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Our June 2014 issue is now on newsstands, with MBL's cool-running, hot-sounding Corona C15 amplifier on its cover. The C15 combines a class-D output stage with a hefty linear power supply to produce performance that finally convinced John Atkinson that class-D designs need not produce compromised sound quality. JA also outs his hearing ability on the line by reviewing EnigmAcoustics' cost-no-object electrostatic supertweeter. The bulk of the Sopranino's output lies above the venerable JA's hearing limit, so did he hear any improvement? Read the review to find out.
In 1995, Harry Weisfeld's son Jonathan was killed in an automobile accident. Jonathan was a charismatic young man whom I had come to know—a genuinely gifted artist and musician who, at the time of his death, was helping his father develop the tonearm that would be named for him: the JMW Memorial Arm. The design of the original JMW Memorial Arm focused on providing easily adjustable and repeatable VTA and SRA via a massive threaded tower that bolted to the plinth. The bearing point, on the other hand, sat near the end of a relatively long and not particularly rigid metal platform cantilevered…
Sidebar: Specifications
Description: 12" unipivot tonearm.
Price: $3000.
Manufacturer: VPI Industries, Inc., 77 Cliffwood Ave. #3B, Cliffwood, NJ 07721. Tel: (732) 583-6895. Web: www.vpiindustries.com.
VPI Industries' Harry Weisfeld has tried, built, and marketed almost every known way of spinning a platter. He began in the early 1980s, before many recent turntable enthusiasts were born, with the belt-driven HW-19, and since then has produced rim-driven models, and 'tables with motors outboard or inboard, one or three pulleys, one or three belts, and platters of acrylic or aluminum alloy. But while Weisfeld has owned quite a few direct-drive 'tables, he'd never come up with his own—until now.
The heart of VPI's new Classic Direct Drive turntable is its motor. Like other turntable makers…
In a follow-up call, Weisfeld explained that he'd at first thought the way to go was decoupling, presumably to prevent the platter-spinning module from exciting resonances in the plinth. However, it's hard to see how those rubber grommets—just thin wafers—could actually perform that degree of isolation, any more than a thin sleeve of stiff plastic actually decouples a tonearm's counterweight from the stub it rides on. On the other hand, it's easy to see how the grommets could prevent the tight coupling of motor and plinth.
In any case, as good as I'd thought the VPI Classic Direct…
Sidebar 1: The RIAA Curve
From the perspective of today's complex, high-tech world, a turntable seems to be a relatively simple, almost primitive device that uses 19th-century technology to make a platter rotate on a bearing at a specific speed.
From afar, a spinning platter is a spinning platter, and if a tonearm and cartridge can travel without a hiccup from lead-in to lead-out groove, well, mission accomplished. But if it's that simple, why do all turntables sound different from one another? Can we all agree that they do? That we don't need to "prove" this with double-blind A/…
Sidebar 2: The Attraction of Direct Drive
Drive the platter directly at the correct speed and you're done. So simple—why didn't Technics think of it? They did, in 1969, with the SP-10, still considered one of the finest of the genre. Throughout the 1970s, the "golden era" of super-turntable designs, many Japanese manufacturers followed suit. Platters became coil holders (rotors), and so an actual part of the motor. Add servo circuitry that constantly fed back speed information to an "electronic brain," and you theoretically had a high-torque turntable that always ran at the perfect speed…
Sidebar 3: Specifications
Description :Direct-drive turntable with outboard power supply.
Dimensions: 23.5" wide by 17.5" deep.
Price: $30,000 inlcuding JMW Classic 3D tonearm.
Manufacturer: VPI Industries, Inc., 77 Cliffwood Ave. #3B, Cliffwood, NJ 07721. Tel: (732) 583-6895. Web: www.vpiindustries.com
The first bit of music I heard at the Munich show—officially known High End 2014—was utterly lacking in soundstage depth, imaging precision, and transparency: It was actual music, courtesy of the Bavarian brass/accordion ensemble Unterbiberger Hofmusik, who performed just inside the main entranceway of the Munich MOC. (To the surprise of everyone, the morning dawned too cold for an outdoors performance.) It was a big, colorful beginning to this uniquely big, colorful show.
I scarcely knew where to begin—and so, upon getting hold of my press badge, I wandered into the nearest of…
How good does it get? I think I'm closer to having an answer to that one.
I'm a person of faith, and I do try my best to sin as little as possible. Yet within 10 seconds of entering the Silbatone Audio room—seconds occasioned by a multisensory experience as shocking as it was pleasant—the first words that escaped my lips were "Jesus tap-dancing Christ on a cracker." I was hearing Maria Callas sing an aria from an Italian opera unknown to me; I was seeing a long wall of enormous loudspeakers, the largest of which was a pair of exceedingly rare Western Electric 13A horns made for Warner…