Sidebar 1: The Music
Bravo! The Best of the 1998 Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival STPH014-2 The Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, Marc Neikrug, Artistic Director
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Piano Quartet No. 1 in G Minor, K.478 26:03
Pinchas Zukerman (violin), Cynthia Phelps (viola), Eric Kim (cello), and Marc Neikrug (piano)
[1] Allegro 11:00
[2] Andante 7:34
[3] Rondo (Allegro) 7:29
Marc Neikrug: Pueblo Children's Songs 11:42
Heidi Grant Murphy (soprano) and Marc Neikrug (piano)
[4] "Naming Chant I" 2:51
[5] "Chipmunks" 2:14
[6] "Naming Chant II…
Sidebar 2: Who Did What, Where, & When
Production: Marc Neikrug (Elgar, Neikrug) & Philip Traugott (Mozart), with Matthew S. Snyder (Neikrug)
Executive Director, Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival: Erich A. Vollmer
Engineering/Editing/Mixing: John Atkinson
Assistant Engineer: Wes Phillips
Piano Technician: Michael Blackwell
Page Turner: Kent Williamson Recorded at St. Francis Auditorium, Museum of Fine Arts, Santa Fe, New Mexico, July 30 & 31, August 13, 16 & 17, 1998
Recording equipment: two Shure SM-81 ½" cardioid microphones (piano ORTF pair,…
Without having intended to, I seem to have collected several "statement" products. I've already reported on the Weiss Medea and Theta Digital Generation VIII digital-to-analog converters. I saw and expressed interest in the Nagra DAC at the 2002 Consumer Electronics Show, when prototypes of it were shown along with a forthcoming multichannel version, the Nagra Digital Audio Processor (DAP). The two units are based on the same chassis and interface, the DAP including additional modules and processing.
Why would anyone think about spending $10,000 or more for a DAC to play…
The Nagra's soundstage was very deep, adequately wide, and grippingly immediate. Even though I sit a good 10-12' back from the speakers, the DAC seemed to pull me in, producing a more nearfield perspective than I usually experience. I think a number of things might have contributed to this: first, the dead quietness of the background in relation to the dynamic musical presentation; second, the power and definition of the lower frequencies, which seemed to directly couple the bass drivers to my ears; and third, the very clear, deep soundstage, which focused my attention on the central image…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: Two-channel digital/analog converter with remote control. Digital section: 5 digital inputs (3 S/PDIF RCA, 1 TosLink, 1 AES/EBU). Sampling rates: 32-96kHz. Analog input section: 1 stereo, RCA or XLR, (digitized at 24 bits/48kHz). Analog input impedance: 100k ohms. Analog frequency response: 20Hz-20kHz, ±0.5dB. Analog output section: XLR or RCA. Nominal output impedance: 50 ohms. Maximum output level: 775mV, 1.5V, 2V, 3.1V, 6.2V (selectable). Digital input frequency response: 10Hz-25kHz, ±0.5dB. THD: <0.02%. Crosstalk: >105dB.
Dimensions:…
Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment
Analog source: Heybrook TT2 turntable, SME III tonearm, Ortofon SME30H cartridge.
Digital sources: California Audio Labs CL-20 DVD-V/CD player, Orpheus 0 CD player, Linn Unidisk 1.1 universal player, Sony SCD-XA777ES SACD player.
Preamplification: Sonic Frontiers Line-3 preamplifier, Audiolab 8000PPA phono stage.
Power amplifiers: Classé CAM-350 monoblocks, Sonic Frontiers Power-3, Adcom GFA-7805.
Loudspeakers: Revel Ultima Studio.
Cables: Digital: i2Digital X-60 BNC with RCA adapters. Interconnect: AudioQuest Anaconda & Python (both…
Sidebar 3: Measurements
It has become increasingly difficult for me to explore the ultimate performance envelopes of such digital components as this Nagra, the Benchmark DAC1 that I review this month, and the Weiss and Theta processors that Kal Rubinson reviewed recently. The A/D converters in my measurement gear are all 16-bit devices—albeit very good ones—so while I can accurately characterize the technical behavior of the products we review with CD data, there is more "handwaving" involved when it comes to longer word lengths than I would like. With that caution in mind, let's proceed…
"Who Stole The Bass?" asked Anthony H. Cordesman, writing about minimonitors in the April/May 1987 Stereophile (Vol.10 No.3). And for the designer of a box loudspeaker, the fundamental design decision, at any price level, is how much bass extension to aim for. It will always be possible to design a speaker with extension down to 20Hz, but will the result be musically and commercially successful? Will the designer end up with a speaker hypertrophied in that one area at the expense of every other? Will, indeed, the result be feasible technically? For example, for a given cabinet volume, gains…
In addition, a part of the Cordesman case against minimonitors was that they are said to operate in severe overload at anything approaching realistic levels. Yet, if you glance at the specifications at the head of this report, you will see that Acoustic Energy is honest enough to talk about the compression, or to be exact, the AE1's lack of compression. (Not just minimonitors, but nearly all conventional dynamic speakers suffer from compression effects: the harder they're driven, the hotter the voice-coil gets, increasing its resistance and changing the tuning of the crossover filters.…
The sound
Acoustic Energy recommends that 24" stands be used with the AE1s; as matching stands were not available (they will be by the time this is printed), I used 24" Celestion SL700 stands, each AE1 sitting on the three upturned cones on the base's top plate. Chicago Speaker Stands' Hercules model would also be a good match. (Use of lower stands is not recommended, the sound of the AE1s from above being too nasal.) The AE1s were used off and on over a period of four months: in my old room driven first by a pair of Mark Levinson No.20s, then by a Krell KSA-50; in my video system…
