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Lamm Industries L2.1 Reference preamplifier Jason Victor Serinus July 2018

Jason Victor Serinus reviewed the Lamm L2.1 Reference preamplifier in July 2018 (Vol.41 No.7):

Sometimes, great components enter our lives with little fanfare. Thus, by happenstance, did Lamm Industries' L2.1 Reference preamplifier ($22,790) end up in my reference system.

The story began at the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show, in Las Vegas, when John Atkinson and I visited Lamm's oversize suite on a high floor of the Venetian Hotel. Our intentions were twofold: to report on what we heard and saw, and to sniff out products for me to review. We found one likely candidate—AQ…

Notorious RBG in Song

Soprano/composer Patrice Michaels with Ruth Bader Ginsburg at Glimmerglass in 2016

First there was the epithet, "Notorious RBG," which NYC law student Shana Knizhnik coined in 2013 (in a sly riff on the name of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's fellow Brooklynite and rapper, The Notorious B.I.G.) as the name of her Tumblr site. Then came Derrick Wang's, Scalia/Ginsburg, an opera based on the odd-bedfellows friendship of two SCOTUS justices and opera lovers from opposite sides of the political spectrum, Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia. During the same time period that the opera…

Music in the Round #92: Digibit Aria Piccolo +

Lovers of high-resolution multichannel sound still don't have it easy. While the two-channel market is replete with snazzy, efficient music servers in stylish boxes, the only multichannel equivalents are Merging Technologies' Merging+Player Multichannel-8, and a handful of stereo devices that are rumored to do multichannel, though no such claims are made in print. To be candid, the latter will play multichannel tracks via USB, Ethernet, or HDMI outputs to suitable DACs (but that's another story), but because they're aimed at the two-channel market, they tend to skimp on the CPU horsepower…

Music in the Round #92: Digibit Aria Piccolo + Page 2

I'm happy to say that DigiBit's Aria Piccolo + is a well-integrated music server that's delightfully capable and easy to use. With suitable attached devices it will play uncompressed (AIFF, WAV) and lossless (ALAC, FLAC) formats up to 32/384 PCM, as well as DXD (32/352.8), DSD64, DSD128, and DSD256 files in glorious multichannel. It was a pleasure to use, and will suit the needs of almost any aficionado of music and multichannel-sound.

Powering the miniDSP U-DAC8
When I reviewed miniDSP's U-DAC8 multichannel USB DAC in September 2015, I found it well worth its price of $299. I used…

Music in the Round #92: Digibit Aria Piccolo + Contacts

Sidebar 1: Contacts

DigiBit, Madrid, Spain. Tel: (34) 915334250. Web: www.ariamusicserver.com. North American distributor: Goerner Audio, 91, 18th Avenue, Deux-Montagnes, Quebec J7R 4A6. Canada. Tel: (514) 833-1977. Web: www.goerneraudio.com

HDPLEX Ltd., 3972 Barranca Parkway, Suite J337, Irvine, CA 92606, Web: www.hdplex.com

Oppo Digital, Inc., 162 Constitution Drive, Menlo Park, CA 94025. Tel: (650) 961-1118. Web: www.oppodigital.com

Music in the Round #92: Digibit Aria Piccolo + Recordings in the Round

Sidebar 2: Recordings in the Round

Schubert: Piano Trio 2, Notturno for Piano & Strings
Trio Alba
Audiomax 9032013 (SACD/CD).

I discovered the second movement of Schubert's Piano Trio 2 in E-flat, D.929, in 1975, when it was used as a stately and insistent motif throughout the film Barry Lyndon. Director Stanley Kubrick said that the piece had "just the right restrained balance between the tragic and the romantic without getting into the headier stuff of later Romanticism." Deeply affected by it, I ran from the theater and purchased a recording, though I no…

Anthem Electronics STR D/A integrated amplifier

Stop me if I've said this before (okay, I have): There's much to be said for integrated amplifiers. While separates have long dominated high-end audio, an increasing number of integrated products not only bundle a preamp and power amp, but sometimes add digital inputs of various flavors, phono stages, bass and treble controls (long on life support in audiophile gear), and more.

It's the "more" that interests me—specifically, the access to equalization that can compensate, at least to some degree, for the inevitable problems created by any listening room of domestic size, particularly in…

Anthem Electronics STR D/A integrated amplifier Page 2

There are four different Profiles, into which you can load different speaker setups; eg, with and without a subwoofer. Since I didn't use a sub, I used only a single Profile. But the manual uses the words profile and configuration (or config) synonymously, which can be confusing. And while it also isn't made entirely clear, the same input can be configured in different ways with different names. For example, I set up two separately named configurations for Coax 1, the input I used 99% of the time: one with ARC on, the other with ARC off. This made switching between them, for comparisons,…

Anthem Electronics STR D/A integrated amplifier Specifications

Sidebar 1: Specifications

Description: Solid-state, class-AB integrated amplifier with Anthem Room Correction (ARC). Analog audio inputs: 4 unbalanced (RCA), 1 balanced (XLR), 2 phono (MC, MM). Digital audio inputs: 2 S/PDIF (RCA), 2 S/PDIF (TosLink), 1 USB, 1 AES/EBU (XLR). Preamplifier outputs: variable, fixed, subwoofer (all RCA). Communication (updates & control): USB, mini USB, Ethernet RJ-45, RS-232, IR in, 12V trigger out. Digital input sample rates: USB: PCM 32/384, DSD at 2.8MHz & 5.6MHz. HDMI & S/PDIF: PCM 24/192. Internal digital processing: 32/192. Power output (…

Anthem Electronics STR D/A integrated amplifier Associated Equipment

Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment

Digital Source: Marantz UD7007 universal BD player.
Preamplification: Marantz AV8802A surround processor.
Loudspeakers: Energy Veritas V2.8, Monitor Audio Silver 10.
Cables: Digital: AudioQuest Coffee (USB), Kimber Kable AGDL (coaxial). Speaker: AudioQuest Rocket 88. AC: manufacturers' own.—Thomas J. Norton