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NEAT Acoustics Iota Alpha loudspeaker Herb Reichert June 2016

Herb Reichert auditioned the NEAT Iota Alpha in June 2017 (Vol.40 No.6):

My girlfriend, bb, and her garden friend Casey were hanging on the bed in my room as I installed NEAT Acoustics' diminutive Iota Alpha floorstanding speakers. Casey said, "Herb, what kind of speakers are those? They look like lawn dwarfs."

I told her to shush her smart-ass mouth. "These are serious British-made high-end audiophile speakers—and they cost $1995/pair!"

Then bb chimed in: "I like them! . . . better than all those other speakers you have. These don't dominate the room. They leave space to…

A Video VPI Tour with Mat Weisfeld

Last week, I embarked on a nearly three-hour public transportation trek from Queens to Cliffwood, NJ to take a tour of turntable and tonearm manufacturer VPI Industries, with Mat Weisfeld as my host. During the tour, I got to meet every member of the VPI family, learn about each step of the process, and get a firsthand look at a couple of unreleased products!

Here's the video tour of VPI:

Miles Davis' <I>E.S.P.</I> at 45rpm

E.S.P., recorded over three sessions in January 1965, marked a major turning point in the music of Miles Davis. Throughout his life—as a sideman to Charlie Parker in the 1940s, a rock-jazz fusionist in the '80s, and the many phases in between—Davis was a restless spirit, a cauldron of change, the spark of several evolutions in the history of jazz. But unlike his earlier shifts, which were followed by brief interludes of backpedaling (for instance, his reversion to hard bop and standards after the modal breakthrough in Kind of Blue), E.S.P. stands as his decisive pivot to modernism.

The…

PS Audio BHK Signature preamplifier

"Let be."

Those two words, from Shakespeare's Hamlet, express an entire philosophy of life in one of the shortest sentences possible. The quotation may not be familiar, but the concept certainly is—contemporary equivalents, each with its own inflections of meaning, include: Shit happens. Let the game come to you. Keep calm and carry on. (I hate that one.) Paul McCartney wrote something similar, and only slightly less concise, in a late Beatles song.

It's Hamlet himself who says, "Let be," near the end of the play (Act V, scene ii). Things are going poorly. His beloved Ophelia has…

PS Audio BHK Signature preamplifier Page 2

Other Things: The remote control is nice enough, with a plastic body, a brushed-aluminum faceplate, and backlit, tacky rubber buttons. It has a little weight to it, and can control everything in a PS Audio system (footnote 3): the DirectStream DAC, the company's new transport, and a phono preamp that, as far as I know, doesn't yet exist. All that functionality makes it a little crowded, but I much prefer this kind of clutter to the clutter of multiple remotes.

The balance control works fine. You can label the inputs. There's a home-theater bypass. And that headphone amplifier.

…

PS Audio BHK Signature preamplifier Specifications

Sidebar 1: Specifications

Description: Fully balanced hybrid line preamplifier with headphone amplifier. Tube complement: two hand-selected, matched 12AU7 dual-triodes. Analog inputs: 5 unbalanced (RCA), 5 balanced (XLR). Analog outputs: 1 pair balanced (XLR), 1 pair unbalanced (RCA). DC triggers: 2. Frequency response: 20Hz–20kHz, ±0.1dB; 0.1Hz–200kHz, –3dB. Input impedance: >66k ohms balanced, >33k ohms unbalanced. Output level: 4.0V RMS. Output impedance: <100 ohms. THD+IM at 1kHz (full scale): <0.03%. Headphone amplifier: output impedance, 0.5 ohm; output power, >200mW…

PS Audio BHK Signature preamplifier Associated Equipment

Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment

Analog Sources: Thorens TD 124 turntable (reconditioned by Schopper AG); Ortofon RMG-212 (rebuilt), Thomas Schick 12" tonearms; Ortofon 90th Anniversary SPU cartridge.
Digital Sources: MacBook Pro computer (early 2015); Intel NUC computer with SSD drive running RoonServer; Benchmark DAC 3, Meridian Explorer2 USB, Mytek HiFi Brooklyn, PS Audio DirectStream DACs.
Preamplification: Auditorium 23 Standard step-up transformer; EAR 834P phono stage.
Power Amplifiers: Lamm Industries M1.2, PS Audio BHK Signature 300 Mono (all monoblocks).
…

PS Audio BHK Signature preamplifier Measurements

Sidebar 3: Measurements

I measured the PS Audio BHK Signature preamplifier with my Audio Precision SYS2722 system (see the January 2008 "As We See It"). The gain with the volume control set to its maximum of "100" was 9.8dB, balanced input to balanced output; 3.7dB, unbalanced input to unbalanced output; and 9.7dB, unbalanced input to headphone output. The unity-gain setting at the line outputs would be between "79" and "80" on the front-panel display, except that that isn't possible; the balanced gain at "80" was 0.33dB. Both sets of inputs preserved absolute polarity (ie, were non-…

Gramophone Dreams #16: Sony & AudioQuest headphones

As much as I delight in pagan dreams of sweetly perfumed garden nymphs, I'm embarrassed to admit that my mind also drifts in pleasant reveries whenever I hear the words research and development in the same sentence. I am by nature a greasy gearhead. The idea of taking well-considered steps of engineering to analyze and possibly improve the operation of any electrical or mechanical system never fails to get my imaginative juices flowing. This is why I've spent decades fascinated by perfectionist audio: I like watching and participating in its edgy, eccentric evolution.

So it's perfectly…

Gramophone Dreams #16: Sony & AudioQuest headphones Page 2

I took a deep breath, pulled the bunker shades down, and listened to Lou Reed croon "Waiting for the Man" and execute long sloooow guitar licks that seemed so "I'm feeling g-o-o-o-o-o-o-d . . ." stretched out. An hour passed. I completely forgot to call Sphere back.

"Heroin (Version 4)": I'm addicted to musicians who can play simple guitar rhythms and jack me up into pulsating delirium. Through Sony's splendidly vivid-sounding MDR-Z1R headphones, Lou Reed's hyper-strummed, screaming, droning guitar, plus Maureen Tucker's poetic-eccentric drumming, were like a needle in my arm booting…