From the time the Luxman MQ-88uSE arrived at my house until I sat down to write these opening paragraphs, I knew only the following: It uses tubes for voltage and current gain—the latter accomplished with two KT88 pentodes per channel—but not for power-supply rectification…
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For this month's column, I did something I've occasionally set out to do but never quite managed: I lived with a new power amplifier for nearly two months, used it to enjoy a variety of records, made scads of listening notes, and wrote most of the subjective portion of my review—all without knowing what was inside it.
Take, for example, the opening measures of the 1961 recording of Strauss's Death and Transfiguration by Otto Klemperer and the Philharmonia Orchestra (LP, UK Columbia SAX 2437). When I play this exceptional record through my reference Shindo amp, the "heartbeat" gently played on the kettledrum (footnote 5) is taut, the contrabassoon ominous but not outsize, and the solo flute nothing less than amazing: big, meaty, and convincingly present, its sound coming from a space physically higher than the other woodwinds (the result of a spot mike, perhaps?). Later in the piece, the agitato section…
James Mallinson confers with Sir Georg Solti during playbacks for Mahler's Symphony No.3 in Chicago's Orchestra Hall in November 1982, from the CSO Archives
Legendary British record producer James Mallinson, whose close to five decades of work with Decca/London, Telarc, and the labels of the major orchestras in London, Chicago and St. Petersburg, died unexpectedly on Friday night, August 24. He leaves behind, in addition to his beloved wife and son, an estimable recorded legacy that earned him no less than 16 Grammy Awards and 49 Grammy nominations.
John Atkinson remembers…
Ever since the Tokyo Electro Acoustic Company (TEAC) founded its Esoteric division, in 1987, Esoteric's slogan has been "state of the art." Given Esoteric's impressive displays at audio shows, which reflect a consistency of ownership, staff, and philosophy of engineering, design, and manufacturing, I have longed to evaluate one of their hand-assembled models in my reference system. Any brand named Esoteric, and whose top line of products is named Grandioso, had better make superior products.
I've been especially curious about the color and tint of Esoteric's house sound, which to this…
The freezing issue seemed to involve miscommunication between the USB sticks and Sound Stream. (The playback of files stored on hard drives worked just fine.) Sometimes the app would show that a file was playing, and my USB stick's status light would blink to confirm that it was being played—but the N-01 produced no sound, and wouldn't respond to presses of its Power button. Only after I'd quit the app, unplugged and plugged in the power cord, let the N-01 reboot, breathed deeply, and started from scratch could I hear music again. My dogs learned to put their paws over their ears to avoid…
With the jazz track at 2Fs, I noticed that the initial patter of fingers on drums and the trumpet sounded drier than without upsampling. The leading edges of notes from the horn, and the most percussive piano notes, were softened and rounded. The Rachmaninoff sounded significantly drier, flatter, and less colorful, and the bass was less profound.
Oversampling at 4Fs added air around instruments and a heightened sense of acoustic space, but the sound was, if anything, more flat and flabby than before. The 8Fs rate surprised me: both tracks sounded "wetter" and airier, with more…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: Network media server-player with integrated digital-to-analog converter. Formats supported: DSF, DSDIFF (DIFF), DoP, FLAC, Apple Lossless (ALAC), WAV, AIFF, MP3, AAC (M4A container). Roon-certified. No internal storage. Resolutions supported: PCM to 32-bit/768kHz, MQA, DSD to 22.5MHz (USB port only); otherwise, PCM to 24/192, MQA, DSD to 2.8MHz via DoP. Inputs: XLR, RCA, optical, USB Type A (front, rear), USB Type B, Ethernet, BNC clock (44.1kHz–24.576MHz). Analog outputs: balanced (XLR), single-ended (RCA), Input impedance: 50 ohms. Frequency…
Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment
Digital Sources: dCS Paganini SACD/CD transport & Scarlatti clock & Rossini DAC; Linksys router with two TP-Link gigabit Ethernet media converters and multimode duplex fiber-optic cable; Intel NUC7i7BNH with 8GB RAM, 128GB SSD running Roon; Apple MacBook Pro computer with Intel i7, SSD, 8GB RAM; external hard drives, USB sticks, iPad Pro.
Preamplifiers: Audio Research REF 6, Lamm Industries Reference L2.1.
Power Amplifiers: Dan D'Agostino Master Audio Systems Progression monoblocks.
Loudspeakers: Wilson Audio Specialties Alexia 2.
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Sidebar 3: Measurements
I measured the Esoteric N-01 with my Audio Precision SYS2722 system (see the January 2008 "As We See It"), using both the Audio Precision's AES/EBU digital output and USB data sourced from my MacBook Pro running on battery power with Pure Music 3.0 playing WAV and AIFF test-tone files. Apple's USB Prober utility identified the Esoteric N-01 as both the "N-01" and "ESOTERIC USB AUDIO DEVICE" from "TEAC Corporation," its serial number as "0 (none)," and confirmed that its USB port operated in the optimal isochronous asynchronous mode. Apple's AudioMIDI utility…
A highlight of my visit to AXPONA, held last April in the Chicago suburb of Schaumburg, was the Dynaudio room, where the two-way, stand-mounted Special Forty loudspeakers ($2999/pair) were being driven by a tubed Octave integrated amplifier. "The stereo image was superb," I wrote in my show report; "even more impressive [were] the solidity and believability of the softly struck bass drum that punctuates the Ramirez Misa Criola." I concluded that this dem "illustrated how matching a relatively small speaker to a smallish room can produce optimal and excellent sound quality."
As its name…