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The July Stereophile will include my Follow-Up report on the Joseph Audio Pulsar loudspeakers; the same Pulsars Michael Fremer raved about in his full review. Before I submitted the review, Jana Dagdagan and I made a live binaural recording/video to accompany my written report so you, the reader at home, could experience the exact same recordings in the exact same system in the same room I used to evaluate the Pulsars. Today, therefore, I will only tell you that Jeff Joseph's floor-standing, gloss-white Perspective loudspeakers (15,990 Euros/pair) sounded fuller, deeper, bigger, and richer,…
I am getting near the end of my Munich High End 2018 report and I am already feeling sad for all the rooms with hornspeakers I did not get to experience. What if I missed all the best ones?
I have some cheer though because one of the best ones I definitely did not miss was Stein Music's Top Line Bob XL flagship. The Bob XL is a 90"-high, four-way hornspeaker that costs 128,000 Euros/pair . Each main Top Line speaker tower is accompanied by a separate Bob XL subwoofer tower with eight 18" DSP-controlled active woofers with an amplifier output of 3000W and a cost of 44,000 Euros each. The…
I've been looking at this all wrong.
My recent informal survey of ca $10,000 CD players has been based on two assumptions: that the people reading those reviews would be looking for their last-ever CD player, and that such a purchase would require Serious Money.
In addition to such things as the best available design and parts, the most luxurious enclosure, and the utmost in reliability, Serious Money is presumed to buy durability of value: Any appliance that costs $10,000 today had damn well better be worth more than nothing in five or ten years.
Beyond that—say, 20 or…
I gave the Apollo a mute run-in (footnote 1) for a few days. I'm not convinced that its sound changed all that much from the beginning of the review period to the end, but I'm certain it sounded fuller and more colorful when warmed up for an hour, as opposed to playing CDs immediately after being powered up.
Listening
I began my listening with Liszt's arrangement for piano of Wagner's Tannhäuser overture, performed by Jorge Bolet, from Rediscovered: Liszt Recital (RCA Victor Red Seal 63748-2). The sound wasn't as extended in the bass as I'd expected—eg, a phrase in the left hand at…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: Single-box CD player. Compatible formats: CD (WAV "Red Book"), MP3, WMA. CD-R. Analog output level: 2.15V maximum (minimum load impedance, 10k ohms). Digital output level: 0.5V. Power consumption (115V): 13.5W.
Dimensions: 8.7" (220mm) W by 3.5" (90mm) H by 13.5" (342mm) D. Weight:7 lb (3.2kg).
Finish: Black.
Serial number of unit reviewed: 29040.
Price: $1095. Approximate number of dealers: 120.
Manufacturer: Rega Research Limited, 6 Coopers Way, Temple Farm Industrial Estate, Southend on Sea, Essex SS2 5TE, England, UK. Tel: (…
Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment
Analog Sources: Garrard 301, Thorens TD 124 turntables; Audio-Creative GrooveMaster II, EMT 997 tonearms; EMT TSD 15, Shindo Laboratory SPU pickup heads; Miyajima Laboratory Saboten L, MusiKraft/Denon DL-103 cartridges.
Digital Source: Sony SCD-777 SACD/CD player.
Preamplification: Auditorium 23 Hommage T1 & T2 step-up transformers; Shindo Laboratory Monbrison (2017) preamplifier.
Power Amplifier: Shindo Laboratory Haut-Brion.
Loudspeakers: DeVore Fidelity Orangutan O/93.
Cables: Interconnects: Audio Note AN-Vx, Luna Red, Shindo…
Sidebar 3: Measurements
Like the Naim CD5 XS, which Art Dudley reviewed in the November 2017 issue, the Rega Apollo has no digital inputs of any kind. That limited my measurement of its technical behavior to using 16-bit test files burned to a CD-R. I tested the Rega with my Audio Precision SYS2722 system (see the January 2008 As We See It").
The Rega's error correction was good—no interruptions were apparent in the player's output until the single gaps in the data spiral on the Pierre Verany Digital Test CD reached 1.5mm in length, when there were occasional glitches. (The…
The right thing at the wrong time is the wrong thing.—Joshua Harris
The sampling theory formulated by Claude Shannon in the late 1940s had a key requirement: The signal to be sampled must be band-limited—that is, it must have an absolute upper-frequency limit. With that single constraint, Shannon's work yields a remarkable result: If you sample at twice that rate—two samples per period for the highest frequency the signal contains—you can reproduce that signal perfectly. Perfectly. That result set the foundation for digital audio, right up to the present. Cue the music.
However,…
Austin: What about upward imaging during reconstruction?
Stuart: If properly managed, upward imaging need have no negative impact on the sound, especially if the images are beyond the frequency range of associated electronics or transducers. Nevertheless, MQA applies quite specific constraints, not just to replicate what was heard in the studio but to maintain envelope and slew rate.
Austin: MQA's main claim is that it improves temporal response—hence, sound quality—by removing digital-conversion–induced "timing artifacts." There's less "ringing," and no "pre-echo." Impulse…
Sidebar 1: Improved MQA Encoding
In "Into the Fold," my article on MQA in the February 2018 Stereophile, I presented measurements of a particular MQA file (2L 2L-078) showing that MQA encoding caused the MQA file to differ radically from the unencoded DXD (24/352.8) version, adding significant noise even within the audioband—although, as I noted, I found that difference inaudible. In his "Manufacturer's Comment" in that issue, Bob Stuart said that the file in question "was one of the first to be encoded to MQA (in December 2015)," and "one of a dozen albums that used the early Sphynx2…