Talk about your genius half–rhymes! Although he’s best known as the raspy voice and gritty songwriter behind “Across 110th Street,” the title track to a fairly forgettable blaxploitation film of the same name, whose fame was revived by Quentin Tarantino in his 1997 film Jackie Brown, Bobby Womack who died on Friday at the age of 70, will go down as one of the finest, if undervalued soul singers of his or any other generation. Womack who’d survived a number of health problems…
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“You don't know what you'll do until you're put under pressure.
Across 110th Street is a hell of a tester.”
New York's CE Week occurs every June and is a miniature version of the January CES held in Las Vegas. The proportional representation of serious audio gear is similar but, given the small number of total exhibits, audio pickings are usually very thin. This year, however, there was more audio buzz than ever before.
First, there was a panel discussion "Making High Resolution Audio Accessible," which was an updated iteration a similar event held last January in which industry representatives discussed marketing strategies for high resolution audio. However, this time, it was preceded by an…
It's going to happen very soon.—Leonard Cohen, "The Great Event"
With a parts list that includes 18 new-old-stock Black Cat capacitors, 16 vintage-style Cosmos potentiometers, two Tango chokes, one Tango power transformer, and some of the loveliest steel casework I've seen on a contemporary product, no one could accuse Noriyuki Miyajima of skimping on the build quality of his company's only power amplifier, the Miyajima Laboratory Model 2010 ($9995, footnote 1). Then again, because the 2010 is an output-transformerless (OTL) tube amplifier, Miyajima-san spent considerably less on iron…
In an unusually good-sounding Russian recording of excerpts from Prokofiev's Cinderella (LP, Melodiya C 01381-2, with Gennadi Rozhdestvensky conducting the Moscow Radio Large Symphony Orchestra) every pizzicato was a burst of intensity, every note in the harps and double basses a deep, colorful thrum—and every melody an object of fascination. And in "Still There'll Be More," from Procol Harum's Home (LP, Regal Zonophone SLRZ 1014), Chris Copping's unusually resonant electric bass and the ever-inventive drumming of the late B.J. Wilson seemed locked together, temporally and dynamically, as…
I'm the editor of AudioStream.com, Stereophile's sister website devoted to computer audio. We review all manner of hardware, software, and music related to file-based playback, and offer helpful (we hope) "How To" articles as well as interviews with industry people—all designed to ease your journey to and through the world of computer audio. I envision my new Stereophile column, "Audio Streams," as an extension of this mission—and the addition of that trailing, plural s gives me some leeway to explore a wider range of hi-fi topics.
One of the main benefits of computer audio is that…
You can connect the Powernode to your network via Ethernet or WiFi. Since WiFi sound quality is dictated by a number of variables, including signal strength and network traffic, it's difficult to ensure perfect playback. At its worst, a poor WiFi connection will cause dropouts during play, which I find unacceptable. One way to help ensure WiFi quality is to get a dual-band WiFi router and dedicate one band to music.
Bluesound Node ($449)
The Bluesound Node is similar to the Powernode but even smaller (8" W by 5.7" H by 6.5" D). It comprises a network player and a 24/192-capable…
In the summer of 1999, Sony held a press event in New York City to mark the introduction of the Super Audio Compact Disc, then the sole domestic embodiment of the Direct Stream Digital (DSD) technology, jointly developed by Sony and Philips. The new format was hailed, in prepared remarks, by an impressive list of audio and music dignitaries: Nobuyuki Idei, then president of Sony Corporation; Steven Epstein, senior executive producer for Sony Classical; Yo-Yo Ma, appearing in a video created for the event; and Wynton Marsalis, appearing in person. All of the speeches—every single one of them…
For example, with Elton John's "First Episode at Hienton," from his eponymous second album (24/96 download, Mercury/HDtracks)—a guilty pleasure, I know, but please humor me and play along—the Luxman DA-06 allowed the piano to sound commendably rich and timbrally saturated. John's voice was appropriately fleshed out, and I was pleased that vocal sibilants were slightly tamer than I usually hear from this high-resolution download. I noted an almost identical set of characteristics in "Willow, Weep for Me," from a CD rip of Frank Sinatra's Only the Lonely (Capitol/Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: Single-box digital-to-analog converter. Formats supported: all PCM and DSD codecs (AIFF, WAV, DSF, etc.). S/PDIF, AES-3, and optical sampling rates supported: 32, 44.1, 48, 88.2, 96, 176.4, 192kHz. USB sampling rates supported: the preceding, plus 352.8kHz, 382kHz, 2.8224MHz (1-bit), 5.6448MHz (1-bit). Digital inputs: USB Type B, S/PDIF (RCA), AES-3 (XLR), optical (TosLink). Analog outputs: single-ended (RCA), balanced (XLR). Maximum output voltage: 2.5V. Output impedance: 300 ohms single-ended, 600 ohms balanced. Signal/noise: 124dB. Channel…
The year: 1999. The city: Minneapolis. While taking a break from partying with Prince like it was, well . . . that year, I wandered into a local audio emporium to see what new and exciting goodies were on display. Set up in a large listening room, attached to the latest Mark Levinson gear, were Revel's original Ultima Studio loudspeakers. I sat down, gave them a listen, and heard the best sound I had yet heard. For the first time, it seemed to me that I was listening to an audio system that played with low distortion and little coloration. Also, the system's wide dispersion threw a huge…