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…
Sidebar: Specifications
Description: Solid-state stereo power amplifier. Inputs: 2 unbalanced (RCA), 2 balanced (XLR). Outputs: 2 pairs Hurricane spade connectors with banana-plug sockets (not available on 230V models). Power output (20Hz–20kHz, 0.25% THD+N): 250Wpc into 8 ohms (25.5dBW),. Frequency response: 10Hz–20kHz, ±0.05dB. Input sensitivity: 2.83V RMS output for 150mV input. Input impedance: 60k ohms (balanced), 30k ohms (unbalanced). Output impedance: 0.054 ohm, 20Hz–1kHz; 0.055 ohm at 5Hz; 0.056 ohm at 10Hz; 0.59 ohm at 20kHz. Signal/noise: >85dB, ref. level 2.83V RMS.…
A selection of gear from Gryphon Audio Designs, the Danish firm founded some 33 years ago by Flemming Rasmussen, will be introduced to listeners at a special event on Thursday, May 3, at The Sound Environment, 11021 Elm Street, Omaha, NE. On hand will be a selection of Gryphon electronics—including their Diablo 120 and Diablo 300 integrated amplifiers, Colosseum stereo class-A amplifier, Pandora preamplifier, Legato phono stage, and Scorpio S CD player—as well as Wilson Audio Alexx speakers, a TechDAS Air Force 3 turntable, and a full Vivaldi stack from digital specialists dCS. Philip O'…
The Final Tour, Volume 6 of Columbia Legacy's Miles Davis Bootleg Series—documenting Miles' quintet, featuring John Coltrane, live in Europe in March 1960—is one of the most revelatory new-old jazz albums in recent years. Of the five concerts on the 4-CD boxed set, one of them—the March 24 date in Copenhagen—is now out on 180-gram LP, and not only is the music thrilling, the sound quality is extraordinary: as vibrant as just about any live album in the Miles catalog.
The concerts took place one year after the band recorded Kind of Blue, but, though they play two of the songs from that…
We're well past the day when the sound of top-tier tube amplifiers can be described as "syrupy" or "too warm" or producing "soft bass." Equally true, solid-state designs have reached a level of maturity at which "sweetness," "fluidity," and "flow" are similarly applicable descriptors, thus smashing the cliché of "cold transistor sound."
One high-end audio manufacturer, resourceful in both tube and solid-state designs, has weathered selloffs, acquisitions, and fickle audiophile demands to create beautiful, enduring audio art under a name synonymous with Japanese high-end audio supremacy:…
