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It's often said that audio design involves tradeoffs. But what differentiates good design tradeoffs from the indifferent and the bad? In my opinion, this has to do with the relationship between "revealingness" and "forgivingness."

By "revealingness" I mean the component's ability to pass on the information in the source material in complete, unexpurgated detail. Lewis Lipnick has used the expression "ruthlessly revealing" to describe a particular component that he felt had a lot of this characteristic. We all know components like that:…

Analog front end: Lingo'd Linn, Ittok, and AudioQuest AQ7000, replaced in the latter half of the review period by the new AQ7000nsx (footnote 1), which, believe it or not, is even better than the cartridge it supplants. Digital: McCormack Signature (footnote 2) CD player, and, for most of the listening, the same player acting as transport, feeding a PS Audio UltraLink via TARA Labs Digimaster coax. Late in the auditioning period, I had to return the McCormack Signature to its manufacturer, and so had to regress to using my old Philips CD-650 as transport. Don't…

I measured the Unity Signature 1 with serial number 4405051. The Signature 1's impedance magnitude and phase are shown in fig.1. The cursor position—2.7 ohms at 138Hz—reveals the speaker to be a very demanding load; although RD didn't have sonic problems with his low-powered Luxman tube amps other than limited loudness, I suspect that this speaker will generally work much better with good, current-capable, solid-state designs. The large difference in impedance below and above 1kHz means that the speaker will tend to sound uptilted in response with an amplifier…

Description: Three-way, ported, floorstanding loudspeaker. Drive-units: 1" silk dome tweeter, 7" cone midrange, downward-firing 10" cast-frame woofer. Crossover frequencies: 155Hz, 2.4kHz, 18dB/octave. Frequency response: 34–20kHz ±2dB. Sensitivity: 90dB/W/m. Impedance: 8 ohms nominal, 7 ohms minimum. Amplifier requirements: 30-100W.
Dimensions: 44" H by 9" W by 9" D. Weight: 58 lbs.
Serial numbers of units tested: 4405051 & '5052.
Price: $2995–$3295/pair depending on finish; $250 for bi-wiring (1993); no longer available (2017). Approximate…

The speakers were positioned for the best sound (with only one pair of loudspeakers in the listening room at a time), generally some 4' from the rear wall (which is faced with books and LPs) and approximately 5' from the side walls (which also have bookshelves covering some of their surfaces). Source components consisted of a Revox A77 to play my own and others' 15ips master tapes, a Linn Linn Sondek/Ekos/Troikasetup sitting on a Sound Organisation table to play LPs, and Kinergetics KCD-40 and Proceed CD players. Amplification consisted of a Mark Levinson No.25…

I use a mixture of nearfield, in-room, and quasi-anechoic FFT techniques (using the MLSSA system from DRA Labs described elsewhere in this issue) to investigate objective factors that might explain the sound heard. The speakers' impedance phase and amplitude were measured using the magazine's Audio Precision System One.

Looking first at the Speedscreen's impedance, its magnitude (solid line) and phase (dashed line) are shown in fig.1. Only dropping below 6 ohms in the presence region, this is an easy load for any amplifier to drive. The tuning is of the…

Description: Three-way, floor-standing loudspeaker with passive bass radiator. Drive-units: ribbon tweeter, 1.4" (36mm) soft-dome midrange unit, 8" polypropylene-cone woofer, 12" passive bass radiator. Crossover frequencies: 600Hz, 9.5kHz. Crossover slopes: 6dB/octave, 12dB/octave. Frequency response: 30Hz&#150—0kHz &#177—dB. Sensitivity: 88dB/W/m. Nominal impedance: 8 ohms. Amplifier requirements: up to 250W.
Dimensions: 48" H by 19" W by 5" D (base is 12" deep). Weight: 60 lbs each.
Finishes available: oak veneer or black, with a black grille…

This video attempts to capture the essence of Stereophile writer and audio industry veteran Herb Reichert—at least as much as is possible in a 10-minute, streamed video. The lighting, background music, and close-up frames, were all stylistic choices chosen to offer the most accurate representation of Herb's personality and philosophy possible.

In doing so, we…

But wait, there's more in this 196-page issue: Focal's awesome Sopra No.3 floorstander takes pride of place on the cover, with bookshelf speakers from DeVore Fidelity and Dynaudio joining it in the review section, along with amplification from AVM, CH Precision, Classé, Gamut, and Music First and high-end headphones from HiFi Man and Thinksound.