Listening
A/B comparisons are scorned by the high-end community because they don't reveal most of the…
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Fidelity starts with frequency response. If a CD player has built-in response errors, it can never reproduce the original signal properly no matter how good it is in other respects. Don't laugh; this has long been one of the major differences between competing players, even high-priced ones. I'm not talking about measured response, although (as our published curves show) there are often small differences there, too. No, I'm talking about subjective response—how the thing sounds.
A Trip to Gordon's House, from February 1994 (Vol. 17 No.2)
After living with the SOTA Vanguard CD player for nearly six months, I figured I'd better trundle off to Gordon's listening room, where I could compare the SOTA mano a mano to the Sony CDP-X779ES CD player that JGH reviewed in Vol.16 No.6 (p.154). It was, as are most of my evenings with Gordon, very educational.
First we listened to a brand-new CD I had just received from BBC Music Magazine: Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique, performed by the BBC Symphony directed by Andrew Davis, and recorded live in Tokyo's Hitomi Kinen…
Sidebar 1: Gordon's Gear
Other equipment used for this review included a Revox A-77 15ips 2-track tape recorder, a Sony PCM-F1, a Threshold FET-10 line controller, Boulder 500AE amplifiers, a Heath Company pink-noise generator, and part of the Snell/Lexicon/Rane home THX system reviewed last December. If this sounds like an odd lineup, here's my rationale: The Revox and the F-1 were used to play some of my original tapes which had ended up on Stereophile's first Test CD, and a tape of JA's that was transferred to Test CD 2. The FET-10 and 500AE are my current reference line controller…
Sidebar 2: Measurements
The Sony CDP-X779ES had an output of 2.49V (L) and 2.52V (R), unbalanced when decoding a 1kHz, 0dB (full-scale) sinewave. The corresponding balanced outputs were 2.1V (L and R). Its output impedance, being well below 1 ohm, was actually too low to measure on our Audio Precision test set in either the balanced or unbalanced (fixed or variable) modes. The Sony's DC offset was 0.1mV left and 0.2mV right. The '779 was non-inverting from the unbalanced outputs, with a positive-going impulse test signal reproduced as positive at its outputs. I verified that the balanced…
Sidebar 3: Specifications
Description: One-piece CD player. Front-panel controls: Digital Output select, track step, forward/reverse shuttle, Drawer open/close, Play, Pause, Stop, Line Out/Phone Level, Play Mode, Display Mode, AC Power. Remote controls: All the above, plus Peak Search, File Recall, Continue, Shuffle, Program, Custom Index, number buttons (0 to 20), program Clear, custom File, Erase file, Fader, Slow/fast search, Index search, A–B Repeat, Time, over-20 numeric, Check. Outputs: fixed and variable single-ended line and fixed balanced line, 2V at 50k ohms, headphones up to…
Saturday March 10, 12pm–5pm, Audio Den (2845 Middle Country Road, Lake Grove NY) welcomes Bill Voss of Technics for a demonstration of the new flagship Technics SL1000R turntable. Refreshments will be provided. Attendance to the event is free. For additional information call (631) 585-5600 or email sales@audioden.com.
The boom in high-end LP reissues has now reached the point where the canniest reissue labels have become acutely aware of what vintage vinyl sells for the most on eBay, Discogs, and other sites. If they can license a good-sounding source, astute labels like Mobile Fidelity, Analogue Productions, and Light in the Attic are now reissuing these artifacts on 180 and 200 gram vinyl LPs for much less than an original will cost.
While I'd still rather have an original copy, these reissues for the most part deliver high-quality sound and deluxe packaging. Especially prized by deejays, funk and…
Winner of the 2018 Grammy for "Best Classical Solo Album," "Recording of the Month" in BBC Music Magazine, nominated for a 2018 Juno Award (Canada's version of the Grammy, coming March 24), listed in "Best Classical Music Recordings 2017" of the New York Times, and recipient of multiple European honors, Crazy Girl Crazy must be heard. Created by the phenomenally versatile Canadian soprano/conductor Barbara Hannigan, the Alpha label album/bonus DVD package showcases Hannigan and the Ludwig Orchestra performing three landmark 20th century masterworks—Berio's conception-shattering, impossibly…
Not only does the April 2018 Stereophile feature our new "Recommended Components" listing, updated and revised (p.47), featured on the cover and reviewed inside is Bel Canto's Black ACI 600. This is a revolutionary kind of all-in-one product, a network-connected integrated amplifier that accepts both digital and analog inputs, including phono. Turn to p.110 to see what we think of it.
And there are more equipment reports to be found in this 188-page issue: Mikey Fremer reviews a massive monoblock from Greek company Ypsilon; Larry Greenhill reviews an almost-as-massive stereo amplifier…
Rachmaninoff: Symphonic Dances, Vocalise
Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Donald Johanos, cond.
Turnabout TV-54145S (LP). David B. Hancock, eng.; Tom Mowrey, Musical Supervision, Recording Director. TT: 41:18.
Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Donald Johanos, cond.
Turnabout TV-54145S (LP). David B. Hancock, eng.; Tom Mowrey, Musical Supervision, Recording Director. TT: 41:18.
Not a new recording, and one that has already received raves in all the other audiophile publications, but if Stereophile is the only such magazine you read, you'd just better know about it, for this is the definitive symphonic recording to date.
Buy it, listen to it, and get a good idea of what the other record companies have been doing to the sound of live music. The…