The success of expensive tube units, however, has prompted a number of manufacturers to offer "budget" tube preamplifiers. Though still not cheap, they come in at prices…
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Once upon a time, all audio equipment used vacuum tubes. In recent years, however, tubes have become the exclusive province of super high-end audio. It is more expensive to accomplish any particular task with tubes than with transistors, and few manufacturers (with the exception of Conrad-Johnson) seemed willing until now to refine their techniques and pare back their budgets to make tube components more affordable.
Sidebar: Specifications
Description: Stereo vacuum tube preamplifier. Inputs for moving-magnet phono (MM), Aux, and Tape. Mute switch, remote power supply. Separate volume controls for each channel, no balance control.
Price: $450 (1984); no longer available (2018).
Manufacturer: Audible Illusions, San Jose, CA 95126 (1984). Distributor: Apax Marketing, Castro Valley, CA 94546. (1984); Audible Illusions, PO Box 2537, Daytona Beach, FL 32115. Tel: (386) 676-2004. Fax: (386) 676-0042. Web: www.audibleillusions.com.
Why the title, "Prokofiev for Two and a Half," for a Deutsche Grammophon recording on which Martha Argerich and Sergei Babayan play Babayan's two-piano transcriptions of music from Prokofiev's ballet Romeo & Juliet and four of his operas? Because any recording that features the outsized pianism of the great Argerich immediately becomes one of extraordinary importance for artistic resources that are inherently doubled by at least 50%.
Okay. I may have engaged in a bit of hyperbole here. But the importance of Prokofiev for Two is highlighted by the fact that DG has released it in three…
The author demonstrating stereo microphone techniques at an English audio show in 1981.
For most people the terms hi-fi and stereo are synonymous, and yet it is clear that there is still a great deal of confusion over what the word "stereo" actually means. There isn't even a consensus of opinion amongst producers of records, designers of hi-fi equipment, audio critics and music lovers as to the purpose of stereo, and considering that the arguments show no sign of diminishing in intensity, it is instructive to realise that 1981 sees both the 100th anniversary of Clement Ader's first stereo…
This position is philosophically untenable: to involve the concepts of "accuracy" and "realism" must be fallacious when discussing just one component in the reproduction chain, because you then introduce another variable: the quality of program material. If you are to assess the imaging properties of a pair of loudspeakers using music program with subjective reference to the live experience, you must know how well the stereo aspect of that live experience has been preserved on your two information channels. But you only have access to that information by listening to the program on…
Multi-Mono Stereo Recording
But, to get back to the theme of this article, how can these voltage ratios be derived? The most basic way is to take a monophonic signal and assign a voltage ratio to it by "panning" it to a position with a "panpot." This gives an image with unambiguous positioning and this panpotted multi-mono image is to be heard on any rock recording. Though it doesn't have positioning anomalies, it is no more than a slightly more complicated version of the notorious "now it's here—now it's there" ping-pong recordings of the late '50s. Despite effects such as artificial…
But, to get back to the theme of this article, how can these voltage ratios be derived? The most basic way is to take a monophonic signal and assign a voltage ratio to it by "panning" it to a position with a "panpot." This gives an image with unambiguous positioning and this panpotted multi-mono image is to be heard on any rock recording. Though it doesn't have positioning anomalies, it is no more than a slightly more complicated version of the notorious "now it's here—now it's there" ping-pong recordings of the late '50s. Despite effects such as artificial…
Spaced Omnis & the Curtain of Sound
If directional information can be represented by interchannel time delays, then would it be possible to abandon Blumlein's "amplitude for phase difference" substitution outlined last month and concentrate on the time delay information? About the time that Blumlein was experimenting with his crossed figure-of-eights in 1931, the Bell Telephone Labs in the USA derived from experimental binaural work the "curtain of sound" concept (fig.7). The overall wavefront emanating from the orchestra is sampled at a large number of coplanar points. The signals…
If directional information can be represented by interchannel time delays, then would it be possible to abandon Blumlein's "amplitude for phase difference" substitution outlined last month and concentrate on the time delay information? About the time that Blumlein was experimenting with his crossed figure-of-eights in 1931, the Bell Telephone Labs in the USA derived from experimental binaural work the "curtain of sound" concept (fig.7). The overall wavefront emanating from the orchestra is sampled at a large number of coplanar points. The signals…
An Audio Obstacle Course: The Shure Trackability Test Record
Shure Bros. TTR-101.
Shure Bros. TTR-101.
Shure's new "Supertrack" V-15 Type II pickup was designed as an answer to all those high-powered discs whose excessive modulations make them shatter all over the place on lesser pickups, But just in case anyone didn't happen to own any of these difficult discs, Shure decided to issue one of these, too. The result is a collection of some of the meanest modulations ever gathered together in one place.
Each "test" is a series of four short musical excerpts, recorded at progressively higher levels…
When it comes to amplifiers, ya gotcher tubes, yer solid-states, and yer hybrids. Although amplifier manufacturers would have you believe otherwise, the majority of designs within each category are variations on a few fairly-well-known themes. Everyone agrees that the power supply is extremely important. Most designers try to obtain the amplifier's desired frequency response and distortion characteristics with a minimum of negative feedback. It's also agreed—at least among designers of solid-state amps—that the ability to drive a variety of speakers, including those that present a low-…
I was ready for some serious listening. I went through the usual test pieces (Chesky, Reference Recordings, etc.), and also listened to some "ordinary" records that I just happened to feel like playing. The sound was impressively neutral, the amp doing little to call attention to itself—which is just what you want it to do. With the Lightstar in the system, I was content to listen to the music, and felt little urge to switch over to one of the other amps I had on hand (all of them more expensive). This, too, is a sign that an amplifier is doing something right.
Dynamics and a sense of…