So thank you, Hanson Audio, for a welcome burst of energy and light. It's not that Stereophile has not…
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What, Jason, you're still on the 5th floor? How are you ever going to get all the way down to sub-Lobby Level, let alone be able to make some "Best of Show" calls, when you're only doing 18 rooms per day? Get a move on, Serinus! Such thoughts crossed my mind as Day One was drawing to a close, and I still had a few rooms left on the second of AXPONA's seven, not six, floors. But what is there to do but simply go with the flow, even if there's little flow left to go with at day's end?
Robert Harley wrote a followup in June 1991 (Vol.14 No.6):
The X-32 has a new, thicker front panel and a much more attractive layout. The unit's original diagonally oriented LEDs have been replaced by recessed LEDs and pushbuttons which make the X-32 much more attractive. The circuit is virtually the same as the one I auditioned, but with one minor software change.
I listened to the Wadia's new X-32 with the same system described in my reviews in this issue of the Audio Research DAC1 and Wadia WT-3200 transport. On hand for comparison were the DAC1, Theta DSPro Basic, Proceed PDP 2…
Given how many great systems—that's great, not good—I had already encountered in the perpetually pale yellow, beige, and brown rooms on the Westin's 12th, 5th, and 3rd floors, the big question was, would the rest of the 3rd floor, and the other floors I would head to in the day and a half remaining, deliver as many delights? After all, given the variables of hotel room acoustics, noisy and sometimes unreliable power sources, and electronics and cabling whose sound changes as they settle in, it was a near miracle to happen upon as many superb sounding rooms as I had in such a short time period…
Sundays are always slow days at audio shows. Which is a shame, because Sunday is the day when, after several days to settle in, equipment usually sounds the best it's going to sound under show conditions.
Slow Sundays, however, are a gift for reviewers, because it means that there's a better chance of scoring the sweet spot, not having to listen over visitors who think exhibits are best treated as background music for their chatter, and encountering more relaxed (if exhausted) hosts. Hence, even though I began Day 3 wondering how I could possibly cover the rest of floor 4, all of 2, the…
With the clock ticking, and three floors to go, I made a hard choice. Skip virtually everything on the lobby level, do what I can of the rest, and promise with all my heart and soul that if I am privileged to return to AXPONA presents Audio Con Chicago in 2016, I will start on Friday on the lobby and lower levels. In doing so, I will remind myself that even though this year, I heeded requests from several manufacturers who pleaded that their rooms would not be up to snuff on Friday, and thus started on the top, that if they're on the lower levels next year and they're not ready for prime time…
How do you measure success? Some show promoters count the number of lanyards they've given out and call those "attendance figures." That, of course, can be misleading. Exhibitors get lanyards, attendees who misplace their lanyards get more lanyards, assistants get lanyards, and maybe even people's service dogs get lanyards. I saw a coyote amble down the street the other day, and he was wearing a lanyard that claimed he was a senior editor at Black Sheep Digest.com.
Other show promoters smile and somehow can't come up with something more than "let's just say 2,326,873 visitors." As for the…
I spent most of my time at the January 2015 Consumer Electronics Show exploring amps and preamps for Stereophile's on-line coverage of the show, but there were a few items of interest to fans of multichannel. There were demonstrations of Dolby Atmos, Auro3D, and dts:X, but these mostly focused on movies—save for Auro3D's thrilling demo of 2L's Magnificat—an album of music by Arnesin, Gjeilo, and Kernis, with Anita Brevik conducting solo singers, chorus, and the Trondheim Soloists and recorded in a cathedral (Pure Audio Blu-ray, 2L-106-SABD). The ambience was more enveloping with Auro3D's…
Back in the day, I owned a Sony Walkman cassette player. I loved it. I took it everywhere I went, listening to Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan, Neil Young (with and without Crosby, Stills & Nash), Miles, Coltrane, and more. Having music move around with me seemed a giant step into a more perfect future in which we could color our experiences with sound.
The Walkman adapted over time to play CDs delivering Perfect Sound Forever—until developments in technology and psychoacoustics taught us that what we heard was true: early CD-quality playback was not perfect. You can argue the theoretical…
Setup procedures seemed identical to those of other Classé controllers, so I was able to jump right in using the Sigma SSP's touchscreen or the OSD. The screen's ability to display live video will be particularly convenient when the Sigma SSP is kept in a closet or other remote location. I connected my Oppo BDP-103 universal Blu-ray player, music server, and cable box to the Classé's HDMI inputs and renamed them. The Oppo was also connected to a coax S/PDIF input and a stereo analog input, and the Sigma's RJ45 jack was connected to my home network. For these inputs I created two…
Playback options include a draggable track-progress bar, the standard play/pause, forward, and back buttons, and repeat and shuffle modes. If you swipe the current song's album-cover art, you're presented with its metadata, including its bit depth and sample rate. Overall, I found the Sony app relatively intuitive and easy to use.
Sound
"Autumn Leaves," from Duke Ellington's Indigos and featuring singer Ozzie Bailey (5.6MHz DSD, Columbia/High Definition Tape Transfers), is some seriously silky-smooth goodness. This 1957 stereo recording is like honey for the ears, and the Sony…