It is in 1915 that 30-year old Alban Berg finally heeds the advice of Schoenberg, his longtime mentor, unleashes his talents on full orchestra, and completes his Three Pieces for Orchestra, Op.6. Although the 22-minute composition pays homage to Gustav Mahler (1860–1911) in its use…
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1915. Marcel Duchamp's nude has already descended the staircase, Arnold Schoenberg's Three Orchestral Pieces, Op.16 have shattered tonality, and the old order is crumbling. World War I is well upon us, bringing with it human-caused suffering and destruction on a scale never before experienced in human history.
Featuring Mytek's MQA-equipped Manhattan II D/A preamplifier-headphone amplifier on its cover, our new issue—132 pages of awesome—is jam-packed with good stuff. There are reviews of Ayre's QX-5 Twenty "digital hub," Kii's ground-breaking, DSP-optimized active speaker, amplifiers from Bel Canto and Octave, and preamplifiers from Shindo and Sutherland. Jim Austin interviews Pass Labs' onlie begetter, veteran engineer Nelson Pass. Robert Baird surveys audiophile-quality reissues of horror-film soundtracks. Mikey Fremer visits revitalized SME in the UK. And kicking it all off, Art Dudley condemns…
Art Dudley and Herb Reichert are back! In this third (and final) video conversation that I shot in Art's living room, Art and Herb have a friendly debate about stereo imaging and talk about what matters to them when it comes to the reproduction of music.
I'm a thirty-year-old puppy doing what I'm told And I'm told there's no more coal for the older engines,"—Andy Partridge, "Train Running Low on Soul Coal"
"[We] know the truth of this: We would likely live happily ever after with a system from nearly 60 years ago. An idler-drive turntable, some Marantz electronics, and Quad ESL-57s can be very satisfying. The main improvements to be made are not necessarily in the area of musical enjoyment, but rather boring old reliability."
Charley Hansen of Ayre Acoustics, who made these observations in an e-conversation two years ago, gives…
In equipment reports, I use the phrase forward momentum to refer to something a little deeper and more encompassing than what's meant by that well-worn Brit-fi expression pace, rhythm, and timing (PRaT). Pace refers to the speed at which a piece of music is being played, and the accurate reproduction of that speed requires audio sources with good dynamic pitch stability. (Digital folk always lord it over LP clingers for digital's superior pitch stability.)
Rhythm is a sequential pattern of any kind, and pattern is the building block of musical expression. Rhythm is especially important. I…
I want to share with you not what I heard from this CD, but what I noticed while listening to McDowell play "Shake 'Em On Down," a trance-inducing hill-country blues anthem by Bukka White. Unlike Chicago blues, which usually features guitar or harmonica solos, "Shake 'Em On Down" is groove-based. It begins with a hard-strumming boogie groove that carries the quickly mesmerized listener forward on a steam train of louder-harder-faster strumming, never slowing or backing off until it gently drops that listener off at its final destination. In "Shake 'Em On Down," the force and movement of…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: Digital-to-analog converter, headphone amplifier, line-level control preamplifier. Conversion: PCM to 32-bit/384kHz; MQA (built-in certified hardware MQA decoder); native DSD to DSD256, DXD. Dynamic range: 130dB. Digital inputs: USB 2 Class 2 (OSX, Linux driverless, all formats), AES/EBU, two S/PDIF (PCM to 24/192), TosLink/ADAT, two S/PDIF SDIF3 DSD to DSD256. Analog inputs: line in (RCA), switchable to phono with optional phono card; line in (RCA); balanced line in (XLR). Analog inputs routed through minimal-path, state-of-the-art analog…
Sidebar 2: Associated Components
Digital Sources: Mytek HiFi Brooklyn, Schiit Audio Yggdrasil, Halide DAC HD DACs; Hegel Music Systems Mohican CD player; Integra DPS-7.2 DVD-Audio/CD player.
Preamplification: Bob's Devices CineMag 1131, Dynavector SUP-200, Lounge Audio Copla MC phono step-up devices; Dynavector P75, Lounge Audio LCR Mk.III+, Parasound Halo JC 3+, Tavish Design Adagio phono preamplifiers; Pass Labs HPA-1, PrimaLuna ProLogue Premium preamplifiers.
Power Amplifiers: Bel Canto Design e.One REF600M (monoblocks), First Watt J2, PrimaLuna ProLogue Premium.
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Sidebar 3: Measurements
I measured the Mytek Manhattan II with my Audio Precision SYS2722 system (see the January 2008 As We See It"), using both the Audio Precision's optical and electrical digital outputs and USB data sourced from my MacBook Pro running on battery power with Pure Music 3.0 playing WAV and AIFF test-tone files. Apple's USB Prober utility identified the Mytek as "Manhattan II DAC Control\000" from "Mytek Digital\000," with the serial-number field occupied by "03303-1703-050." The USB port operated in the optimal isochronous asynchronous mode, and Apple's AudioMIDI…
As you can see from the logo above, Stereophile has accepted an invitation to be inducted into the European Imaging and Sound Association (EISA), as the exclusive US member of the EISA's Hi-Fi Expert Group. (At the same time, our sister magazine Sound & Vision was inducted as the exclusive US member of the HT Video Expert Group.) The categories of US and European may seem mutually exclusive; but last May, at the EISA Convention in Antwerp, Belgium, the members supported Paul Miller, EISA president and editor of the UK's Hi-Fi News magazine, in an initiative to take the Association…