The player was broken-in for roughly a month before I sat down to listen. I fed it CDs, set it for infinite repeat, and hooked the fixed outputs to a 10k load (you can make this by soldering a 10k resistor between the signal and ground of an RCA plug, or alternately, you can just hook the player up to an input on your preamp, turned all the way down), which ensured that signal would flow through the audio circuitry, output coupling caps, wire, etc. If you leave the output jacks unterminated there's no signal flow, and all you accomplish is a ha'pen'orth's…
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Sidebar 3: Measurements
The SD-22's frequency response (fig.1) is flat over most of the range, though its definite high-frequency rolloff beginning about 6kHz would likely translate into some softness in the upper octaves. The ripples in the top two audio octaves are typical of the Philips digital filter used. In fig.2, the SD-22's de-emphasized response tracks the HF rolloff of the player as a whole. The squarewave response in fig.3 is typical of the players in this group—a good rise-time combined with the moderate ripple indicating a linear-phase digital filter, though more overshoot…
The first time I saw Thomas's Sandwich Size English muffins on the shelves of my local supermarket, I thought, This is it: the English muffin has now been perfected, and I need never buy another kind. I bought a four-pack—their awesomeness is so potent that to supply them in greater quantities would apparently be dangerous—and prepared one the minute I got home.
It was awful. In particular, it was impossible to toast just right: it was too thick, too doughy, just plain too big. I had learned a valuable lesson: Talking myself into wanting something isn't a good enough reason to actually…
Second, and in a more general sense, it increased my sense of wonder at the provenance of every record I've bought secondhand, many of which appear to have been cherished. And really: when you have in your possession an object that has been loved, how can you not wonder about the people who did the loving?
ah but gee!
In the years since buying those records that had once belonged to John Alan Hunt I've bought literally thousands more used LPs, and in doing so have made some other discoveries. The names of a few other collectors have appeared on multiple titles purchased in the same…
When David Murray decamped to Paris 20 years ago, the New York jazz scene lost its most distinctive voice: a tenor saxophonist who fused the hefty romance of Ben Webster, the improvisational zest of Sonny Rollins, and the avant skybursts of Albert Ayler. Now he's back, living in Harlem, playing at Manhattan's Village Vanguard (this week, through Sunday) with new and old bandmates, and sounding as lush, adventurous, and shiversome as ever.
In the 1980s through mid-'90s, Murray was omnipresent: leading a big band at the Knitting Factory every Monday night; heading ensembles of various sorts…
With any large gathering of people who share a common passion, one is bound to encounter polarizing issues and the fiercely opinionated standing on either side. In the world, it's politics and religion. In our world, it's tubes vs solid-state, whether cables really matter or not, and, most recently . . . Master Quality Authenticated.
At CES this past January, one of the more controversial issues was actually CES itself—whether the high-end segment would continue, whether it would be the last CES, whether this reflected the state of the industry, and so on. But at AXPONA, the show itself…
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).
In consultation with, first, Acoustic Analyst Bob Hodas, and then retailer Brian Berdan of Pasadena-based Audio Element and John Quick of dCS (…
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…