Once you see the system list—Tidal Audio Akira speaker ($215,000), Presencio Reference preamplifier ($77,900), Impulse monoblock amplifiers ($64,900/pair…
search
If you want to know why Stereophile's John Atkinson, Jana Dagdagan, and Herb Reichert journeyed to Philadelphia earlier this year to conduct two video interviews with Doug White of The Voice That Is, you only had to hear his set-up at AXPONA to understand that their trip was in pursuit of excellence. If what they heard in Philly was anything like the sound Doug managed to produce in a modest-sized hotel room, they must have left elated.
I love tubes and horns. So naturally, when Jason and I were dividing up rooms, I leapt at the opportunity to cover Destination Audio, a company rumored to execute tubes and horns well, even in small hotel rooms.
As owner Sam Wisniewski explained to me, the name Destination Audio refers to the point of sound he had always been searching for. After many years of experimenting, he finally created Destination Audio's eponymous three-way, fully horn-loaded speakers ($95,000/pair). And, as implied by his company's name, these are the only speakers he will ever create and sell, because he's…
Never have I had to work so hard to convince someone that a product that first surfaced at CES 2017, just started shipping, and was just awarded MQA certification belonged in a new-product show report. Finally, after several minutes of what was beginning to look like a Socratic dialogue, Michael McCormick, President of Minneapolis-based Bel Canto Design, acknowledged that the single-box Bel Canto Black Box ACI 600 ($25,000) was indeed deserving of coverage by the publication that awarded the three-box Bel Canto Black system "Best Amplification Product of 2015."
Billed as the "Ultimate…
The fabled Nelson Pass, whose 160 lb XA 200.8 class-A monoblocks are an essential part of my reference system, has just gone small with the first appearance of the Pass Labs XA25 class-A stereo amplifier ($4900). With a single pair of 700W devices per side, the single-ended amp delivers 25Wpc into 8 ohms and 50Wpc into 4 ohms, and is stable down to 0.5 ohm.
Of the amp, which was shown in passive display, Pass Labs' Desmond Harrington said, "We needed a smaller, lighter, and less expensive amplifier. A single human being can pick it up, and it can fit on a shelf. It's actually a little…
Several years ago, at a Consumer Electronics Show, Bob Stuart, then with Meridian Audio, took John Atkinson and me into a private room to demonstrate something new. He played individual tracks of mostly familiar recordings, twice each: first, straight from the commercial release, and then again, this time after processing with technology he was still developing. The differences were subtle, but usually we favored the second version. It was all very hush-hush, and despite our requests for technical information, Stuart spoke of his new process only in terms of results—as a way to recover the…
This arrangement is exactly the one I use with my other servers. The only special requirement for MQA was to make sure that all of JRiver's DSP options were turned off, including any up/downsampling, file conversion, and dither settings. It was also necessary to uncheck the box for "Open device with exclusive access."
Mmm-mmm, Good
Most of the recordings I'd requested from 2L were hi-rez DXD files (24/352.8)—the MQA versions downloaded in a fraction of the time it took to download the unprocessed originals. The batch of 10 original files (5.96GB) was more than six times larger than…
Sidebar 1: Contacts
MQA Limited, Latham Road, Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire PE29 6YE, England, UK. Tel: (44) (0)1480-445678. Fax: (44) (0)1480-445686. Web: www.mqa.co.uk.
Mytek HiFi, 148 India Street, First Floor, Brooklyn, NY 11222. Tel: (347) 384-2687. Web: www.mytekdigital.com.
Sidebar 2: Recordings in the Round
TRONDHEIM SOLOISTS: Reflections
Britten: Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge. Stravinsky: Apollon Musagète. Vaughan Williams: Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis.
Trondheim Soloists; Øyvind Gimse, artistic dir.; Geir Inge Lotsberg, guest leader
2L 2L-125-SABD (SACD/CD+BD). 2016. Morten Lindberg, prod., eng. DDD. TT: 70:16
This recording was nominated for a Grammy for Best Surround Recording. The winner is more than fine (you can look it up), but we wuz robbed! Perhaps the Trondheim Soloists' 2L recordings are now quantities too…
Having discontinued the MAXX3 loudspeaker ($68,000/pair in 2009, when I reviewed it), Wilson Audio needed to plug the resulting gaping hole between the Alexia ($48,500/pair) and the Alexandria XLF ($210,000/pair). Company founder Dave Wilson was busy with the limited-edition WAMM Master Chronosonic loudspeaker ($685,000/pair), so son Darryl Wilson set about creating a speaker with a retail price of about $100,000/pair. The result, the Alexx, finally came in at $109,000/pair.
The Alexx shares with the Alexandria XLF Wilson's Aspherical Group Delay technology, whereby the positions of its…
In my room, the Alexx's bottom end was far superior to the Alexandria's: deeper, faster, tighter, and, interestingly, more organically and tunefully delivered. With recordings that include deep bass, that deep bass was just there—it didn't sound as if it was being pumped into the room by a loudspeaker. In that regard, the Alexx was remarkable.
That visceral but tuneful, well-controlled bass was ideally damped: sounding neither too tight nor mechanical nor in any way "porty." I'll be interested to compare John Atkinson's measurements of the Alexx's in-room frequency response with those…