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Editor: Comments on HR's Wretched Excesses: I have failed miserably trying to be tame. Meditation, yoga, psychoanalysis, group therapy, prayer, a frontal lobotomy, and jogging, have all been tried and proved ineffective. I apologize to all whom I have offended with my prose, and ask their forgiveness. No matter how hard I try, my excitement and enthusiasm overpower me. Any suggestions from physicians in the readership?

Comment on the Glorious Folly #1: To stimulate further the tube vs transistor debate, it should be noted that the Futterman OTL-1 uses a…

Description: Four-chassis stereo output transformerless tubed amplifier. Nominal output: 150W into 16 ohms. Large-signal frequency response (–3dB down): 2Hz–40kHz. Small signal response: 1.4Hz–200kHz. Phase shift: 15° at 10kHz and 45° at 40kHz. Output impedance: 2 ohms at 10Hz, 0.15 ohms at 1kHz, and 0.3 ohms at 10kHz. Signal/noise ratio: 85dB unweighted, 92dB A-weighted. THD: less than 1% at full power from 100Hz–100kHz, dropping to less than 0.1% at lower levels. IM distortion: 1.2% at full power, dropping steadily at lower levels.
Price: $12,000 (1986);…

Don't be misled by the title of this. It's fine for listening to KLH by, and it is also fine for listening to any other top-notch reproducer by. It is, in fact, the best, and most musical, stereo demonstration disc that's come along to date.

The KLH demo disc offers musically complete selections (instead of fragments) and a bare minimum of hokum in the discing, and the sound is excellent: very transparent, warmly natural, with an extremely smooth, un-hyped high end. Lows are…

Putting my customary preamplifier, the Krell KRS-2, to one side, the references used for this review were the $635 Audio by Van Alstine Super PAS (reviewed in October 1998), and the $659 PS Audio 4.6 (reviewed in September 1988 by Tom Norton) used with its normal external power supply, not the $469 M-500 upgrade (footnote 1). For reference purpose, the RIAA response of the PS 4.6 is Flat through almost the entire audio band, with a well-extended bass response, though it starts to roll off at the top of the top audio octave.

Power amplification was…

I ran a conventional set of measurements on this preamplifier. This was not so much to find a cause behind any facet of each unit's sound quality, but to see if there were any particular aspects which would lead to system incompatibility problems. At this price level, I would be surprised by any electronic component that didn't depart from neutrality, so careful system matching is even more essential with the Parasound preamplifier than with expensive models.

Fig.1 shows the overall frequency response of the third sample of the P/FET-900 measured via the…

Description: Solid-state preamplifier with three line-level inputs, one MM phono input, two tape loops, and bass and treble controls. Specifications: Frequency response (line): 10Hz–80kHz ±0.05dB (tone defeat on). Input impedance: 47k ohms in parallel with 150pF (phono), 47k ohms (line). Measured output impedance: 700 ohms (main). Maximum output level: 10V RMS at less than 0.02% THD. Sensitivity (phono): 2.6mV RMS input at 1kHz for 1V output. Sensitivity (line): 200mV RMS input at 1kHz for 1V output. Maximum input levels at 1kHz: 220mV (phono), 2V (line). S/N…

Harvey Rosenberg, the not-unflamboyant President of New York Audio Labs (NYAL), recently sent me a curious little black box he is purveying. Christened with the unlikely name of "SuperIt," this device turned out to be a hybrid tube/MOSFET phono preamp. When I say phono preamp, I mean just that! It…

Editor, I have a dream. I want the average man to be able to own a reliable/affordable sound system that possesses the quality of the best tube gear. The SuperIt, which exploits our new Moscode hybrid tube/FET hypercascode circuit, is just the beginning. Can you imagine tube gear without tube tremors? There will be a $169 It available in December.—Harvey Rosenberg, Elmsford, NY (footnote 1)

After reading GMG's comprehensive review of the SuperIt in Vol.9 No.6, I couldn't resist a second look at this significantly low-priced product.

Ever want to add a second phono input to your preamplifier, have a second hi-fi system for phono only, want to add a phono input to a tape recorder, or simply have a cheap stereo system built around nothing but a phono input? Well, now from the same laboratory that first brought you Shostakovich with digital cannons comes the SuperIt!

If you are…