On the last question, I’ve always…
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Another Monday, another rock passing, another reappraisal. The death of Glenn Frey, 67, a member of a band widely known for being stronger in the studio than it was on the concert stage (at least until Joe Walsh and Don Felder arrived) brings up two questions. Given the Eagles run of smash hits from 1974 (“Best of My Love”) through the end of that decade, all of which were played literally to death by the radio, can anybody still listen to Eagles records these days? And if so, is that audiophile fave, Hotel California really the band’s creative peak?
"You're only as good as your most recent gig," was literally drummed into me in my pro musician days; I've found it to be just as true in magazine publishing. No matter how much hard work went into, say, an equipment review, a couple of months down the line that review will be as fresh as yesterday's undunked donut. And no matter how good-sounding the product, or how much it excited the writer, it will always tend to be overshadowed by the latest and greatest products written about in the new issue—the "moving finger, having writ..." syndrome.
Needless to say, this is a drag. I want to…
Loudspeaker of 1992
Sonus Faber Extrema ($14,000/pair including stands (footnote 1); reviewed by Martin Colloms, Vol.15 No.6, June 1992 Review)
I first heard a Sonus Faber speaker some years ago in the home of a friend in England. I forget which model it was, but this minimonitor boogied like a good'un, while managing to avoid destroying the subtleties present in the music we played. (I've been surprised at the fact that this Italian range of beauties has only recently been distributed in the US.) When Martin Colloms told me at the beginning of the year that he wanted to review the…
Amplification component of 1992:
Melos SHA-1 headphone amplifier ($995; reviewed by Corey Greenberg & John Atkinson, Vol.15 No.10, October 1992 Review)
When I tallied the close voting in the amplification category and realized that this strange little beast was the 1992 winner, I smiled. It might be expected that in awards schemes like this, the contenders whose designers have been allowed effectively unlimited design budgets have an overwhelming advantage. Yes, there are some very expensive components carrying away kudos from the Stereophile scribes, but this line/headphone…
Considering the amount of careful research, cautious theorizing and wild speculation that have been lavished on the amplifier power question, we should expect to be considerably closer to the answer in 1962 than we were five years ago. This does not seem to be the case.
We have instruments for measuring sound pressure levels in the air, for measuring electrical power, and for analyzing distortion content to the third decimal place, and the literature is full of learned dissertations on the structure of musical sounds, their behavior in concert halls and living rooms, and the relationships…
Digital Source of 1992:
Mark Levinson No.30 D/A processor ($13,950; reviewed by Robert Harley, Vol.15 No.2, February 1992; Jack English, Vol.15 No.7, July 1992 Review)
It's ironic that, ten years after the launch of the CD medium, we are still witnessing a furious and passionate improvement in the standard of digital replay. Yet, when I first heard the Mark Levinson No.30 processor, I thought that at last there would be a bit of a breathing space. For, coupled with a resolution of detail that seemed to belie the limited CD encoding standard, the No.30 offers a freedom from…
Thus far, we have fairly well established the power that we must have in order to avoid outright overload when reproducing original orchestral level through a speaker of known efficiency. But it is not all the power we should have on hand, because there's more to fidelity than just reproducing sound at the proper volume.
Anyone who has perused an amplifier's power-vs-distortion curve will have noticed that distortion rises gradually with output until just below the overload point, beyond which the distortion skyrockets. This is one reason why a high-powered amplifier is likely to sound…
Analog Source of 1992
VPI HW19 Mk.IV turntable ($1800; reviewed by Guy Lemcoe, Vol.15 No.8, August 1992 Review)
Now, I'm a Linnie—my turntable loyalties lie toward Scotland. Yet if the LP12 hadn't sprung fully formed from the forehead of the sainted Ivor Tiefenbrun, it would be a VPI that would probably be spinning my LPs. In its Mk.IV version, VPI's HW19 features the bearing and 11/2"-thick, 20-lb, lead-impregnated, four-layer, precision-machined acrylic platter of their TNT flagship model—changes over the ealier '19 that bring the sound, thinks Guy Lemcoe, into competition…
Accessory of 1992
Audio Power Industries Power Wedge 1 AC line conditioner ($499; reviewed by Corey Greenberg, Vol.14 No.11, November 1991)
Again I smiled when I counted up the votes in this category. The winner was a product, the kind of which didn't even exist just a few years ago. The conventional wisdom, at least in domestic systems, used to be that a component's power supply offered an insuperable barrier to the slings and arrows of outrageous AC line glitches and garbage. In these more pragmatic days, we accept the fact that AC power is as grundge-ridden as our industrial…
Editor's Choice
Quad ESL-63 USA Monitor loudspeaker ($4995/pair plus $265/pair Arcici stands; reviewed by J. Gordon Holt, Vol.6 Nos.4 & 5, April & May 1983; Anthony H. Cordesman, Vol.7 Nos.2 & 7, Spring & Fall 1984; Sam Tellig, Vol.8 No.3, July 1985; Martin Colloms, Vol.10 No.1, January 1987; Larry Greenhill, Vol.12 No.2, February 1989; John Atkinson & Sam Tellig, Vol.12 No.6, June 1989 Review)
When we conceived our annual awards, the "Editor's Choice" idea surfaced as a way of recognizing products that have stood the test of time. An aspect of this industry…