Firesign Theater uses sound effects, but in a way that has to be heard to be believed. Firesign creates worlds based on sound; detailed and realistic sound. Where you are and what you perceive is based on puns, plays on words, free association, and subtle aural clues.…
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You have probably read speaker reports that suggested that you audition with natural sounds like clanking chains, storms, animals and other things that give an easy reference to live experience. The problem is that most sound-effects albums are a real bore, dominated by reject Walt Disney announcers with adenoid problems.
It's that time of the year when I shift away from the world's calamities to some of its finest achievements (for a minute anyway), which is to say, here is my list of the best jazz albums of 2017. Elaborations, with sound clips (often links to entire tracks) can be found in the version that I've written of this for my main gig at Slate, though followers of this blog will note—and will be reminded in some of the links below—that I've covered some of these albums in this space over the year. Also, below the list, I've jotted down a few things of interest for Stereophile readers.
The best (…
For those unfamiliar with the symphonies of Danish composer Carl Nielsen (1865–1931)—that includes me—the startling opening of his Third Symphony, "Sinfonia espansiva," will undoubtedly come as a shock. Its relentless pounding chords, played at an accelerating pace by the entire orchestra on the same pitch, may owe more than a little to Beethoven's Third Symphony, "Eroica," but their language is far more modern, and reflective of an era profoundly unsettled. Heard in high-resolution stereo (24/96 WAV) in the new live recording of Nielsen's Symphonies No. 3 and 4 from the Seattle Symphony,…
Register to win a copy of ELO's 2LP collector's picture disc edition of Out of the Blue we are giving away.
According to the company:
One of the indisputable masterpieces--and most commercially successful titles--in the ELO canon, Out of the Blue, the group's seventh studio album, was originally released in October 1977. The musical and conceptual brainchild of Jeff Lynne, who wrote and produced the entire album, Out of the Blue is among the most ambitious double albums in classic rock history, a complex and visionary work that included, as the album's complete Side 3, Lynne's "…
Every year from 1963 to 1969 the Beatles recorded and released a Christmas single on flexi discs to be mailed free to members of their UK fan club. These singles have now been collected and reissued on vinyl in a singles boxed set by Universal Music, The Christmas Records. All seven are now in a different color of vinyl, from green to orange, and other than 1965, which is at 45rpm, the rest spin at 331/3rpm. As the liner notes in the 16-page booklet frankly state about the original flexi disc format: "This was not hi-fi." While the fidelity is still fairly rough, this is the Beatles being…
It's been more than seven years since the late Wes Phillips reviewed Vivid Audio's top-of-the-line loudspeaker, the Giya G1, for Stereophile, and since then the speaker has been seriously revised. At first glance you still notice the sui generis form; closer inspection reveals fundamental changes that make it, in most respects, an entirely new speaker.
The Giya G1 Spirit is slightly shorter and wider than the Giya G1—as if the latter's top had been gently pushed down a few inches and bulged out its bottom half. This change in shape was needed to accommodate the entirely new and larger…
We placed the Spirits approximately where my baseline references, MartinLogan's Prodigy electrostatics, had been in my largish listening space, and O'Hanlon began by using the title track of Shelby Lynne's Just a Little Lovin' (CD, Lost Highway B0009789-2) to distance the speakers from the front and side walls. He used the left channel of the recording, one speaker at a time, listening for the sound of the bass to make sure it met his approval at the listening position. He then had me sit down and close my eyes while he walked in front of the speaker from the left wall, repeating the phrase "…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: Four-way, five-driver loudspeaker with exponentially-tapered-tube bass-reflex loading. Drive-units: HF: D26 1" (26mm) metal-dome tweeter, D50 2" (50mm) metal-dome tweeter, C125-75 4.9" (125mm) midrange with alloy-carbon diaphragm & 3" (75mm) voice-coil, two C225-100 8.9" (225mm) woofers with alloy diaphragms & 3.9" (100mm) voice-coils in 1.75" (45mm) gap. Crossover frequencies: 220Hz, 880Hz, 3.5kHz. Frequency response: 29Hz–33kHz, ±2dB on reference. Frequency range: –6dB at 25Hz and 36kHz. Sensitivity: 92dB/2.83V/m on axis. Impedance: 6 ohms…
Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment
Digital Sources: Apple MacBook Pro computer (2.5GHz Intel Core i7, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD) running OS 10.13, Roon v.1.3 build 262, JRiver Media Center 19, iTunes 12.7, Amarra Computer Music Player, VLC, Reaper 5.52, XLD; Western Digital 2TB NAS; Western Digital, Toshiba portable USB drives; Oppo BDP-103 universal BD player; Meridian Digital Media System (formerly Sooloos) Control 15, QNAP TS-669 Pro NAS; Apple iPad Air 2 & iPhone 6. Ayre Acoustics QB-9DSD, Benchmark Media Systems DAC1 USB & DAC2 HGC, Meridian Explorer2 DACs.
Analog Source: Oracle…
Sidebar 3: Measurements
With a loudspeaker as large and bulky and heavy as Vivid's Giya G1 Spirit, I decided to measure them at Jon Iverson's home on the California Central Coast rather than have them shipped to my Brooklyn lab. I therefore used a test setup different from my usual system of MLSSA software and hardware, which is not readily transportable. When I visited Jon, I took with me my MacBook Pro running SMUGSoftware's Fuzzmeasure 3 app, along with an Earthworks QTC-40 microphone and a FireWire-connected Metric Halo MIO2882 audio interface, the latter sampling at 96kHz.
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