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Nelson Pass is a consummate engineer, but he got his start in physics, earning a bachelor's degree from UC Davis. As he worked on his degree, he was already an audio designer, focusing on loudspeakers—great training for a designer of audio amplifiers. Soon, in 1974, he cofounded Threshold Audio with René Besne, of audio and folk-dancing fame; their goal was to build electronics, partly because the field is less competitive—it's harder than building speakers. As he told Thomas J. Norton in "Simple Sounds Better," an interview in the November 1991 issue of Stereophile, Pass created one of the…
We have gain devices; basic topologies; values of the many passive components, like resistors, capacitors and inductors; classes of operation (bias points and load lines); and a host of other details—but it's more about process. Because I personally do not have anyone dictating the desired results—lucky me—I often start with a consideration of the gain devices themselves, as their characteristics suggest the best or most interesting circuits that might play to their strengths.
I lean toward class-A because it makes the process smoother—again, no boss—and I work on individual gain stages…
Michael Newman—Classical Guitarist
Sheffield Lab 10 (LP). Lincoln Mayorga, prod.; Doug Sax, eng., prod.
Sheffield Lab 10 (LP). Lincoln Mayorga, prod.; Doug Sax, eng., prod.
Mr. Newman's program comprises Bach's "Chaconne" from the Violin Partita No.2 in d, Albeniz's Torre Bermeja, Turina's Fandanquillo, and Eduardo Sainz de la Maza's Campanas del Alba. This is simply gorgeous. The most perfect guitar recording to date. BUY IT!!!!—Margaret Graham
Long ago, I stopped associating Act II of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake with dancing. Now, every time I hear it, I immediately flash on broken battlements, a black cape, and Béla Lugosi's unmistakable Hungarian accent: "Listen to them—cheelllldreennn of dee night. What muuuusic they make!"
Then there were James Bernard's tense scores for the Hammer films—like Dracula: Prince of Darkness (1966), starring Christopher Lee—that my parents somehow let me see in a theater when I was seven, as part of an afternoon of bargain monster movies that included all the sourballs and unbuttered popcorn you…
It's time to fulfill my promise to write about Playback Designs' Sonoma Syrah music server and Sonoma Merlot DAC. It all began when I asked Playback's founder and CEO, engineer Andreas Koch, when he plans to produce a multichannel digital-to-analog converter—a question I've put to so many other manufacturers. He said that he already had a multichannel system on the drawing board, and not just a DAC. Our e-mail exchange culminated in his announcement of the Playback Designs USB-XIII Digital Interface, to be used between a USB source component and as many as three DACs via PLink, Playback's…
The other option is to connect the USB-XIII and the Merlots directly to the Baetis server via USB and use Playback's ASIO driver (footnote 3). This worked beautifully, and quickly became my preferred configuration for ease of use and musical enjoyment. It also let me make A/B comparisons with the exaSound e38 D/A processor by linking the outputs to the two DAC setups and using input switching on the preamp. The differences weren't huge, and less than I'd expected, but they were in favor of the Playback setup. Soundstage detail was equal, but the exaSound's was a bit more forward; the…
Kalman Rubinson returned to Roon v.1.3 in September 2017 (Vol.40 No.9):
The Roon music-management and -playback system is no longer new (footnote 1). Its history, from its roots in Sooloos and Meridian, is outlined in Jon Iverson's review of Roon v.1.0 in the October 2015 issue. At the time, I found Roon intriguing but frustrating, primarily because it lacked support for multichannel audio. But in the last two years Roon has been improved and extended, driven in part by a lively user website that's supported by the active participation of company personnel. Turns out I wasn't the only one…
In football there's a saying to describe an unexpected outcome: "That why they play the games."
The recorded music equivalent might be "That's why you have to listen to the records." Much as you might be tempted to gaze at the cover art, remember a band's last record or think about the one time you saw them live and they really blew it, prejudging can be dangerous. In the end, you still gotta listen.
So there I was, waving around a CD copy of Pop Art Live, by 1970s power pop band, The Raspberries about to launch into a tirade about how most bands from the '70s should just stop.…
Who is Michael Lavorgna?
What is AudioStream.com?
What is AudioStream.com?
This video is the answer to all of your questions.
Warner's 5-CD box set, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf: The Complete 78 rpm Recordings 1946–1952 is a vocal lover's dream. Filled with recordings made when the soprano was between 30 and 37 years of age—she was born December 9, 1915—this bargain bonanza confirms that Schwarzkopf's oft-brilliant, sometimes outré interpretations of art song and opera were an essential part of her artistic personality from the get-go.
The brilliance of Schwarzkopf' instrument, and the magic of her sweet head tones, was already in place when the first of these recordings was made. In fact, listening to these new…