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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…
The Audiophiliac, Steve Guttenberg, is a long time industry heavyweight, a prolific audio journalist, and a wild "As We See It" contributor to Stereophile. He's also been a crucial mentor of mine since we first met in early 2015, during my pre-Stereophile days.
In this video, Steve shares his personal background and offers his perspective on a variety of audio-related topics. He defines the term "audiophile" while questioning the evasiveness surrounding the term, discusses affordable audio, and describes his method for reviewing. Think of this as an "As We See It"—video edition.
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The M15 Super is the first high-output pickup to come from Ortofon. Previous ones required either step-up transformers or a booster preamp, and it is only fairly recently that either kind of step-up device was available with high-enough quality to avoid a noticeable degradation of the sound. Early step-up transformers muddied the bass, and previously-available booster preamps added noise or hardness or both to the sound. Now that there are excellent transformers available from Ortofon and other sources, and at least one extraordinarily good booster preamp (the Mark Levinson, at an…
Manufacturer's Comment
Editor: We do not agree with your subjective evaluation of the M-15 Super's sound, but since there is no disputing personal taste, we are not going to argue the point.
There are however some misleading statements in the report that we must, in the interests of accuracy, take issue with.
You stated that it is likely that production quality control will be better (than it was for your sample) by the time this report gets into print, but expressed no such qualification for the rather poor response and separation curves you show. In fact, the deviations…
Sidebar: Specifications
Description: Moving-magnet phono cartridge with 0.6 mil spherical stylus (M-15) or 0.7 by 0.3 mil elliptical stylus (M15E). Recommended tracking force: 1 gram. Output: 4mV.
Cartridge weight: 5 grams.
Price: $79.95 (elliptical) or $69.95 (spherical) (1974); no longer available (2017).
Manufacturer: Ortofon A/S, Stavangervej 9, DK-4900 Nakskov, Denmark, US Distributor: Ortofon US, New York, NY 10016 (1974); Ortofon Inc., 500 Executive Blvd, Suite 102, Ossining, NY 10562 (2017). Tel: (914) 762-8646. Fax: (914) 762-8649. Web: www.ortofon.com.
Stereophile seldom reviews A/V receivers. We made an exception for Arcam's FMJ SR250 ($3600) because it's that unusual two-channel device: one that includes room-correction software, in this case Dirac Live. Many of us who listen in multichannel are comfortable with room correction, but a week doesn't pass without my hearing or reading someone say that they bypass room correction when listening to music in stereo. Spock-like, I find that illogical and, from experience, pointless.
If one accepts that, just like careful speaker positioning and acoustic treatments, room equalization exists…
Taking over in Connecticut
The Arcam FMJ SR250 served as the hub of my New England system, replacing my Marantz AV8802a preamplifier-processor and Bryston 9BST power amp, and fed source signals via HDMI, analog, Ethernet, and S/PDIF. The speaker terminals were cabled to my Monitor Silver 8s, and the two subwoofer outputs to my pair of JL Audio E-Sub e110 subs. A HDMI TV monitor is required for initial setup of the SR250 and Dirac Live, but not for daily use—the SR250's front-panel display is clear and communicative. Setup was relatively easy.
The Arcam FMJ SR250 served as the hub of my New England system, replacing my Marantz AV8802a preamplifier-processor and Bryston 9BST power amp, and fed source signals via HDMI, analog, Ethernet, and S/PDIF. The speaker terminals were cabled to my Monitor Silver 8s, and the two subwoofer outputs to my pair of JL Audio E-Sub e110 subs. A HDMI TV monitor is required for initial setup of the SR250 and Dirac Live, but not for daily use—the SR250's front-panel display is clear and communicative. Setup was relatively easy.
Arcam's remote control is illuminated and…