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Music in the Round #87: Oppo UDP-205 Recordings in the Round

Sidebar: Recordings in the Round

Rachmaninoff: Symphony 1
Gabriel Feltz, Dortmund Philharmonic
Dreyer Gaido 21100 (SACD/CD). 2017. DDD. TT: 45:43

I'd just switched on the radio. Wow. Several times, I thought, Yes, this piece must be ending now. It continued. I didn't know what it was, or that I'd tuned in at the middle of the first movement. What was it? Surely too brash and clumsy for Rachmaninoff, but . . . it sure sounded Russian—and boy, was it exciting.

That was more than 20 years ago, and I still find unique enjoyment in this work composed by…

Don't Fear The Reaper

Watch out Christmas! While December 25 may be the holiday with the most music written specifically to celebrate it, Halloween, that delightful pagan holiday that has become a multi-million dollar business in the United States, has its own growing body of musical works dedicated to ghosts, goblins and having a good time.

Along with the usual mix of sound-effect records featuring creaking doors and unhinged laughter, there are the mix records intended for Halloween parties. Of course it could be argued all Halloween records are party records? Most of these tangentially related rock…

Bill Evans, <I>The Riverside Recordings</I> at 45rpm

For all the stir over newly excavated tapes by Bill Evans (and the stir is justified), the heart of his discography—the stuff for which he's most celebrated now and will likely be for eons to come—beats in the albums he recorded on the Riverside label from 1956–62. This is where "the Evans sound" was minted and nurtured—the lyrical way with a ballad, the sprightly spin on show tunes, the harmonic lushness with an edge, and, at the era's peak, the coining of a new sort of jazz trio: not a piano backed by bass and drums, but three musicians careening off one another as equilateral sides of a…

Naim CD5 XS CD player

By no means could I undertake a survey of candidates for Your Last Perfectionist-Quality CD player—so far, my ongoing series of reviews has focused on models from Audio Note, Bryston, EAR, Luxman, and Metronome—without including Naim Audio. After all, it was Naim that brought to market the first really good-sounding CD player of my experience: the two-box CDS, introduced in 1991 at a then-staggering price of $6999. In doing so, they convinced me that a digital future might not be so bad after all.

Four years after the CDS's stunning debut—and three years after their introduction of an…

Naim CD5 XS CD player Page 2

One more thing: To prevent the swing-out drawer from swinging out all over the place during shipping, and thus damaging the transport, Naim fits to the bottom of the CD5 XS's casework a transit bolt—as they've done with all their players equipped with such transports. I'd warn you against using the CD5 XS without removing its transit bolt, but because it isn't possible to do so—if you can't open the drawer, you can't insert a disc—I won't bother with that, either.

Listening
One thing in particular that characterized the pre–break-in Naim CD5 XS—and, if I recall correctly, the CD3—was…

Naim CD5 XS CD player Specifications

Sidebar 1: Specifications

Description: CD player. Analog outputs: 5-pin DIN, 1 pair RCA. Digital outputs: 1 BNC. Frequency response: 10Hz–20kHz, +0.1/–0.5dB. Maximum output level: 2.1V RMS at 1kHz (fixed). Output impedance: 10 ohms maximum. THD+N: <0.1%, 10Hz–18kHz at full level.
Dimensions: 17" (432mm) W by 2.75" (70mm) H by 11.85" (301mm) D . Weight: 13.2 lbs (6kg).
Serial number of unit reviewed: 418407.
Price: Originally $3050, now $3995. Approximate number of dealers: 100.
Manufacturer: Naim Audio, Ltd., Southampton Road, Salisbury, Wiltshire SP1 2LN, England, UK…

Naim CD5 XS CD player Associated Equipment

Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment

Analog Sources: Garrard 301 turntable; EMT 997 tonearm; EMT OFD 15 & TSD 15, Ortofon SPU #1S, Shindo Laboratory SPU pickup heads; Denon DL-103 cartridge, with/without MusiKraft body.
Digital Sources: AudioQuest DragonFly, Halide Design DAC HD USB DACs; Apple iMac computer (late 2015) running OS 10.12.1 & Roon v.1.2, Build 165; Sony SCD-777 SACD/CD player.
Preamplification: Auditorium 23 Hommage T1 & T2 step-up transformers; EMIA Phono transformer (copper); Sentec EQ11 phono preamplifier; Shindo Laboratory Masseto & Monbrison (2017…

Naim CD5 XS CD player Measurements

Sidebar 3: Measurements

Like the Hegel Music Systems Mohican and Bryston BCD-3, which we reviewed in the May and August issues, the Naim CX5 XS has no digital inputs of any kind. This limited my measurement of its technical behavior to using 16-bit test files burned to a CD-R. I tested the Naim with my Audio Precision SYS2722 system (see the January 2008 "As We See It").

The Naim's error correction was adequate—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 0.5mm in length, when there…

Margules Audio U280-SC Black power amplifier

Prelude
The setting of the Prelude to our opera, The Margules Saga, is the California Audio Show, in August 2012. There, on first hearing Margules Audio's tube electronics, I wrote in my notebook, "great inner vitality, warm but with a welcome and appropriate bite." An encounter the following January inspired me to write, of a system that included an earlier version of the company's U280 amplifier, "The sound? Beautiful and warm. I've heard these electronics at two shows, and each time, I've left the room feeling good."

Enter Julian Margules, owner and chief designer of Margules…

Margules Audio U280-SC Black power amplifier Page 2

Also on the top deck are blue LEDs to indicate the power tubes' bias and operation. These light up only after several minutes, when autobiasing is completed and the U280-SC is ready to be used, and change intensity with the output level. If an LED's illumination remains constant, dims, or is rarely activated, there's likely a problem with the associated tube.

Act I: Where's the Soprano?
The U280-SC Blacks arrived the same day that John Quick and Brad O'Toole of dCS stopped by with review samples of the dCS Vivaldi 2.0 and Network Bridge. As I prepared lunch for our starving fish and…