I measured Peachtree Audio's nova300 with my Audio Precision SYS2722 system (see the January 2008 "As We See It"). Before performing any tests, I ran it at 80Wpc into 8 ohms for an hour. At the end of that time, the vents on its top panel were warmer than I'd anticipated for an amplifier with a class-D output, at 92.3°F (33.5°C), though this is cooler than would be expected for an amplifier with a conventional output stage. Because of it uses ICEpower class-D modules, all measurements of the nova300 were taken using Audio Precision's auxiliary AUX-0025 passive…
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Manufacturer's Comment
Editor: We would like to thank Art Dudley and John Atkinson for taking the time to review Peachtree Audio's nova300.
At first, we were perplexed by Art's conclusion since every other review and all of the dealer and customer feedback has been in direct opposition. Even Michael Lavorgna at Stereophile's sister website, AudioStream.com, described the nova300 as "slam-O-licious" and "bodacious," and gave the nova300 a "Greatest Bits" award (Recommended Component).
ComputerAudiophile.com honored the nova300 with a "Cash" award (Suggested Hardware)…
Not so long ago, the 1970s were regularly and fairly vociferously disparaged as a musical wasteland. Lately however, it's become very noticeable, especially since Madison Avenue is now using '70s tunes to sell everything from cars to ice cream, that those voices have largely gone silent.
In fact, there is now a growing chorus from many different quarters—jazz and classical music fans included—that sing the praises of '70s music: that magical time before the compact disc, before Napster, before all the money drained out of the music business, and young folks decided that instead of…
Newcomers to the music of Argentinean tango composer Astor Piazzolla (1921–1992) will undoubtedly join the already converted in hailing the arrival of Warner's two-disc CD compilation, The Sound of Piazzolla. Filled with one fascinating performance after the other, many of which were transcribed for the particular forces at hand when they were recorded between 1996 and 2016, this set will seduce many who are not already under Piazzolla's spell.
Piazzolla's career as a composer, bandoneonist, ensemble leader, and arranger is fabled. Starting with pianist Arthur Rubinstein, one great…
He was the last to have the name. And now with the passing on Saturday, May 27 of Gregg Allman, the keyboardist, singer, songwriter and godfather of both Southern Rock and the Jam Band movement, one of the greatest of 1960s rock stories has come to its final chapter.
While his 2011 solo record, the T Bone Burnett-produced Low Country Blues, was a much-acclaimed return to form, and his upcoming Don Was-produced record Southern Blood (release date September 2017) will undoubtedly stir interest, especially now that it's a posthumous swan song, Gregg Allman's finest moments came just after…
For a first-time audio show, the Los Angeles Audio Show's (LAAS) June 2–4 stint in the Sheraton Gateway Hotel, adjacent to LAX, could very well move the bar higher for consumer audio show expectations. With 116 active exhibit rooms—participation was intentionally capped so that show manager Marine Presson could keep a handle on things during this initial run—348 brands and manufacturers, and a >8000ft2 HeadGear Planet with 35 booths in the "affordable section" and another five in the "Xtreme section," this looks like it is going to be one helluva show.
Of course, for a show that bears…
For fans, of course, he's never been gone, not even for a minute. A jazz pianist who played from the heart and spent a tumultuous life fighting his demons while searching, as singer Tony Bennett has often said, "for truth and beauty," Bill Evans is now the subject of four previously unheard, recently released titles, on LPs, CDs, and downloads, of live recordings of his music. There's also, from Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab, a new and superlative One-Step Process vinyl reissue of his classic Sunday at the Village Vanguard. Finally, there's a wonderful new documentary, Bill Evans: Time…
Another Time is one of those recordings in which the entire group is on the same musical and philosophical path from the opening number, an up-tempo run-through of André and Dory Previn's "You're Gonna Hear from Me." Evans's playing is looser and more fluid than it had been two days before, in the Black Forest. A number of tracks here are absolute standouts, and easily among the best live recordings Evans ever made.
Throughout his career, Evans had a penchant for pushing and pulling well-known pop tunes into a very personal statements. His version of Johnny Mandel's "Theme from M*A*S*H…
There was a fight. And when the fight took a turn for the worse and things began being broken and thrown, it was time to leave. Not later. Not soon. Now.
Which meant he had to get as much stuff downstairs and out to the curb in as few trips as possible. Clothes and a few treasured paintings and photos were musts. LPs were left behind and written off. (Too many to haul, too difficult to choose just a few.) Likewise, the amps and turntables were written off—someday there would be others. And the loudspeakers, in their custom-made one-off cabinets, were over 5' tall: might as well try…
I decided to rule out the gap once and for all by taking the original diaphragm, now presumed useless, and drilling out the offending alignment hole, apparently 1/8" in diameter, to 9/64", after which I carefully and slightly countersunk it. That provided just the slight amount of slop I needed—and what I now realized was a perfectly round former and coil of consistent and correct thickness dropped neatly into what I also now realized was a perfectly made voice-coil gap.
Whether the mounting pins on that Altec had always been a little bit off, or whether one or both had become…