Digital Sources: Oppo BDP-103 universal BD player, Mac mini server running Windows 7, JRiver Media Center Version 23, build 84, Roon 1.3.
Preamplifier: Marantz AV8802A.
Power Amplifier: Bryston 9BST.
Loudspeakers: Monitor Audio Silver 8 & Silver 2.
Cables: Digital: AudioQuest Vodka (HDMI). Interconnect: Kubala-Sosna Anticipation (RCA) & Fascination (XLR). Speaker: Kubala-Sosna Anticipation & Fascination. AC: Kubala-Sosna Emotion.
Accessories: Environmental Potentials EP2450 power conditioner, Emotiva CMX-2, Precision AC Line…
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Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment
Sidebar 3: Measurements
I used DRA Labs' MLSSA system and a calibrated DPA 4006 microphone to measure the Monitor Audio Silver 300's frequency response in the farfield, and an Earthworks QTC-40 for the nearfield responses. My estimate of the Silver 300's sensitivity was 88.8dB(B)/2.83V/m, which is close to the specified 90dB. The Silver 300's nominal impedance is specified as 8 ohms, and its impedance magnitude (fig.1, solid trace) remains between 5 and 9 ohms through almost the entire audioband. Although the minimum magnitude is 3.6 ohms between 150 and 170Hz and there is a combination…
Not so long ago, you could not wander the halls of any High End Audio show and not hear The Eagles' Hotel California. To say it was an audiophile favorite is to grossly understate the obvious.
Produced by Bill Szymczyk and tracked between March and October 1976 at Criteria Studios in Miami and the California branch of the Record Plant, it was the group's fifth and ultimately one of the album-sales blockbusters of all time. Its current sales number is somewhere near 35 million copies sold. Late last year Rhino Records released a Hotel California 40th Anniversary Deluxe Edition CD boxed set…
New, well-recorded albums of Verdi arias from two of the Metropolitan Opera's biggest and most heralded stars - Bulgarian soprano Sonya Yoncheva, 36, and Maltese tenor Joseph Calleja, 40, give as much cause for excitement as they do for pause. As fine as the singing may be on Sonya Yoncheva: The Verdi Album (Sony) and Calleja: Verdi (Decca), the ways in which these artists push their voices to encompass heavier repertoire raises questions as to how long they can sustain such pressure on their instruments without serious sacrifice.
Yoncheva
Of most concern is Yoncheva. Heard thrice…
Immediately following the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show, our resident videographer Jana Dagdagan and I visited PS Audio in Boulder Colorado. The company's founder, Paul McGowan, gave up his Saturday to give us a tour of the factory.
In Jana's video, we start with the "Hall of Fame" in the vestibule, visit Paul's office/studio, PS Audio's engineering, production, and shipping departments, and end up in Paul's dedicated listening room, "Music Room One," where he has a pair of fully restored Infinity IRS V loudspeakers set-up.
In the next two videos we shot in Boulder, I talk to…
Thursday March 1, 6pm–8pm, Suncoast Audio (7353 International Place, Unit 309, Sarasota FL, 34240), is hosting an event featuring presentations by Walter Swanbon, the US Harbeth distributor, Vince Galbo from MSB Technologies, Kevin Hayes from VAC, and Jett Logan from AudioQuest. Suncoast will be raffling off a free pair of Harbeth speakers—must be present to win—and products being demmed and discussed will include the MSB Select II DAC and new MSB Reference Transport, the new AudioQuest Storm Series Power Cables, and the 40th Anniversary Edition Harbeth Monitor 40.2 speakers driven by VAC…
Queen of Bebop: The Musical Lives of Sarah Vaughan
By Elaine M. Hayes. 419 pp. Ecco/HarperCollins, 2017. Hardbound: $27.99. Available in eBook and digital audiobook formats.
By Elaine M. Hayes. 419 pp. Ecco/HarperCollins, 2017. Hardbound: $27.99. Available in eBook and digital audiobook formats.
This is the second biography of Sarah Vaughan (1924–1990), whose towering vocal talents took her to the top rung of the jazz ladder, beside Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald. The author, trained as a classical musician, puts far more emphasis on the singer's recordings than Leslie Gourse did in Sassy, her 1993 Vaughan biography. Hayes's grasp of music, and her definitions of the musical terms she uses, make this…
Five years ago, I reviewed the Alumine loudspeaker from Stenheim, a Swiss company founded by four former employees of Goldmund SA (footnote 1). I noted the Alumine's surprisingly "high sensitivity and easy drivability," praised its performance for being "clean but neither sterile nor colorless," and admired, in my geeky way, the coated cellulose-fiber cone of its 5" midbass driver, which is made in Chartrettes, France—just southeast of Paris—by a company called PHL.
One year later, almost to the week, I bought my first vintage Altec loudspeakers: a pair of 1967 Valencias, in which a…
Fortunately, I had help installing the Alumine Fives: Gideon Schwartz of Audioarts, the Manhattan retailer that also serves as Stenheim's US distributor, visited my house in early November, and between the two of us we got the speakers unboxed and moved into place in my new listening room. After a few rounds of listening and fine-tuning, each Alumine Five had wound up 42" from the front wall and 27" from its sidewall—both distances measured from the center of each front baffle—with the cabinets toed-in toward the central listening area, about 8' away, although not so drastically that I…
Earlier this week, we posted a video blog with PS Audio's founder and CEO Paul McGowan giving Jana Dagdagan and me a post-CES tour around the Boulder, Colorado company's factory. That tour ended in Paul's dedicated listening room, "Music Room One," where he has a pair of fully restored Infinity IRS V loudspeakers set-up.
Following the tour, I sat down with Paul in Music Room One and in a wide-ranging conversation, we talked about amplifiers and loudspeakers, DACs and audio systems, and the state of high-end audio. We touched on audio retailing, permission vs push marketing, and even…