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From the Hill Country to the Low Country. From grackles and bluebonnets to azaleas and snowy egrets. From the teeming, swilling, blabbering, fashion-conscious masses in Austin at SXSW--from which, I admit, I do recharge my batteries—to a more genteel crowd and more relaxed setting. After my Austin sojourn this year, I paid a visit to the more staid and adult universe of the Savannah Music Festival. Now in it’s 26th year, the festival, held in a town blessed with charming squares, a large arts school, Savannah College of Art and Design (better known as SCAD, though I kept calling it SACD for…
Although I attended the 2015 Consumer Electronics Show, and contributed to Stereophile's on-line show report, there were many products outside my beat that I found about just like Stereophile readers, ie, reading my colleagues' show reports. One of these that piqued my interest was the Wilson Audio Sabrina, the lowest-priced ($15,900/pair) floorstander from this elite speaker manufacturer. Larry Greenhill's report provided a brief description of the speaker, but since the speaker was only being shown, not demonstrated, he couldn't very well say much about the sound.
A listening report…
Bay Area high-end audio retailer Audio High (165 Moffett Boulevard, Mountain View, California) has been chosen as the first Meridian partner to introduce its revolutionary MQA audio coding system on Thursday April 16, from 6pm–9pm.
As John Atkinson wrote last December, MQA is a backward-compatible codec that reduces the size of a hi-rez audio file by three quarters. When played back on a standard DAC, it plays as a conventional 16-bit file sampled at 44.1kHz or 48kHz, but when decoded by a DAC offering MQA, it plays back with higher resolution and the original sample rate.
As well…
PS Audio’s affordable Swiss Army Knife of an integrated amplifier—it offers digital, Bluetooth, and analog inputs, including phono—is featured on the May issue's cover. And five more amps and preamps are reviewed in this amplification-dominated issue: Bricasti's new M28 monoblock and Raven's 300B amplifier, Simaudio's Moon 740P preamp, and Luxman's CL-38u preamp.
John Atkinson kicks off May with an analysis of why the mainstream media have rejected not just the PonoPlayer but hi-rez audio in general, while Herb Reichert pays tribute to the late Joe Grado. Michael Lavorgna auditions Sony'…
Bruckner: Symphony 8
Rémy Ballot, Upper Austrian Youth Symphony Orchestra
Gramola 99054 (2 SACD/CDs). 2015. John Proffitt, prod., eng.; Richard Winter, prod.; Rémy Ballot, Matthias Kronsteiner, eds., mastering. DDD. TT: 103:44
Performance ****½
Sonics *****
Rémy Ballot, Upper Austrian Youth Symphony Orchestra
Gramola 99054 (2 SACD/CDs). 2015. John Proffitt, prod., eng.; Richard Winter, prod.; Rémy Ballot, Matthias Kronsteiner, eds., mastering. DDD. TT: 103:44
Performance ****½
Sonics *****
This performance of Bruckner's greatest, most generous work, his Symphony 8, took place in August 2014 in the basilica of St. Florian, the Austrian monastery where Bruckner was schooled and served as organist. It was taped before an audience, directly above the crypt in which Bruckner is buried. The band was the Upper…
Violet- and orchid-colored LED banks shimmer across the room. Green and pink spots radiate out and back. A steady stream of beats and keyboards from other electronica luminaries rumbles out of the speakers. Let's dance! Or maybe just listen?
Onstage, Dan Deacon is busy tweaking his gear. Out on the floor, the audience is oddly antsy. To fight the waiting, one woman hangs on her boyfriend. Clumps of hipsters conviviate. Very strong drinks (a sponsorship deal?) flow for seven bucks a pop. Anticipation thickens. Impatience turns to pacing. Young men make solo air grooves. The LED black…
I write this in a Seattle coffee bar—my flight home to New York has been canceled due to a snowstorm. As I try to put down these thoughts, I'm listening to the high-resolution masters of the April issue's "Recording of the Month," Sasha Matson's jazz opera Cooperstown, on my Pono player using Ultimate Ears UE18 in-ear monitors. I was in Seattle for Music Matters 10, held by retailer Definitive Audio, and this was my first road trip with the Pono since I reviewed it for the April issue. (Bruce Botnick and Charles Hansen comment on that review elsewhere in this issue.)
I realize now that,…
Pikes Peak Upgrade, May 2015 (Vol.38 No.5):
Although I've been a happy owner of an Ayre Acoustics CX-7eMP CD player for five years, I decided last fall that it was time to upgrade my CD playback. My choice was a PS Audio combination of DirectStream DAC ($5999) and DirectWave Transport. What I found particularly appealing about the DirectStream (DS) was that its data processing is performed by field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) rather than by a dedicated chip, and can be upgraded with downloadable firmware that's free to all DS owners.
When I got the DS last fall, it had…
"In the fields of observation, chance favors only the mind that is prepared."
When Louis Pasteur uttered these words more than a hundred years ago, he must have speculated that they would apply equally well to future circumstances as to the events of his day. What he couldn't anticipate, however, was the technology to which his insight now seems so appropriate.
Finding himself by "chance" without a CD transport at home one night, Theta Digital designer Mike Moffat (footnote 1) borrowed a videodisc player from his video system and hooked its digital audio output to a digital…
Finally, the videodisc medium is much more demanding on the playback system than the CD format. Unlike CD, the data stored on a videodisc result in an analog video signal, without the benefit of error correction. Slight changes in the signal reflected from the disc caused by player imperfections will show up as poor video quality. These factors force videodisc players to perform to a much higher standard than their CD-only cousins.
All this seems good in theory, but how does the Data sound as a CD transport in a demanding high-end audio system?
Music
I might as well come…