As luck would have it, Jürgen Reis's laptop crashed as I walked…
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The last room I visited at the 2019 AXPONA was the best-sounding: the big room shared by Kyomi Audio and MBL on the Renaissance Hotel's 15th floor. The system comprised MBL's Noble Line N31 CD player/DAC ($15,400) that I reviewed in February 2018, the N11 preamplifier ($14,600), four N15 monoblock amplifiers ($35,600/pair) and the omnidirectional 101E Mk.2 loudspeakers ($70,500/pair), all hooked up with WireWorld Eclipse Series 8 cables. The N31 is being updated to act as a Roon endpoint, so I hope to be writing a followup.
By the time I knew they were handing out cots, it was too late: They had already run out. The person at the Help Desk at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport said he'd never seen so many people camping out there. (Thanks to Mike Trei for the above photo.)
The day had begun on a less dire note. When I woke up Sunday morning at the Renaissance Schaumburg Hotel, I looked out the window and saw some pretty snow flurries.
Not long after, it was a snow squall, and soon after that, it was a snow bomb: a complete whiteout. I thought it was charming: The hotel is mostly glass,…
As much as I enjoy hi-fi, I strongly prefer non-hi-fi accoutrements, especially component racks. I'm currently using—and have been for years—a standard cherry entertainment console (the Durham) made by Maine-based furniture company Chilton. True, it's sagging a bit under the weight of my components, but I've managed to reinforce it with strategically placed home-made screw jacks.
The racks produced by Butcher Block Acoustics, which were on display in the EXPO at AXPONA 2019, are about what you'd expect from a company with that name: They look like butcher blocks made into shelves, with…
Both the name of the company and the look of their products belie what I found to be the company's spirit. "CAD"—short, in this case, for Computer Audio Design, but more commonly denoting computer-aided design, evokes highly technical, inhuman stuff. The main CAD products on active display in this room at AXPONA—the CAD Audio Transport, the 1543 Mk II DAC, and various "Ground Control" boxes—are squared off and minimalist in design, resembling space objects from 2001: A Space Odyssey. The components' green logos evoked, for me, nothing so much as the eyes of aliens come to abduct us.
CAD…
AXPONA 2019 was a good show—I'm tempted to say an important show. It's just an intuition, but I sense renewed vitality.
I wasn't able to visit as many rooms as I wanted to—too many meetings! Those meetings, though, had their own rewards—indeed, they were the highlight of the show for me. What a privilege to meet so many talented and enthusiastic people who share my passion for hi-fi. I met Sandy Gross of GoldenEar, who, years ago at Polk Audio, designed my first serious pair of speakers, Polk's Model 7Bs, bought when I was 16. I met Tim de Pavaracini, who designed the EAR 834P…
Francesco Diodati Yellow Squeeds: Never the Same
Francesco Diodati, electric & acoustic guitar, gongs; Francesco Lento, trumpet; Glauco Benedetti, tuba, valve trombone, flute; Enrico Zanisi, piano, Fender Rhodes, synths; Enrico Morello, drums, gongs
Auand AU9080 (CD). 2019. Francesco Diodati, Marco Valente, prods.; Stefano Del Vecchio, Roberto Lioli, engs. DDD. TT: 44:24
Performance ****½
Sonics ****
Francesco Diodati, electric & acoustic guitar, gongs; Francesco Lento, trumpet; Glauco Benedetti, tuba, valve trombone, flute; Enrico Zanisi, piano, Fender Rhodes, synths; Enrico Morello, drums, gongs
Auand AU9080 (CD). 2019. Francesco Diodati, Marco Valente, prods.; Stefano Del Vecchio, Roberto Lioli, engs. DDD. TT: 44:24
Performance ****½
Sonics ****
Guitarist Francesco Diodati is one of the freshest voices to enter jazz in the new millennium. If this news comes as a surprise, you probably live in the US. A…
When we launched Stereophile's website at the end of 1997, we decided that we would not reprint the magazine's most popular features, including the biannual "Recommended Components" listings and Michael Fremer's monthly "Analog Corner" column. We were concerned that doing so would cannibalize magazine sales. As it turned out, we were wrong—and so the latest "Recommended Components" is available on our free-access website day-and-date with the publication of the April and October issues in which it appears. And starting with Mikey's very first "Analog Corner," from July 1995, I have been…
I keep getting older. By the time you read this, I will be genuinely old. When I was genuinely young, I bellyached, "Wires are the worst part of hi-fi—there's gotta be a way to get rid of them." I first made that statement when audio electronics and loudspeakers both still nestled inconspicuously in proper bookcases. Back then, people sitting on the sofa weren't forced to stare at diverse audio boxes and ungainly wires.
I marveled when audiophile speakers departed the bookcase and ventured into the walkabout space of the room. I laughed as they and their zip-cord tails inched nearer the…
Next, I cleaned, waxed, and rearranged my writing desk, to create an attractive, intimate system. The KEFs were about 36" apart, the centers of their tweeters some 30" away from and 8" below my ears. The sound was fundamentally clean and meticulously detailed. Unfortunately, the bass notes of Amanaz's Africa (16/44.1 FLAC, Now-Again/Odk/Tidal) shook my whole desk, making loud, buzzy-blurry-woody noises below 1kHz. I stopped. And thought. Some little IsoAcoustics stands would have been just the ticket, but I had none. Instead, I put a short stack of dense books under each speaker. Now their…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: Two-way, coaxial, rear-ported, active, dynamic wireless loudspeaker and all-in-one stereo hi-fi system. Drive-units: coaxial Uni-Q array comprising a 0.75" (19mm) aluminum-dome tweeter and 4.5" (115mm) magnesium-aluminum-alloy midrange-woofer, each powered by its own class-D amplifier (30W, tweeter; 70W, woofer) and 24-bit/192kHz DACs, with active crossover and DSP functions. Direct streaming: WiFi, Bluetooth 4.2 (aptX). All functions managed and controlled by KEF apps: Control accesses the LSX's Music Integrity Engine digital signal processing;…