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Listening #131 Page 2

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.

With my system thus configured, the tonal signature of the GE-1 was quite…

Listening #131 List of the Month

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…

Constellation Audio Performance Centaur Mono monoblock power amplifier

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…

Constellation Audio Performance Centaur Mono monoblock power amplifier Page 2

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…

Constellation Audio Performance Centaur Mono monoblock power amplifier Specifications

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.…

Constellation Audio Performance Centaur Mono monoblock power amplifier Associated Equipment

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…

Constellation Audio Performance Centaur Mono monoblock power amplifier Measurements

Sidebar 3: Measurements

Before performing any measurements, I ran one of the Performance Centaur Monos (serial no. 1101131901) for an hour at one-third its specified maximum power of 500W into 8 ohms, thermally the worst case for an amplifier with a class-B or -AB output stage. The amplifier was too heavy for me to lift it onto my test bench so it sat on the carpeted floor, with some clearance given by supporting it on Black Diamond cones. By the end of the hour, the top panel was warm, at 105°F (43.5°C), and the side-mounted heatsinks were warmer, at 114.5°F (45.8°C). With the…

La Luz

La Luz: Marian Li Pino (drums), Abbey Blackwell (bass), Shana Cleveland (guitar), Alice Sandahl (keys)

On Tuesday night, while on their way to Seattle to play a show with Of Montreal, the four young women who make up the great new band La Luz suffered a frightening accident. Losing control of their van, they slid across black ice, and slammed into a concrete highway divider. The band managed to maneuver their van to the side of the road, where they called for help. Then, almost incredibly, while waiting for the police and a tow truck to arrive, their van was hit by a semi-trailer truck.…

Music in the Round #63

Make It Simple. . .
Ah, for the old mono days. I remember assembling my first audio systems in my early teens and as a novice—things were easy. My first amp had four RCA input jacks, each clearly labeled and corresponding to an identically labeled setting on the input selector switch. There were screw-down speaker connectors for 4, 8, and 16 ohms, and ground. Tape output was defaulted to whatever input I was listening to. The amp had but four knobs: Input Selection, Volume, Bass, and Treble. And although it would seem almost impossible to go wrong, I did exercise focus and care as I…

Music in the Round #63 Page 2

In addition, the filters chosen by NuForce's AutoEQ, and confirmed by my ears, revealed very large corrections throughout the midrange and none for the subwoofer. The audible result of all this was a harsh midrange, somewhat boomy but hollow bass, and a strong image shift to the left. Completely unacceptable and inferior to the out-of-box sound before any adjustments to these parameters were made!

Fortunately, the Cirrus chipset in the AVP-18 offers a potent parametric equalizer. This can be extremely effective: each of the 11 filters for the five main channels permits adjustment of…