John Atkinson, too, is a hard man, at least when it comes to audio gear. When, in January 2014, he reviewed the Pass Laboratories XA60.5…
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Years ago, when I was young and foolish (instead of old and foolish, as now), I was hanging out with a friend at a strip-mall strip club in a small southeastern city. A youngish lady approached our table in G-string and pasties and did a tableside dance. My friend's jaw scraped the floor; I, noting her lack of enthusiasm, was unmoved. The stripper noted my impassivity and stated, with irony that at the time I somehow missed, "You're a hard man."
I frequently attend concerts, from lieder, chamber music, and small-ensemble jazz to operas and big symphonies. I know what live music sounds like. Since moving to New York, I've had some great experiences, from the Jazz Standard club through the 92nd Street Y to the Metropolitan Opera and Carnegie Hall. I also regularly attend, at a neighbor's place, house concerts by professional musicians who are preparing for a competition, tour, or recording date. Usually I sit in a folding chair near the right elbow of a string player, or a few feet behind the Steinway's lower keys. Always a great…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: Class-A, solid-state, monoblock power amplifier. Inputs: 1 unbalanced (RCA), 1 balanced (XLR). Outputs: 2 pairs, can accommodate spades or bananas. Power output: 60W into 8 ohms (17.8dBW), 120W into 4 ohms (17.8dBW). Frequency range: 1.5Hz–100kHz. Voltage gain: 26dB. Input sensitivity: 2.83V RMS output for 150mV input. Input impedance: 100k ohms balanced, 50k ohms unbalanced. Output impedance: not specified. Signal/noise: >85dB, ref. level 2.83V RMS. Power consumption: 375W. Trigger input, 12V DC (RCA).
Dimensions: 19" (480mm) W by 7.5" (…
Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment
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 DAC 1, Meridian Explorer2 USB, Mytek HiFi Brooklyn, PS Audio DirectStream DACs.
Preamplification: Auditorium 23 Standard step-up transformer, EAR 834P phono stage.
Power Amplifiers: Benchmark AHB-2 bridged for use as monoblocks), PS Audio BHK…
Sidebar 3: Measurements
Before performing any measurements, I ran one Pass Labs XA60.8 (serial no. 28984) for an hour at one-third its specified maximum power of 60W into 8 ohms—thermally, the worst case for an amplifier with a class-B or -AB output stage. By the end of the hour, the top panel was warm, at 96.4°F (35.8°C), and the side-mounted heatsinks were a little hotter, at 109.1°F (42.8°C). (Temperatures were measured with a Mastercool infrared thermometer.) The XA60.8 ran a little cooler than the XA60.5 I reviewed in January 2014, probably due to its larger heatsinks.
I…
Here's our final report from the New York Audio Show. Thank you to everyone who watched our previous videos, all of which featured Herb Reichert (left above in JA's photo) and gave us feedback—positive and otherwise. We started making these videos as a response to feedback, and will continue monitoring feedback to help improve our future videos.
In the first room hosted by Adirondack Audio & Video: a D-08u SACD Player ($14,995), PD-171A belt-drive turntable ($6,995), Ortofon Cadenza Blue cartridge ($2039), EQ-500 vacuum-tube phono EQ ($6495), C-900u control preamplifier ($14,…
For 13 years now, Maria Schneider and her Jazz Orchestra have played Thanksgiving week at the Jazz Standard in New York City, and, judging from the late set on Tuesday, they just keep getting better and better.
I've been following Schneider closely since the mid-1990s, when she and the band played every Monday night at Visiones, a small, now-defunct club in Greenwich Village. The door fees gave her enough to pay each band member $25 and herself $15, the cost of cab fare to and from her apartment on the Upper West Side. Several years passed before bookers and producers came in for a listen…
Art Dudley returned to the nova300 in December 2017 (Vol.40 No.12):
Come back, baby. You'll find a million poems deep in your destitute soul.—Richard Hugo, "Second Chances"
The poet Richard Hugo (1923–1982) was known by his students for suggesting that every poem has two subjects: the thing that triggered the writing of the poem in the first place—the writer's Grecian Urn, if you will—and, beyond that, whatever eventually becomes the finished poem's actual subject. Hugo observed that the latter often isn't known to the writer when he or she begins work, but reveals itself over…
The music world continues to lose its very brightest talents. It was a very sad sidebar to the Thanksgiving holiday that on Wednesday, November 22, both the great jazz producer George Avakian passed away at 98 and power pop guitarist and songwriter Tommy Keene died way too early at 59 at his home in Los Angeles.
Not a household name by any means, Keene was a star in the world of indie rock. In a world populated by literally thousands of guitar players, Keene's sharp, extra crunchy guitar tone was distinct and unmistakable. His songwriting, indebted like all power poppers to The Beatles,…
Overflowing with heart, Brahms' three Trios for violin, cello, and piano are amongst the most venerated chamber works in the literature. Completed over a span of 35 years, they reveal Brahms forever true to his love and longing. Again and again it surfaces, expressed through an irrepressible love for melody, Hungarian and gypsy sentiments, romance and drama that sings and sighs at its most vulnerable in this special, two-disc Sony recording of the Brahms Piano Trios from cellist Yo-Yo Ma, pianist Emanuel Ax, and violinist Leonidas Kavakos.
Surprising as it may seem, this seems to be the…