Analog Sources: Thorens TD 124 turntable (reconditioned by Schopper AG); Ortofon RMG-212 (rebuilt), Thomas Schick 12" tonearms; Ortofon 90th Anniversary SPU cartridge.
Digital Sources: MacBook Pro computer (early 2015); Roon Optimized Core Kit running on Intel NUC computer with SSD drive; Benchmark DAC1, Meridian Explorer2 USB, Mytek Brooklyn, PS Audio DirectStream DACs.
Preamplification: Auditorium 23 Standard step-up transformer, EAR 834P phono stage.
Power Amplifiers: PS Audio BHK Signature 300 Mono monoblocks.
Integrated Amplifier:…
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Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment
Sidebar 3: Measurements
I measured the Benchmark DAC3 HGC with my Audio Precision SYS2722 system (see the January 2008 As We See It"), using both the Audio Precision's optical and electrical digital outputs and USB data sourced from my MacBook Pro running on battery power with Pure Music 3.0 playing WAV and AIFF test-tone files. Apple's USB Prober utility identified the DAC3 as "Benchmark DAC2 USB Audio 2.0" from "Benchmark DAC2" (sic), with the serial-number field occupied by "0000." The USB port operated in the optimal isochronous asynchronous mode, and Apple's AudioMIDI utility…
Did I really listen to and love the hi-rez (24/44.1k) file equivalent of four CDs chock-full of piano music written by and for the great Terry Riley (b. 1935)? Not only is the answer in the affirmative, but I can now honestly attests that pianist/pedagogue Sarah Cahill's Eighty Trips Around the Sun abounds in opportunities to take you on multiple mind-bending excursions through the mind of a true master.
As the composer of In C (1964) and A Rainbow in Curved Air (1969), Riley's reputation as "The Father of Minimalism" is assured. But as much as those two compositions changed the course of…
From a small regional show, Gary Gill's seven-year old Capital Audiofest has grown into the East Coast Show of 2017. Set for November 3–5 in the Hilton Hotel Twinbrook in Rockville, MD, CAF will offer 57 exhibit rooms spread over three floors plus the hotel Atrium. That amounts to 93 exhibitors and over 200 brands, including a CanMania with 20 headphone vendors. For a show that, just last year, maxed out at 40 rooms with 65 exhibitors and 85 brands, this represents major growth.
One big reason for CAF's growth, which includes the presence of several major companies, is the switch from…
Direct From Cleveland
Orchestral works by De Falla, Bizet, Tchaikovsky, Berlioz
The Cleveland Orchestra, Lorin Maazel (cond.)
Telarc 5020 DD1 (LP). Robert Woods, prod.; Jack Renner, sound eng.; Glenn Glancy, Michael Bishop, disc-cutting engs.
Orchestral works by De Falla, Bizet, Tchaikovsky, Berlioz
The Cleveland Orchestra, Lorin Maazel (cond.)
Telarc 5020 DD1 (LP). Robert Woods, prod.; Jack Renner, sound eng.; Glenn Glancy, Michael Bishop, disc-cutting engs.
Potentially the best news for perfectionists in years is the announcement of the first stereophonic direct-to-disc recording (in the US, at least) of a major symphony orchestra. Advent records of Cleveland, in collaboration with Discwasher, Inc. of Columbia, MO put four complete and usable runsthrough onto two sets of lacquers. The…
For some months now, I've lived mostly without music. To survive the dust and grit of the renovation of our Manhattan apartment, all electronics had to be covered with heavy plastic, the speakers encapsulated in large green lawn bags, and the listening room partitioned off with a temporary wall. We could listen to music with our little 3.1-channel TV system in the den (eh) or through headphones (not!), or we could decamp to our house in Connecticut, which we did as much as possible. I felt deprived. Now that it's all over, I'm grateful to have it back—and grateful for the improvements in the…
Using my Marantz pre-pro, I used both HDMI outputs anyway, and yes, Audio Only sounded somewhat smoother, with less haze and, consequently, greater resolution of very low-level signals. But the difference wasn't much. I think this implementation of low-jitter HDMI is a pyrrhic victory, especially for BD playback, and that most users will forgo the low-jitter audio merely out of convenience.
These days I play few discs, but when I do, my Manhattan system can handle only multichannel sources with analog outputs. Fortunately, the implementation of the Sabre Pro DACs in the UDP-205 is…
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…
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…
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…