” has its obvious examples. Nashville, Austin and the place the term was coined for, New Orleans, all come to mind. Truth be told though, New Your City is the world’s greatest music town, but there’s so much else going on here, that music tends to get lost, being just one facet of the cultural life of the five boroughs.

A lesser known but no less active music town is Northampton, Massachusetts. A textbook definition of a very large small town, NoHo has that most essential of music town ingredients: a fairly large group of people, between the ages of 25 and 65 who are…

Just Another Night in New York City

Thursday night, I took the F train to Manhattan's Blue Note, the 8pm set, to see Trio 3—the longstanding improv band, consisting of Oliver Lake on alto sax, Reggie Workman on bass, and Andrew Cyrille on drums—joined by Jason Moran on piano.

Lake is best known for his work with the World Saxophone Quartet. Workman has played with most of the modern greats, starting with Coltrane in the early 1960s and continuing with Wayne Shorter, Art Blakey, Mal Waldron, Archie Shepp, and David Murray, among others. Cyrille made his mark with Cecil Taylor in the '60s, then played with a host of others…

The 2015 Rocky Mountain Audio Fest Is Underway

Making the long trip from the Denver Airport to the 12th Annual Rocky Mountain International Audio Fest at the Marriott Tech Center, I got lost in the vast open plains (this ain't Brooklyn), the mountains, and Colorado's big dome sky. My mind wondered to the Ute, Sioux, Arapahoe, Crow, Cheyenne, and Apache tribes that inhabited these still primordial looking spaces.

I remember the photos of Native Americans by ethnologist Edward Curtis and the intense stories of a doomed Native American culture by Louise Erdrich (Love Medicine, Tracks, etc.). I think of wagon trains, railroads, highways,…

Old & New Friends at RMAF

Photos: Laura LoVecchio

Standing in front of the poster for the November issue of Stereophile, new at the show, is Michael Mandell, who used to provide IT services for the magazine when it was first based in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Michael is wearing a vintage T-shirt with the "Lonely at the Top" illustration we created for our April 1988 "Recommended Components" issue.

And below is the Stereophile stand at the Denver Marriott Tech Center, located in the lobby between the Evergreen A ballroom (showing Legacy Audio & Coda Technologies) and the Marketplace. Come by and…

The Morrow Audio High-end Speaker Cables with SSI Technology Sweepstakes

According to the company:

Standard version shown in the photo. Bi-wired & Bi-amped versions also available on the Morrow website. The SP3 (shown) consists of 24 runs of solid core, small gauge and individually insulated, silver coated copper wire (renowned SSI Technology) which is then silver soldered to the termination of choice. Silver coated copper wire was chosen for the excellent balance of sound that it provides. The cable has an attractive…

Sasha Matson's First Day in Denver

One mile high—and when you touch down? The huge and energetic 2015 Rocky Mountain International Audio Fest, or RMAF, based at the Denver Marriott Tech Center. Spread out over several areas of floors in the towers, as well as an extended lobby area with its own mezzanine sections—ithe show takes a bit of initial navigating. This is the first RMAF I have had the pleasure to attend, and seems to have great and varied participation—from both the exhibitor side as well as attendees.

Heading to the tower's eighth floor, I was able to spend some quality time in a room hosted by Denver retailer…

Jason's First Day at RMAF

The Rocky Mountain Audio Fest decided to give press a head start this time around by inviting us in two hours before the show's official noon opening on Friday. While not all manufacturers got on board—several of the rooms I tried to visit on the 2nd floor of the Marriott Denver Tech Center's Tower were locked—digital audio pioneer dCS leaped into the breach by staging a 10am press conference for the official release of the dCS Rossini CD player. The company's Martin Reynolds (above) flew over from the UK to do the presentation.

dCS's Rossini system, a "greatly updated successor to the…

Day One for Herb Reichert

Jason Victor Serinus, Sasha Matson, and myself spent crazy time before the show started talking, scheming and dividing up RMAF rooms. But, in the end, after hours of planning, I finally declared, "You two cover the audio rock stars, I'll go find the rooms of the lesser known, still unknown, or up-and-coming, exhibitors that may have not made show-report headlines in the past.

One such newcomer was Dennis Fraker, of Serious Stereo ("We Build What It Takes") who, besides trafficking in alliteration, made Rosanne Cash's "She's Got Your Picture" sound sad, sexy and real. He was driving his…

More First Day Adventures from Sasha

Continuing my tour on the first day of this year's RMAF, let me just say in the first sentence that the beautifully matched system I found up and running in room 9026 fit me like a glove. I have had direct experience over the years, as have many others, with several of the fine audio brands represented in the room hosted by The Audio Alternative, a retailer out of nearby Fort Collins. On show was excellent gear from Audio Research Corporation, Vandersteen Audio, AMG, AudioQuest, and Harmonic Resolutions Systems. Noted speaker designer Richard Vandersteen himself had just arrived when I did.…