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Call me stuck in the 1970s, or stuck in two-channel audio, but for me surround sound still conjures the idea of quadraphonic sound, which if I’m not mistaken was kind of like LaserDisc, or DVD-A: ideas whose time never came. To be fair, I also live in a New York apartment and the chance of me optimizing my environment to take full advantage of 5.1 recordings is nil. I have heard 5.1 recordings, recorded in surround which is key, played on a proper rig, that have been a very pleasurable listening experience, and one very different, though not necessarily better, that those in the two-channel…
Hats off and heads down. Let Joe Grado's passing fill our collective hearts with enduring feelings of gratitude (for what Joe brought to the quality and character of the audio industry over six decades) and respect (for his myriad inventions and human fortitude that delivered musical joy and aural insights to countless listeners and audio professionals throughout the world).
Joe Grado was a mechanic, an engineer, an inventor (with scores of patents), an inveterate tinkerer, an artist, an operatic tenor, and an old-school American entrepreneur. Joe Grado and Saul Marantz can legitimately…
In what may be the first collaboration of its kind, the San Francisco Audiophile Society (SFAS) has partnered with a major urban arts presenter, the SFJAZZ Center, to offer its members a prime block of "audiophile-approved" seats to major SFJAZZ Center events. The instant success of the SFAS Concert Series collaboration is reflected in the fact that all 30 tickets to the first event, a March 1 concert with Taj Mahal, sold out in four hours. In fact, SFAS "chief troublemaker" Alón Sagee was forced to cut the waiting list off at 20, lest even more people get their hopes up for seats that would…
John Atkinson wrote about the Dayton B652-AIR in February 2014 (Vol.38 No.2):
Stephen Mejias reviewed the Dayton Audio B652 bookshelf loudspeaker in Stereophile's January 2013 issue. Sold direct by Parts Express as well as by Amazon, and priced at just $39.80/pair (including two 9½'-long 20AWG speaker cables), the B652 is by far the cheapest speaker we have reviewed. The B652 is still available, but has been joined by a new version, the B652-AIR ($59.80/pair, footnote 1). Like the earlier speaker, the 'AIR is a small, two-way, sealed-cabinet design with a 6.5" polypropylene mid/woofer and…
Listening to the AIRs
I auditioned the Daytons with my usual high-end rig. It is a fair criticism that no one will use these speakers in a system costing upward of $50,000, but it's important to change as little as possible when inserting a new component in a reviewer's reference system. Connection is via a pair of spring-clip speaker terminals; to connect the Daytons to my usual speaker cables, I used pigtails with bare wire at one end and dual banana plugs at the other. The Daytons were used well out in the room, though it's fair to note that they could well benefit from some boundary…
I auditioned the Daytons with my usual high-end rig. It is a fair criticism that no one will use these speakers in a system costing upward of $50,000, but it's important to change as little as possible when inserting a new component in a reviewer's reference system. Connection is via a pair of spring-clip speaker terminals; to connect the Daytons to my usual speaker cables, I used pigtails with bare wire at one end and dual banana plugs at the other. The Daytons were used well out in the room, though it's fair to note that they could well benefit from some boundary…
COPLAND: Appalachian Spring, Rodeo, Fanfare for the Common Man
Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Louis Lane, cond.
Telarc Digital DG-10078 (LP). Robert Woods, prod., Jack Renner, eng. DAA. TT: 44:11.
Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Louis Lane, cond.
Telarc Digital DG-10078 (LP). Robert Woods, prod., Jack Renner, eng. DAA. TT: 44:11.
I predict that this Fanfare for the Common Man will suffer the same fate as the opening measures of Also Sprach Zarathustra. The impact of the opening brass and tympani is stupendous. Even when I know it is coming, I tend to leap from my chair in surprise. All audiophile copies of this disc will become grey and worn on Band One of Side One.
Audiophile impact aside, please don't…
With Break Stuff, his third trio album and his first on the ECM label, Vijay Iyer comes into his own as a master pianist, composer, and conceptualizer—one of the truly great jazz musicians of our time.
It's his 19th album overall (as soloist and leader or co-leader of various ensembles), and you can hear the evolution. There's a schematic edge to Iyer's music, stemming perhaps from his education in math, physics, and cognitive sciences; he has long experimented with numerical patterns in his music (Steve Coleman is a key influence), and in some of his early work, you could hear the…
Powerful, massive, and expensive, Revel's Ultima Rhythm2 subwoofer ($10,000) swept me off my feet when I first saw it in Harman International's suite at the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show. It outsizes, by 49 lbs and 2.6 cubic feet, Revel's previous flagship model, the Ultima Sub30, which I reviewed in the November 2004 issue. Its specs read like no other sub's: 196 lbs; 18" cast-frame woofer; dual 4" voice-coils; 4kW peak power from twin internal amplifiers that generate 1kW RMS; 115dB peak acoustic output; a fully configurable, high-resolution, 10-band parametric equalizer (PEQ); an…
Because some internal crossovers produce audible effects, I checked to hear if the Rhythm2's internal electronic crossover was altering the sound of the high-pass signal driving the Salon2s. Try as I might, I couldn't hear the Rhythm2's crossover. Whether I ran the Salon2s full range and used the Rhythm2 for reinforcement, or passed the audio signal through the sub's crossover, the tonal characteristics of my system didn't change. I heard no discontinuities between the speakers and the subwoofer even with solo-piano recordings. The light, lyrical quality of Keith Jarrett's playing in "True…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: Powered subwoofer in aperiodic enclosure. Drive-unit: 18", forward-firing aluminum cone with dual 4"-diameter voice coils, neodymium magnets, and cast frame. V-Max: 1.7". Rear-panel inputs: R & L, balanced (XLR) and single-ended (RCA), USB, 12V trigger. Rear-panel outputs: high-pass output (XLR & RCA), 12V trigger. Rear-panel controls: Gain, Power Mode (Auto/On/Trigger). Low- and high-pass filters: adjustable, 50–100Hz, in 1Hz steps. Slopes: first, second, fourth, or eighth-order Butterworth; fourth- or eighth-order Linkwitz-Riley, user-…