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After years playing musical instruments, I have finally gotten adept at tapping three beats in the bar with one hand against four in the other; on a good day with the wind behind me, I can even manage five against four. But most days, the tapping quickly degenerates into an arrhythmic mess. Similarly, good amplifiers and speakers can preserve polyrhythmic intricacies in music after lesser products have stopped making musical sense. The underlying groove of "Ascension Day," from Talk Talk's Laughing Stock (16/44.1 rip from UK CD, Verve 847-717-2), was recorded in a fairly reverberant space…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: Remote-controlled, network-connected D/A integrated amplifier. Standard: Analog inputs: 2 pairs RCA (line), 1 pair RCA (phono). Digital input: USB Type B. Analog outputs: 1 pair unbalanced (RCA), 1¼" stereo headphone jack, 4 pairs speaker binding posts. Digital outputs: 1 TosLink, 1 coaxial S/PDIF. Optional modules included on review sample: MDC DD S/PDIF provides AES/EBU, 2 TosLink, 2 coaxial S/PDIF; MDC DD-BluOS provides Bluetooth, Ethernet, 2 USB Type A. Supported file formats: MP3, AAC, WMA, OGG, WMA-L, FLAC, ALAC, WAV, AIFF, MQA. Supported…
Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment
Digital Sources: NAD Masters Series M50.2, Roon Nucleus+ digital players; Mac mini laptop running Roon 1.3, iPad mini running Roon, Bluesound apps; Meridian 518 format converter; Ayre Acoustics C-5xeMP disc player.
Integrated Amplifier: Luxman L-509X.
Power Amplifiers: Lamm M1.2 Reference monoblocks.
Loudspeakers: KEF LS50, Rogers LS3/5a, Sonus Faber Guarneri Tradition, TAD ME1, GoldenEar Technology Triton Reference, Wilson Audio Specialties Alexia 2.
Cables: Digital: AudioQuest Coffee (USB) & Vodka (Ethernet), Canare (15', AES/EBU), DH…
Sidebar 3: Measurements
I measured the Masters Series M32 DirectDigital using my Audio Precision SYS2722 system (see the January 2008 "As We See It"). Usually, before I test an amplifier, I precondition it with both channels driving a 1kHz tone at one-third power into 8 ohms for an hour. This thermally stresses an amplifier with a conventional class-AB output stage, but as the NAD is a class-D design, this wasn't appropriate. Even so, before doing any testing I ran it for an hour at a moderate power level, to ensure that it was fully warmed up. Because class-D amplifiers emit relatively…
Constellation’s Irv Gross (right) welcomes Jason to the Precision Audio room.
On Saturday April 14, I followed Jason Victor Serinus around AXPONA with my video camera while he played recordings from MA and John Atkinson.
We first visited a room hosted by retailer Precision Audio featuring MartinLogan Renaissance ESL 15A loudspeakers ($24,995/pair), a Continuum Audio Labs Obsidian turntable ($35,000) with Viper tonearm ($10,000), Constellation Audio Taurus monoblock power amplifiers ($39,000/pair), a Constellation Andromeda phono stage ($18,000), a Constellation Pictor…
In a definite sign of the times, Sony Classical is poised to bring the 60-year old classic RCA Victor Living Stereo series to streaming, hi-rez download, and social media platforms. Beginning on Friday April 27, and lasting for two months, Living Stereo playlists—Living Stereo Spectaculars, Living Stereo Top 50, and Living Stereo Deep Cuts among them—will stream on Apple Music, Spotify, and Deezer.
Since Sony also lists HDTracks as a source for its catalog, I presume that it, too, would have been listed as a streaming site had its long-anticipated streaming service actually launched in…
Cellist Antonio Lysy, whose Yarlung Records recording Antonio Lysy at the Broad won a Latin Grammy for its inclusion of Lalo Schifrin's song "Pampas," has returned with a unique recording of South American-connected compositions and arrangements. Aptly titled South America (YAR80167DSD), the nine compositions honor Astor Piazzolla, Heitor Villa-Lobos, Carlos Gardel, Antonio's violinist father Alberto Lysy, and Argentine bandoneon master Coco Trivisonno. There's even some Brazilian-tinged J.S. Bach and a work by Spanish cellist Pablo Casals.
I'm not sure chicken soup is an appropriate…
For some years now, I've tried to free myself from playing physical media and get all my music organized on a server. It's not that I don't enjoy handling and playing discs, but it's almost impossible to keep track of them. When my collection was only a thousand or two LPs, I felt I could remember each one individually. But now I have several times that many silver discs, and I know I can't.
The fundamental issues are those of filing the music and then finding the music. It's easy to file a compilation disc like Red Hot + Blue: A Tribute to Cole Porter on a shelf under "Collections," and…
Their front panels aside, the Halos A 52+ and A 51 look different. Most noticeable is the A 52+'s three-sided wrap, stamped from lightweight metal. Nonetheless, that cover wasn't resonant when in place, and when I removed it, I saw a high level of component quality, including substantial heatsinks. The rear panel is cleanly laid out in modular fashion; each of the five channels has, vertically arrayed from top to bottom: a balanced input (XLR), an unbalanced input (RCA), and a pair of multiway speaker connectors. The connections for the five channels are arrayed from left to right, with the…
When I reviewed the Mark Levinson No.536 monoblock, I said that its sound quality was second to none. However, its stratospheric price of $30,000/pair unnerved me—only seven of the 35 top-rated solid-state power amplifiers listed in the April 2017 edition of Stereophile's "Recommended Components" cost more, and a similar number (not the same models) deliver more power into 8 ohms. "But don't despair," I wrote—"Mark Levinson has just released a less expensive version of the No.536: the dual-mono, 250Wpc No.534 stereo amp ($20,000)." I requested a review sample of the No.534, to see if it…