I first met Enzo in the early 1980s. While he played an important role is establishing US high-end brands in Europe—his company, Audio Natali, founded in 1959, distributes Audio Research, Krell, Dan D'Agostino, Transparent, VTL, Ayre, Wilson,…
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Just a brief comment to note the passing on Saturday August 11 of Italian audio distributor Enzo Natali, pictured at the 2012 CES second from left above with UK distributor Ricardo Franassovici (left) and Enzo's two sons Luca and Marco (right and far right). (My thanks to Ricardo for allowing me to publish both this picture and the one below.)
The guitarist John Abercrombie's latest, Within a Song (on ECM) is something of a high-wire act: delicate music of an uninsistent intensity, a quiet swing, that hangs together or collapses on the ensemble's sustenance of balance. The musicians here—Joe Lovano on tenor sax, Drew Gress on bass, Joey Baron on drums—are masters at this sort of thing (and many other things too), and so it's a riveting album. Even when they coast, swish, and twirl along the slightest thread, you're carried along (or I was anyway).
Abercrombie is of the Jim Hall school of jazz electric guitar: low-key, single-…
Over at AudioStream, my man Michael Lavorgna mentions Diogenes: Digital Home for Experimental Music. I stumbled upon the site yesterday. Thinking that ML would love it, I forwarded the link to him immediately. I was right!
For the adventurous music lover who craves new, unusual sounds—stuff that might challenge, that might delight, and that will certainly expand your mind—and for the audiophile who primarily uses a computer as a source, Diogenes is an online heaven.
And don’t let the name scare you away. Diogenes isn’t all noise, though there is a lot of that. You…
"Grand Integra" is the name Onkyo has given to its line of perfectionist-oriented audio products, and the M-508 is the cheaper of Onkyo's two Grand Integra power amplifiers. (The flagship model is the $4200 M-510, reviewed by Larry Greenhill in Vol.8 No.8, featuring "high current capability," and rated at 300W continuous per channel.)
The rather bulky, but surprisingly lightweight (for its size and power) M-508 is a true dual-mono design, consisting essentially of two completely separate amplifiers on a single chassis. That it is not designed for outstandingly high current capability is…
Sidebar: Specifications
Description: Dual-mono, single-chassis, class-AB power amplifier. Rated power: 200W into 8 ohms. Power bandwidth: 20Hz-20kHz. THD at rated output: 0.003%.
Dimensions: 18.25" (with wood end panels) by 7.25" H by 17" D. Weight: 55 lbs.
Price: $1150 (1987); no longer available (2012).
Manufacturer: Onkyo USA Corporation, 18 Park Way, Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. Tel: (800) 229-1687. Fax: 201-785-2650. Web: www.onkyousa.com.
With the introduction of Audio Alchemy's Digital Transmission Interface (DTI) more than three years ago, the company created an entirely new category of hi-fi product: the jitter filter. The original DTI was a good start, but didn't always improve the sound of the better-quality digital front-ends.
The DTIPro, released 18 months later, bore little similarity to the rather simple DTI. The Pro added a more sophisticated dual Phase-Locked Loop (PLL) input receiver for much lower jitter, and also performed a new type of Digital Signal Processing (DSP) that Audio Alchemy called "Resolution…
Setting up the DTIPro 32 and choosing its output word length requires the owner's manual; there's no direct readout of the 32's operating status. You must instead interpret a code provided by the three power-indicating LEDs. For example, 20-bit output is indicated by illumination of only the bottom two LEDs. Without the owner's manual (or a great memory), you won't be able to correctly set up the Pro 32 for your system.
To change the output word length, press and hold the "Phase" button until the three power-indicating LEDs switch from power indication to operational status indication…
Sidebar 1: Review System
Most of my experience with the DTIPro 32 was in my usual system, consisting of a Sonic Frontiers SFL-2 preamplifier driving a pair of Audio Research VT150 monoblock power amplifiers. Loudspeakers were Genesis II.5s, whose woofers were driven by an integral servo power amplifier. Interconnects in the Sonic Frontiers/ARC/Genesis system were AudioQuest Lapis, Diamond X3, and Wire World Gold Eclipse, and loudspeaker cables were short runs of AudioQuest Dragon II.
Digital front-ends with which I tried the DTIPro 32 include the Mark Levinson No.31 and Sonic…
Sidebar 2: Measurements
I started by looking at the DTIPro 32's effect on low-level signals alternately in bypass mode, and then with the Resolution Enhancement processing engaged. I performed wideband third-octave spectral analysis, waveform capture, and FFT-derived spectral analysis on a variety of signals, but saw no difference in the noise level, noise-floor spectrum, or even the presence of dither. I also tried to measure the DTIPro 32's effect by looking at the output of the DDE v3 processor with and without the DTIPro 32 in the signal path. Again, the DDE v3's low-level…
Sidebar 3: Specifications
Description: Jitter filter and resolution-enhancement device. Inputs: S/PDIF coaxial on BNC, S/PDIF TosLink optical, I2S bus (ST-type optical optional). Outputs: S/PDIF coaxial on BNC, I2S, AES/EBU, ST-Type optical. Output word length: 16, 18, 20, 22, 24 bits (user-selectable).
Dimensions: 8.5" W by 2" H by 7" D. Weight: 7 lbs (shipping).
Serial number of unit tested: 83317.
Price: $1595. Approximate number of dealers: 180.
Manufacturer: Audio Alchemy Inc., Westlake Village, CA 91362 (1996). Company no longer in existence (2012).