A Distortion of Love
In reviewing the Benchmark AHB2, Kal Rubinson played Gerald Finzi's song "Come away, death" (the text is from Shakespeare's Twelfth Night), from the album of that title by mezzo-soprano Marianne Beate Kielland and pianist Sergej Osadchuk. I own that recording, too, in several versions…
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Isn't that a problem for the design goals of an amplifier like the Benchmark AHB2? Can such excellent noise and distortion performance be realized in the real world, including my Manhattan apartment? I'll have more to say about noise and distortion later. For now, let's just listen.
Sidebar: Resolution and Dynamic Range
When you add more bits to a digital format, you add more potential volume levels. A 16-bit system has 65,536 unique levels; a 24-bit system increases that 256 times, to 16,777,216 levels. It seems reasonable, then, to use the word resolution to describe what you gain when you add more bits.
Apparently, though, it isn't. Benchmark's John Siau told me in an e-mail exchange that if a digital system is properly dithered, those discrete levels don't really exist—and on further thought, it makes sense. "If the digital audio is TPDF dithered"—TPDF…
Even as hypergentrification runs rampant, enriching financial opportunities for some and crushing small-business dreams for others, New York City remains ground zero for jazz and for the small clubs it thrives in. The New York Times may not cover jazz unless someone of the stature of Wynton Marsalis is on the bill, but the music moves ahead undeterred, taking up residence at such iconic venues as the Blue Note, Cornelia Street Café, Fat Cat, 55 Bar, Jazz Gallery, Mezzrow, Smalls, Smoke, the Village Vanguard, and Zinc Bar.
America's only original music—along with the blues (from which it…
Jeff Lederer
—"How has anyone ever survived in New York as a 'free-jazz' musician?"
—"How has anyone ever survived in New York as a 'free-jazz' musician?"
A tenor saxophonist and clarinetist whose band Shakers n' Bakers reimagines the music of free-jazz giant Albert Ayler as if through the visions of a religious sect, Jeff Lederer returns to that fascination with Heart Love, released by Little (i) Music, on which he interprets Ayler's controversial 1968 soul-funk blowout, New Grass (Impulse!).
"The magic of New Grass is the freedom that Albert brings to his improvisations even in this structured setting," Lederer said. "The music is…
The days were long, the strawberries ripe, but it wasn't quite summer. It was, however, a perfect night for Otis Redding and Carla Thomas singing the Lowell Fulson–Jimmy McCracklin classic "Tramp," on a 7" 45rpm single (Stax 45-216).
Otis: What you call me?
Carla: Tramp! You don't wear continental clothes, or Stetson hats.
The full-on Memphis soul coming out of Legacy Audio's Studio HD minimonitors (see review elsewhere in this issue) made me think, Dang, Ernie! This is what this blue-label Stax disc is supposed to sound like! It had a genuine old-school solidity and a…
Many collectors of 45s claim that styrene discs become noisy after only five or six plays, and that playing a styrene with a MicroRidge or Shibata stylus is a fast road to ruined discs. So far, my experience does not confirm this.
Before the Hana SL Mono, I played my 7" 45s with either my super-fine-line-tipped EMT TSD 75 SFL, or a Koetsu Rosewood Standard cartridge with quadrahedral stylus. I've played some of these styrene singles—eg, the Trashmen's "Surfin' Bird" (Garrett GA-4002) or Matt Lucas's "I'm Movin' On" (Smash S-1813)—scores of times, mostly with fine-line styli tracking at…
On the eve of the 15th annual Rocky Mountain Audio Fest, being held this weekend in the newly remodeled but acoustically challenged Denver Marriott Tech Center, show organizer Marjorie Baumert revealed the show's future venue: beginning in 2019, RMAF will relocate to its new home in the brand new Gaylord Rockies Resort & Convention Center, just five miles from Denver International Airport. Baumert made the announcement alongside Gaylord Rockies' Director of Sales, Jeff Lindeblad (on the right in the photo above), and used the occasion to reveal that show dates for next year will move up a…
At an early morning press conference at the Rocky Mountain Audio Fest, presented jointly by Sony and Acoustic Sounds, the latter company's Chad Kassem announced that of the 5000 stereo copies pressed of the company's new UHQR LP reissue of the Jimi Hendrix Experience's Axis: Bold as Love, only 1000 remain. (The 1500 mono copies pressed are already sold out.) Hand-pressed, one-at-a-time, on 200 gm clarity vinyl that has no incline, the $100/each stereo copies are housed in an expensive Teflon jacket, and come with lots of documentation. Copies can be ordered online from Acoustic Sounds.
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The RMAF T-Shirt Award of 2018 goes to Denver's own Chris Hoffman, whom I spied on the ground floor of the Denver Marriott Tech Center. "I'd been threatening to make this T-shirt for a couple of years," he confessed after being caught in the act. (For more on this subject, please see my piece "Don't Play it Again, Sam!" from the September 2016 Stereophile).
At the press conference sponsored by Sony Corporation and Acoustic Sounds, Marc Finer, Director of Communication Research, Inc., introduced speakers Hayami Robise, Acoustic Engineer, Sony Corp., Chad Kassem of Acoustic Sounds,…
The large, superb-sounding system in the High Fidelity Services room left me deeply impressed. The system was headlined by the debut of the Verity Audio Monsalvat speaker system with its included Pro-6 six-channel crossover ($675,000 total) and three of Verity Audio's Monsalvat Amp-60 stereo amps ($58,000/each). Together with a TW-Acustic Raven phono preamplifier ($18,000), TW-Acustic Raven Black Knight turntable ($42,000) with debut Raven 12 and 10.5 tonearms ($11,500 total) and debut Ortofon MC Century cartridge ($12,000), Melco N1ZH MK1 music server ($4995), debut Signal Projects cables,…