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Turntables were much in evidence at TAVES, perhaps the most impressive being the TechDAS Air Force One, which had two versions of the famed Graham Phantom Elite arm mounted. Bob Graham himself was on hand, and can be seen in the photo. Bob demonstrated the vacuum hold-down of the turntable, the audible resonance of the LP when tapped being silenced when the vacuum was turned on. Impressive. The worldwide standard price of the Air Force One is $100,000, and the Phantom Elite arm is $15,000, but Bob said that since he's also the distributor of the AirForce One, he can offer a "deal" on the…
The design and manufacturing of loudspeakers can be described as falling on a continuum. At one end, we have speakers that use off-the-shelf drivers purchased from driver manufacturers, combined with crossovers based on information in standard loudspeaker design cookbooks and/or loudspeaker design software (perhaps with "voicing" that conforms to the designer's preference). In the hands of a skilled designer, this approach can produce good results—but they can't claim any originality.
At the other end of the continuum are speakers that are designed and built from the ground up,, using…
The long-anticipated opening of Brian Berdan’s high-performance audio store, Audio Element, took place on November 1 and 2 in Pasadena, CA. The store’s prime location in the heart of Pasadena’s retail- and restaurant-rich Oldtown helped sweeten the unveiling of America’s newest high-end emporium.
Signaling the start of a new era for high-end dealerships in Southern California, Friday night’s catered “soft” opening for existing clients and Saturday’s six-hour public open house were attended by enough major manufacturers, designers and distributors to have made possible a mini-…
Whenever I'm moved by an artist whose work I've never before heard or seen, my first impulse is to wonder: What else has this person done while I slumbered in ignorance?
The same applies to those audio designers whose craft has approached the level of art. The products of Ken Shindo, Tim de Paravicini, Jean Constant Verdier, J.C. Morrison, Junji Kimura, Don Garber, Denis Morecroft, and a handful of others have all elicited that response—yet none more than the late Hiroyasu Kondo. His Audio Note Ongaku amplifier of 1989 woke the world to a number of possibilities: that a successful…
Leeza
Especially where preserving the texture and the tactile qualities of recorded sound is concerned, I persist in thinking that all moving-coil phono pickups sound best when loaded with a well-made and properly selected step-up transformer. Because the people of Kondo share that belief and design their phono preamplifiers accordingly, it was easy to begin my Kondo adventure by substituting their GE-1 for the phono preamplifier of my Shindo Masseto preamp, with my own Hommage T2 step-up transformer in place.
Especially where preserving the texture and the tactile qualities of recorded sound is concerned, I persist in thinking that all moving-coil phono pickups sound best when loaded with a well-made and properly selected step-up transformer. Because the people of Kondo share that belief and design their phono preamplifiers accordingly, it was easy to begin my Kondo adventure by substituting their GE-1 for the phono preamplifier of my Shindo Masseto preamp, with my own Hommage T2 step-up transformer in place.
With my system thus configured, the tonal signature of the GE-1 was quite…
Sidebar: List of the Month
The Eight Worst Music/Youth Culture Magazines of All Time
8) Rolling Stone, for its list of the greatest musical artists ever
7) Rolling Stone, for its list of the greatest albums ever
6) Rolling Stone, for sucking up to Robbie Robertson
5) Rolling Stone, for its list of the greatest singles ever
4) Rolling Stone, for retracting negative reviews of albums by Dylan and the Stones
3) Rolling Stone, for its list of the worst band names ever
2) Rolling Stone, for firing Lester Bangs
1) Rolling Stone, for liking Bruce Springsteen just…
High-performance audio has always been and will probably remain a cottage industry perpetuated by talented and visionary individuals whose products reflect their singular visions and whose companies often bear their names, though of course there are notable exceptions. One of them is Constellation Audio. No single star dominates the appropriately named Constellation Audio, which arrived on the scene at the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show with a seemingly impossible debut roster of products: stereo and monoblock amplifiers, preamplifiers, digital file player/DACs, and phono preamplifiers, each…
The long horizontal bar on the front panel is a rocker switch with a single LED and settings of On (hold it down a while) and Mute. On the uncluttered, easily accessed, unrecessed rear panel are the three inputs, a three-way (Bal/Direct/RCA) toggle switch for selecting among them, a Mute On/Off toggle, two pairs of widely separated metal binding posts, a 15 amp IEC AC jack, and the main power rocker switch. The heatsinks are hidden behind circular cutouts in the distinctive side panels.
"Comin' At Ya" Exhilarating Sound!
I reviewed Lamm Industries' ML-3 Signature monoblocks in the…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: Solid-state monoblock power amplifier. Inputs: 1 single-ended (RCA), 1 balanced (XLR), 1 Constellation Direct (XLR). Outputs: 2 pairs binding posts. Rated power output (1kHz at 1% THD+N): 500W into 8 ohms (27dBW), 800W into 4 ohms (26dBW), 1000W into 2 ohms (24dBW). Voltage gain: 26dB (14dB, Constellation Direct). Frequency response: 10Hz–100kHz, +1/–0.5dB. Output noise: <70µV, 500kHz BW, –116dB ref. 250W. THD+N: <0.05% (1kHz at up to 90% of rated power). Input impedance: 200k ohms Constellation Direct and balanced, 100k ohms RCA unbalanced.…
Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment
Analog Sources: Continuum Audio Labs Caliburn, Cobra, & Castellon turntable, tonearm, & stand; Kuzma 4Point tonearm; Lyra Atlas, Ortofon Anna, Miyajima Labs Zero (mono) cartridges.
Digital Sources: dCS Vivaldi DAC, transport, clock, upsampler; BPT-modified Alesis Masterlink hard-disk recorder; Meridian Digital Media System; Pure Music software.
Preamplification: Ypsilon MC-10 & MC-16 SUTs step-up transformers; Ypsilon VPS-100, Thrax Orpheus phono preamplifiers; darTZeel NHB-18NS preamplifier.
Power Amplifiers: darTZeel NHB 458…