Sidebar: Contacts
AudioQuest, 2621 White Road, Irvine, CA 92614. Tel: (949) 585-0111. Web: www.audioquest.com.
PSB Speakers International, 633 Granite Court, Pickering, Ontario L1W 3K1, Canada. Tel: (905) 831-6555. Web: www.psbspeakers.com.
Sennheiser USA, 1 Enterprise Drive, Old Lyme, CT 06371. Tel: (860) 434-9190. Web: www.sennheiserusa.com.
In the wake of my October 2013 "Listening" column and its negative take on the Pete Riggle Woody tonearm (footnote 1), I was surprised and gratified by the offer of another new arm: a gesture of trust not unlike sending one's children to a sleepover at Casey Anthony's house. The supplier was Phillip Holmes, of Texas-based Mockingbird Distribution (footnote 2), and the new tonearm was the Abis SA-1, the design and manufacture of which was commissioned by the Japanese firm Sibatech, itself a distributor of dozens of high-end audio brands, including Zyx, Mactone, Zerodust, and, perhaps most…
Where the Abis gave it up to my transcription-length tonearms was, surprisingly or not, with mono records. The SA-1 did a good, enjoyable job with Johanna Martzy's recordings of J.S. Bach's Sonatas and Partitas for Unaccompanied Violin (3 LPs, (EMI/Electric Recording Company 33CX 1288), but didn't reach the same magical heights of artistic teleportation as the big arms. Ditto the recent mono release of Paul McCartney's spotty Ram (Apple/Hear Music HRM-334452-01), which sounded good, but not as chunky and forceful as it should: The superb Miyajima Mono simply gives more of itself when…
Referring to his former partner and his shall we say distinctive personality, Graham Nash once used the term, “Neilness” in front of me. That quality has been on public display in rarely seen quantities at South by Southwest 2014, the annual monster music fest in Austin, Texas where Young has launched his new high-resolution player and music store collectively known as PonoMusic. A Hawaiian word meaning “all one,” Pono is Young’s latest business concern to attack the problem of declining sound quality in recorded music. Many music fans and Young–O–philes will remember he was an early and…
After going so far off the beaten path in my last column, with examinations of digital signal processing (DSP) from miniDSP and Illusonic and multichannel in-room measurements, this month I take a look at and listen to a new preamplifier-processor from Yamaha, along with its companion multichannel power amplifier. The Japanese company (footnote 1) was a pioneer in digital signal processing (DSP) and multichannel sound, but for a long while now has been swimming in the mainstream of audio/video receivers and home theater.
Yamaha Aventage CX-A5000 preamplifier-processor
When I saw the…
I took the second option, and inserted the DSpeaker AntiMode 2.0 between the Yamaha and the subwoofers, set up as "Stereo Subs" to maintain the distinction between the "Front+Rear" subs established by the Yamaha. When I ran AntiMode's automatic correction routine (fig.2), the resulting sound was so good that I bit the bullet and ran XTZPro to develop correction filters for each sub, which I then copied into the filter set already arrived at by YPAO.
Fig.2 Before (blue) and after (red) implementation of bass equalization (16–120Hz) with the AntiMode 2.0 (5dB/vertical div.)… By 2035, the way we produce and consume media will be entirely different from how we experience it now. Today there is still a "fourth wall" between us and the media we consume: within three decades, that line between reality and its recreation will all but disappear. Our media experiences will become fully immersive—from spherical audio and video that tracks with our body's movements, to gestural computing, to physical-feedback devices, and more. Using tomorrow's technology, our children and grandchildren may find it difficult to distinguish the real thing from reproduced.
Technology…
Let's conservatively assume that the resolution and accuracy of gesture technology will double every two years (though given the economic incentives, doubling each year may be more realistic). Common gestural devices ($100 at 150 pixels per inch [PPI], by today's standards) will boast two orders of magnitude greater resolution by about 2025. Costing only $1 for the ability to map and track 15,000 3D positions per inch, such devices will allow for much greater degrees of freedom and movement (think Minority Report without the $1 million price tag). By 2025–2030, the price of sophisticated,…
Nevertheless, gestural-control and head-tracking technologies share many of the same design attributes, and appear to be maturing at similar rates. Head-tracking requires six degrees of freedom (6DOF), which tracks XYZ axes and rotations about each axis, known as pitch, yaw, and roll. Popular head-motion tracking systems for gaming today cost around $200 and offer about 640x480 of raw resolution, a sample rate of 100 frames per second, and latencies of less than 10 milliseconds. Lab-grade units with better resolution and response are also available.
Assuming a doubling of CPE every two…
The April 2014 issue of Stereophile is now on newsstands. Inside, you’ll find 35 pages of “Recommended Components,” our handy guide to today’s best audio products, covering categories including: Turntables, Tonearms, Phono Cartridges, Phono Preamplifiers, Media Players, Digital Processors, Loudspeakers, Amplifiers, Preamplifiers, Integrated Amplifiers, and Headphones.
Our cover model is the extraordinary Vivid Audio Giya G3 loudspeaker. Is there room in John Atkinson’s heart for another loudspeaker? My guess is yes, but where exactly does the Giya G3 rank among the countless other…
