In consultation with, first, Acoustic Analyst Bob Hodas, and then retailer Brian Berdan of Pasadena-based Audio Element and John Quick of dCS (…
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By the time we had finished the house tour and admired the quiet beauty of the fir-canopied neighborhood, we sensed that we would follow our hearts from unsafe and increasingly unaffordable East Oakland, CA to the serene hamlet of Port Townsend, WA. We also knew, given the house's layout, that the only suitable place for my reference/review system and my husband David's vocal practice would be in the 22' x 22' detached garage (below).
Maryland store Gramophone (West Aylesbury Road, Timonium MD 21093) is hosting Sandy Gross, president of GoldenEar, on May 10, from 6–9pm. Sandy will be presenting GoldenEar's new flagship, the Triton Reference loudspeaker, which made its debut at CES 2017. The Reference is an evolution of the technology and concepts introduced in the GoldenEar Triton Series, which first debuted in 2010. The reference incorporates all new drivers, including the Reference High Velocity Folded Ribbon Tweeter (with 50% more neodymium, rare-earth magnet material), a new high-resolution 6" upper bass/midrange…
Ella Fitzgerald, who would have turned 100 years old this year, and so is the object of an avalanche of reissues of her work from Universal Music, has one of the most varied and influential catalogs of recorded music in the history of jazz. Live and in the studio, early in the swing bands with Chick Webb, later as a nimble bebopper, and finally as one of the greatest vocal stylists in all of popular music—one who could make the greatest tunes from Tin Pan Alley her own in unforgettable ways—Fitzgerald's influence on jazz vocals is almost unimaginably vast.
With her perfect enunciation,…
The RS-212 is one of the most impressive-looking tonearms we've seen in many a moon. Our first reaction to it, in fact, was much the same as our reaction to the first big, professional Ampex tape recorder we ever saw: it reminded us of one of those precision-engineered and cleanly styled electronic devices you see in hospitals and industrial laboratories—devices which make no attempt to cater to the current fashion in interior decorating or depth-researched consumer preferences, but which are designed simply to do a job neatly and efficiently. This arm, in short, is practically guaranteed to…
John Wright wrote about the Ortofon RS212 in January 1970 (Vol.2 No.10):
Mounting: By boring one hole and inserting three screws, all of whi~ch are positioned by means of a metal template and plastic mounting pillar. These proved to be accurate. No overhang adjustment or alignment protractor is provided, although the exact position of the cartridge in the headshell may be slightly altered via the cartridge-mounting plate.
Cartridge acceptance: An additional screw-in weight is provided in the counter-balance, and with this inserted the arm would balance for cartridge weights…
Sidebar 1: Vertical vs Horizontal
There seems to be some confusion in the audio industry as to just which tonearm pivot is which. Some writers identify the pivots according to whether their axis lies vertically or horizontally, others identify them according to the mode of arm motion that they are related to. For the record, we wish to state that we use the latter system. (After all, the axis of a unipivot needle is vertical, but the arm moves both vertically and horizontally about the pivot.) When we refer to the vertical pivots, we mean those pivots about which the arm moves vertically…
Sidebar 2: Specifications
Description: S-shaped tonearm. Counterbalance system: Rear weight sets static balance; light spring and calibrated knob set tracking force. Bias compensation: calibrated adjustment varies offset angle of force spring. Plug-in headshell weight (without pickup): 12.5 grams. Counterbalance range: 31 grams (shell plus Ortofon SI5T pickup) to 7 grams. Damped cueing lift lever. Isolated-ground four-circuit output.
Dimensions: Overall length: 12". Nominal length: 8.875". Rear overhang: 3". Distance from turntable center: 8.4375". Base-to-stylus distance: ?", from…
The Shure V15-III is the latest of Shure's top-of-the-line "Super-track" pickups, earlier versions of which we scorned because of their dished-down response in the 6kHz range and their consequent "dead" sound. (We were unimpressed with Shure's suggestion that the pickup cable capacitance be increased to a total of around 300pF, since few audiophiles are equipped to measure either cable capacitance or frequency response).
The V15-III's specifications (unlike those for the earlier models) include a statement about cable capacitance, calling for "400 to 500 picofarads total capacitance per…
The V15-III's compliance, though, is obviously much greater than that of the Decca Mark V, yet in the same arm, both showed a slight low-frequency rise starting at the same frequency and having about the same amplitude, and the Decca had no trace of the slight heaviness we observed in the Shure. So perhaps we weren't measuring what we were hearing after all. Which is why we depend more on our ears than on our instruments. In any case, the low-end difference noted was slight.
The pickup does have rather high electrical inductance, though, which means it is not going to match all preamps…
Sidebar: Specifications
Description: Moving-magnet phono cartridge. Stylus: 0.7 by 0.2-mil elliptical. Recommended tracking force: ¾–1¼ grams. Output: 3.5mV.
Weight: 6 grams.
Price: $72.50 (1974); no longer available (2017).
Manufacturer: Shure Bros., Evanston, IL 60204 (1974). Shure Inc., 5800 W. Touhy Avenue, Niles, IL 60714-4608. Tel: (800) 257-4873, (847) 600-2000. Fax: (847) 600-1212. Web: www.shure.com/americas.