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The door to a professional reviewer's listening room is one that revolves: As one product leaves, another enters. After a while, it becomes difficult to remember exactly when you auditioned any specific component. But some products stick in your memory—you fondly remember the time you spent with them, and wish they hadn't departed quite so quickly. With loudspeakers, I recall a few such: Revel's Ultima Salon2 ($22,000, footnote 1), MBL's 111B ($17,000), Dynaudio's Confidence C4 ($16,000), Sonus Faber's Amati Futura ($36,000), Vivid's B1 ($14,990), TAD's Compact Reference CR1 ($40,600 with…
All three amplifiers were more powerful than needed to drive the SS-NA2ESes to very high levels. The MBLs emphasized the top octaves a little but got the midrange right. The Lamms brought the treble and midrange into better balance with each other, but the low-frequency balance with these amplifiers became a little too rich. The Classés got the low and middle frequencies right, but the high treble was a bit more disconnected from the presence region than with the Lamms, if not quite to the extent as with the MBLs. But recorded ticks and clicks on the 192kHz-sampled needle drops I've been…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: Three-way, reflex-loaded, floorstanding loudspeaker. Drive-units: 1" (25mm) soft-dome tweeter, two 3/4" (19mm) soft-dome tweeters, 5" (130mm) paper-cone midrange, two 6.5" (165mm) aluminum-cone woofers. Crossover frequencies: 400Hz, 4kHz, with multiple slopes. Frequency response: 45Hz–45kHz, –10dB. Sensitivity: 90dB/2.83V/m. Nominal impedance: 4 ohms. Power handling: 100W maximum (non-clipping).
Dimensions: 35.4" (900mm) H by 10" (254mm) W by 16.3" (415mm) D. Weight: 70.5 lbs (32kg) each.
Finish: Wood Grain Piano.
Serial numbers of…
Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment
Analog Sources: Linn Sondek LP12 turntable with Lingo power supply, Linn Ekos tonearm, Linn Arkiv B cartridge.
Digital Sources: Marantz NA-11S1 media server; Ayre Acoustics C-5xeMP universal player; Apple 2.7GHz i7 Mac mini running OS10.7, iTunes 10, Pure Music 1.86; MSB Diamond DAC IV D/A processor with Diamond Power Base, Arcam FMJ D33 D/A converters; Astell&Kern AK100 media player; Ayre Acoustics QA-9 USB A/D converter.
Preamplification: Linn Linto phono preamplifier, Pass Labs XP-30 line preamplifier.
Power Amplifiers: Classé CT-M600,…
Sidebar 3: Measurements
I used DRA Labs' MLSSA system and a calibrated DPA 4006 microphone to measure the Sony SS-NA2ES's frequency response in the farfield, and an Earthworks QTC-40 for the nearfield and spatially averaged room responses. All the measurements were performed with the second pair of SS-NA2ES speakers.
My estimate of the SS-NA2ES's voltage sensitivity was 91dB(B)/2.83V/m, a full dB higher than the specified 90dB. As I found in my auditioning, this is a high-sensitivity speaker. The Sony's impedance magnitude drops below 4 ohms in the midrange and high treble (fig.…
By now, you’re familiar with Record Store Day, the annual event that celebrates independent record stores and vinyl records. Now, we can celebrate another special music format: the cassette! The first Cassette Store Day will be held tomorrow, Saturday, September 7th.
You may (very reasonably) wonder whether such an event should exist. Are there enough stores selling tapes? Are there enough labels releasing tapes? Are there enough consumers buying tapes? As it turns out, the answer to all of those questions is yes. At last count, there were about 100 stores participating in the event,…
Even as the gulf narrows between the sounds of the best solid-state and the best tubed amplifiers, most listeners remain staunch members of one or the other camp. Similarly, when it comes to video displays, the plasma and liquid-crystal technologies each has its partisans, though that conflict's intensity is relatively mild, perhaps because video performance, unlike audio, is based on a mastering standard that establishes color temperature, gray-scale tracking, color points, and the like (I'm deeply in the plasma camp). But in audio, the "standard" is whatever monitoring loudspeaker and sonic…
The album I always played for visitors was a spectacular reissue of Aaron Neville's 1991 breakout solo album, Warm Your Heart (2 45rpm LPs, A&M/ORG 141), coproduced by Linda Ronstadt and George Massenburg. The reaction to "Everybody Plays the Fool," even from hardened audiophiles, was always visceral and accompanied by "Oh wow!"s as the amps produced a soundstage limitless in width and depth, on which three-dimensional instruments, both acoustical and synthetic, appeared out of pitch blackness. Neville's voice—vividly drawn, free of artifacts, and 3D—hovered in space well in front of the…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: Tubed monoblock power amplifier (ML3) with outboard power supply (ML3-PS). Tube complement: one 12AX7, four 6N30P-DR, one GM-70 (ML3); six 12AX3 (ML3-PS). Output power: 32W into 4, 8, or 16 ohms at 3% THD (32dBW). Frequency response at 30W into 16 ohms: 20Hz–20kHz, +0, –1.5dB. Input impedance: 41k ohms. Input sensitivity: 850mV for maximum output. Slew rate (61.96V peak–peak): 5V/µs. Signal/noise ratio, ref. 4V RMS into 16 ohms: typically 92dB, A-weighted.
Dimensions: ML3 and MLS-PS (each): 15.8" (406mm) W by 8.2" (210mm) H by 20.2" (518mm) D.…
Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment
Analog Sources: Continuum Audio Labs Caliburn, Cobra, & Castellon turntable, tonearm, & stand; Kuzma 4Point tonearm; Lyra Atlas & Titan i, Ortofon Anna, Miyajima Labs Focus mono cartridges.
Digital Sources: Simaudio Moon Evolution 650D DAC/CD transport; dCS Vivaldi DAC, transport, clock, upsampler; BPT-modified Alesis Masterlink hard-disk recorder; Meridian Digital Media System; Pure Music software running on a Macintosh computer.
Preamplifier: darTZeel NHB-18ns.
Power Amplifiers: darTZeel NHB-458 monoblocks.
Loudspeakers:…